BEIJING, Sept. 11 -- As U.S. President George W. Bush and General David Petraeus struggle to make the case that yet more time is needed for victory in Iraq, the goal for success is no longer the way the architects of the 2003 invasion had hoped.

       Bush's decision six years ago to wage war against former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the Sept. 11 attacks led to many miscalculations and mistakes.

       Bush not only wanted to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and "overthrow a brutal dictator but to create a shining pro-Western democracy in the heart of the Arab world."

       Almost nothing the Bush administration has said about Iraq has made it.

       The victory in Iraq long sought by the Bush administration now has become "avoiding a bloodbath, having some minimum amount of stability and predictability in the region," said Dan Benjamin, a former Middle East specialist with the National Security Council in the Clinton administration.

       "Our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is not just difficult, it can be misleading and even hazardous," Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told a House of Representatives hearing on Monday.

       Bush's continual linking of Iraqi insurgents with al-Qaida terrorists who planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been challenged by academics and war critics. Thirty three percent of Americans said they think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001, 58 percent said he was not, and 9 percent said they did not know, according to a New York Times poll released on Monday.

       Petraeus testified that Bush's troop buildup has led to measurable successes and should allow a reduction in troop levels by the middle of next year.

       But it follows "four years of mistakes," said Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution military analyst. "What I don't know is whether the four years of errors are something we can recover from."