The Washington Post reported yesterday that "[t]he Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq." (Registration required.) A "senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion" was the source for these statements. "What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said this unnamed individual. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

This isn't surprising, considering that the Bush Administration wanted to fight the Iraq War on the cheap, putting far fewer troops on the ground than generals wanted. Secretary of Defense Donald "Duck" Rumsfeld insisted that the United States' modern army could easily defeat the Iraqi army with fewer troops than might seem necessary. And, true to form, we took Baghdad with lightning speed. What we did not expect, however, was the insurgency. With a power vacuum, the insurgents came from around the Islamic world to attempt to wrest control of Iraq from the United States. Oops; I guess we didn't plan for that.

A lot of the problems in Iraq come from this lack of infastructure. Roads, pipelines, and electrical lines were destroyed during the invasion, and they have yet to be rebuilt. Under Saddam Hussein, there was a bureaucracy in place that got everyday tasks done. Now, there's nothing. Power generation remains below pre-invasion levels. And the Texas tea that we thought would flow like manna from heaven ended up flowing like the trickle of a broken faucet. Pipelines are still destroyed and have not been rebuilt fast enough. The oil is there, but there's no way to get it out. The Bush Administration had hoped that oil sales would -- pardon the term -- fuel the country's growth, but those oil sales haven't happened, and neither has the growth.

Oh, and the world is a safer place now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.