Major Change in Iraq/No Change in Iraq

The dichotomy, were people not dying, might be amusing. First, this Washington Post article entitled "Major Change Expected in Strategy for Iraq War":

The growing doubts among GOP lawmakers about the administration's Iraqstrategy, coupled with the prospect of Democratic wins in next month's midterm elections, will soon force the Bush administration to abandon its open-ended commitment to the war, according to lawmakers in both parties, foreign policy experts and others involved in policymaking.

Clearly the Bush administration keeps track of this sort of thing, as you can tell from this article entitled "Bush, Rumsfeld Defend Strategy":

President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday defended the U.S. strategy in Iraq, saying the ultimate goals remain unchanged despite escalating violence and increasingly somber assessments from military leaders on the ground.

But perhaps that's not entirely accurate:

Speaking at a Washington fundraiser, Bush said the U.S. goal in Iraq "is clear and unchanging": creating a country that can govern and defend itself and "that will be an ally in the war against these extremists."

Perhaps I'm missing something, but wasn't our goal to create more than a "country that can govern and defend itself"? Did Bush abandon the "democracy in the desert" approach sometime ago, and I simply missed it? Even reading the language broadly, it's easy to imagine a country that can govern and defend itself that isn't quite a democracy. Or am I reading too much into works spoken at a fundraiser? Regardless, it's hardly relevant except in our domestic political sphere. The goal of democracy was abandoned sometime ago by everyone except those in the Bush administration.