Spreading Democracy Something

Right at the tail end of a truly depressing NY Times piece headlined Bombs Aimed at G.I.’s in Iraq Are Increasing, we get this little update on how all that democracy-spreading is going:

Bush administration officials now admit that Iraqi government’s original plan to rein in the violence in Baghdad, announced in June, has failed. The Pentagon has decided to rush more American troops into the capital, and the new military operation to restore security there is expected to begin in earnest next month.

Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

Looks like we’ve hit a stop sign on that Road Map to a Democratic Middle East.

What I find most distressing is that this is reported as part of an article focusing on the increasing number of soldiers being killed or injured by bombs. The Bush administration keeps telling us their sacrifice has a purpose, and that that purpose is a free and democratic Iraq, that we’ve got to stay the course or their lives will have been given in vain. Well, okay, Bullshit Brigade—what say you now? They’re dying for…an alternative to democracy? Sounds awesome.