If We Lower Our Expectations, We Won't Be Disappointed, Right?

The Bush Administration is preparing us for a big mess with the Iraqi elections.
With just over two weeks until the Iraqi elections, the United States is lowering its expectations for both the turnout and the results of the vote.

This is kind of like when your mommy doesn't tell you that she is going to take you to Disney World because she's afraid it will rain, and you won't be able to go, and you'll be disappointed. Then when you end up staying inside and playing Candyland all day, you don't get mad, because Candyland really is kind of fun. But then you find out that your friends got to go and had a really good time, even though they had to wear those silly Mickey Mouse ponchos.

"I would . . . really encourage people not to focus on numbers, which in themselves don't have any meaning, but to look on the outcome and to look at the government that will be the product of these elections," a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a White House briefing yesterday.

Is this guy speaking on the condition of anonymity because he realizes what he said is really stupid, but Karl Rove made him say it anyway? The outcome is most likely going to be something close to civil war, but no need to worry about the numbers.

You go for elections, hope for the best and if it doesn't materialize, you go with whatever emerges -- probably a heavily Shiite government," said Henri J. Barkey, a former State Department Iraq specialist who is now head of Leheigh University's International Relations Department. "Then you hope that this new government will be smart enough and enlightened enough to make an outreach to the Sunnis."

You know, instead of claiming a mandate and then having the nation's most elaborate and expensive Inauguration in history, and sticking it to D.C. taxpayers to the tune of $11 million in security costs.