BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Nightmarish political realities in Baghdad are prompting American officials to curb their vision for democracy in Iraq. Instead, the officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security.
A workable democratic and sovereign government in Iraq was one of the Bush administration's stated goals of the war.
But for the first time, exasperated front-line U.S. generals talk openly of non-democratic governmental alternatives, and while the two top U.S. officials in Iraq still talk about preserving the country's nascent democratic institutions, they say their ambitions aren't as 'lofty' as they once had been.
The failure of Iraq to emerge from widespread instability is a bitter pill for the United States, which optimistically toppled the Saddam Hussein regime more than four years ago. Millions of Iraqis went to the polls to cast ballots, something that generated great promise for the establishment of a democratic system.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, declined to be interviewed for this story, but they issued a joint statement to CNN that reiterated that the country's 'fundamental democratic framework is in place' and that 'the development of democratic institutions is being encouraged.'
But Crocker and Petraeus conceded they are 'now engaged in pursuing less lofty and ambitious goals than was the case at the outset.'
The U.S. government has long cautioned that a fully functioning democracy would be slow to emerge in Iraq. But with key U.S. senators calling for al-Maliki's removal, some senior U.S. military commanders even suggest privately the entire Iraqi government must be removed by 'constitutional or non-constitutional' means and replaced with a stable, secure, but not necessarily democratic entity.
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