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My guess is he's not being more realistic. Note my comments in another thread about cognative dissonance and worldviews as paradigms.
Bush is forced to 'admit' the war is unwinnable in order to allow people who share views with Mojo that it doesn't really matter, as long as we'er doing something, it must be better than nothing. We could be doing something else, possibly, that is more effective. But this admission allows us to bend our paradigm without causing it too much disruption.
Given that analysis, tt's really not all that problematic for him to admit it. Because everyone already thinks that it wasn't winnable in any sense of the word that we are used to in conventional warfare. But all different notions of winnable are floating around in popular discourse, so the two main sides that we call liberal and conservative can't meet in the middle to discuss what our goals are or ought to be in any common frame.
So one side can now say, what a dumbass, of course it isn't winnable. and the others can say look at those dumbasses who thought we thought it was winnable--of course we knew it wasn't, but we're trying to do something here, but they're too dense to see it.
Actually, we could be discussing what that alternate vision is, and rationally discuss which of the two main visions would be best for our long-term interests, but we're too caught up in this kind of public nonsense that Bush is all too complacent in engendering. That's one of his major flaws as a leader (although it's very effective at extracting support, it's more suited for an oligarchy than a democracy, in my opinion).
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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
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