Well the original goal after the getting rid of Saddam was to build a stable, secular democracy which would lay the groundwork to overthrow the various Middle East Dictatorships.
Since it looks like Iraq just isn’t going to be stable in the next 15 years and it’s going to be more an ally of Iraq than the US and it’s not going to be an example of a democracy to the Muslims, we are looking to minimize our failure.
I think that you meant to say "Iran". If that was your intention, then I disagree. Iran & Iraq will probably never be allies, the historical emnity is too great... even for the Iraqi Shia. I do agree with the rest of your statement about "minimizing failure" though I might use slightly different terminology.