You may remember Ken Adelman as the guy who famously said that our invasion of Iraq would be a "cakewalk."
Adelman long ago ackowledged that his exuberant assessment was a mistake, but his lifelong friend and mentor, Don Rumsfeld never did.
And Adelman's inability to get Rumsfeld to see that Iraq is coming apart at the seams has ended their friendship amid an attempt by Rumsfeld to have his friend fired from the Defense Policy Board, according to an article in The New Yorker.
Two months ago, Kenneth Adelman, the former director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, received a call from the Pentagon: Donald Rumsfeld would like to see him as soon as possible. Adelman said he knew then that this meeting might be their last.
Adelman, according to Rumsfeld, had become disruptive and negative. he wanted Adelman out.
This is the same Ken Adelman who in a Washington Post op-ed piece in February 2002 introduced the word 'cakewalk' into the Iraq War debate.
I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.
Adelman, to his credit, recognized FUBAR when he saw it. Rumsfeld remained deep in denial.
"When Rumsfeld said, in reaction to all the looting, `Stuff happens,' and `That's what free people do,' I was just so disappointed," Adelman recalled last week. "This wasn't what free people did; it's what barbarians did." Within the confines of the policy board, Adelman became blunt about his disenchantment with the Pentagon's management of the war. At the board's meeting this summer, Adelman said, he argued that the American military needed a new strategy.
"I suggested that we were losing the war," Adelman said. "What was astonishing to me was the number of Iraqi professional people who were leaving the country. People were voting with their feet, and I said that it looked like we needed a Plan B. I said, `What's the alternative? Because what we're doing now is just losing.' "
Adelman said that Rumsfeld didn't take to the message well. "He was in deep denial--deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did fifteen or twenty minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can't lose it in Iraq. And I tried to interrupt this interrogatory soliloquy to say, `Yes, we are actually losing the war in Iraq.' He got upset and cut me off. He said, `Excuse me,' and went right on with it."
Rumsfeld told him he wanted him out. Adelman said he didn't want to leave.
"I had the floor then, and I started by saying what a positive influence he had been in my life, that I love him like a brother. He nodded, kind of sadly. And then I said, `I'm negative about two things: the deflection of responsibility, and the quality of decisions.' He said he took responsibility all the time. Then I talked about two decisions: the way he handled the looting, and Abu Ghraib. He told me that he didn't remember saying, `Stuff happens.' He was really in denial that this was his fault." Adelman said that it struck him then that "maybe he really thinks that things are going well in Iraq."
Just before the election Adelman got a card from Rumsfeld thanking him for his work and telling him a replacement would be named for him.
And then, Rumsfeld was out.
Adelman is, apparently, still in. "I'm heartsick about the whole matter," he said. He does not know what to make of the disintegration of Rumsfeld's career and reputation. "How could this happen to someone so good, so competent?" he said. "This war made me doubt the past. Was I wrong all those years, or was he just better back then? The Donald Rumsfeld of today is not the Donald Rumsfeld I knew, but maybe I was wrong about the old Donald Rumsfeld. It's a terrible way to end a career. It's hard to remember, but he was once the future."