WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Bush administration is holding publicly to a lofty definition of victory in Iraq but analysts say it should lower its sights <\m> at least for now.The Navy admiral in line to become the US commander for the Middle East has signalled he favours redefining the goals and some experts say US officials already have done so privately.

In his State of the Union speech on January 23, President George W. Bush declared: “Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.”

But the aim right now — and the administration knows it <\m> is just to stop a further descent into civil war from clashes between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, said Anthony Cordesman, one of Washington’s most prominent military analysts.

“At this point in time, the main goal is to get through the next year without seeing a major deterioration in the situation in Iraq,” said Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

“You can redefine victory in December if you’ve made it that far,” he said.

Adm. William Fallon, Bush’s pick to run US Central Command which is responsible for the Middle East, told senators it may be time to scale back expectations for Iraq.

Fallon, who would oversee Bush’s new plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq, said the United States had “hundreds of good ideas” about making Iraq more like America when it invaded in 2003, ending decades of dictatorship under Saddam Hussein.

“Maybe we ought to redefine the goals here a bit and do something that’s more realistic in terms of getting some progress and then maybe take on the other things later,” he told the US Senate’s Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

US officials spoke after the invasion of creating a democracy that could serve as a model for the Middle East and offer an alternative to Islamist radicalism.

That vision replaced the initial goals of the invasion <\m> to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and oust Saddam.

The first goal was based on faulty intelligence, while the second was achieved with speed and ease, compared to the battle the United States faces to achieve its aims in Iraq today.

Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said the United States may now have to settle for an Iraq that was “a wee bit better than Syria” in terms of democratic standards.

Some analysts say achieving democracy in Iraq should remain a longer-term US aim and could still be achievable. But they also say establishing security must be the only goal for now.

“I think it’s a question of timing and I think it’s a question of phasing and priority,” said Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute.

Kagan published a paper last month entitled “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq” which proposed sending more troops to Iraq and influenced Bush’s new approach.

“We had been imagining that we were going to be able to accomplish what we wanted very quickly. That is not going to happen,” Kagan said. “We need to start with security.”

But even achieving that smaller victory will be extremely hard, said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“I think the odds of success in Iraq right now — an end to the violence — are quite long indeed,” said Biddle, an expert on military strategy.

Biddle said Bush’s plan increased the chances of success a little but still did not provide enough US troops. To end a civil war, an outside military force had to convince all sides that it would stay long enough to police the peace and be strong enough to crush resistance, Biddle said.

“We’re telling everybody who’ll listen that we’re not willing to stay long enough to provide the carrot. We’re also not able to produce enough troops to provide much of a stick,” Biddle said.

Ultimately the chances of US success in Iraq — whether defined modestly or more ambitiously — rest in large part with Iraqis themselves and whether they can live together and share power, US officials have acknowledged.

“It depends a great deal on the Iraqis. Can anybody predict the odds? No. Are they good? Probably not,” Cordesman said. “Certainly many of the people working on the new strategy thought they were less than even.”