This entry's title is from The Washington Post, quoting "a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion [of Iraq]."
Let me give you the full quotation:
"We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
My translation: The neocons who dominate the Bush Administration are finally having to wake up and smell the coffee. They thought there would be no resistance and few casualties, that the Iraqi people would welcome our soldiers with flowers, that the war would be over in weeks, and that democracy and peace would spread throughout the Middle East like a virus. Turns out, they were wrong.
Sane people - and all the lessons of history - told them they were impossibly wrong from day one. They wouldn't listen. They huffed and puffed and bragged and denied for more than three years, while over 1,800 Americans died, countless others were maimed and wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed.
Now, while things continue to worsen, Bush takes a five-week vacation, while "a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion" says: "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality1 that dominated at the beginning."
Second translation: "We were full of shit from day one. We've pretended we weren't for three years, but now the jig is up. We are desperate and trying to figure out how the fuck to save face. Help!"
Maureen Dowd sums it up nicely in a New York Times op-ed column here. Sleep tight.
1 Wishful thinking, but does "shedding the unreality" include hanging Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld by thier ankles from lamp posts? It should.