Should this surprise anyone?
Starting a war in Iraq was a bad idea...period. The whole debacle was hastily and poorly and justified to the American people upon the thinly veiled lies of the Bush administration. While its purported purpose was to protect Americans from alleged Iraqi WMDs, it had been reversed justified upon the to goal of creating a democratic state when these wMDs failed to show up. Now administration officials are planning to even back away from that line of reasoning.
Its a quagmire folks. A quagmire.