Kids: Bush Says He Supports Iraqi Leader "And it's not up to the politicians in Washington, D.C., to say whether he will remain in his position," Bush said. "It is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship."
Grownups: U.S. officials rethink hopes for Iraq democracy 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. "Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future," said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war's major battlegrounds. The comments reflect a practicality common among Western diplomats and officials trying to win hearts and minds in the Middle East and other non-Western countries where democracy isn't a tradition.