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Rumsfeld in 'denial' over situation in Iraq: report

7 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Pentagon insider Kenneth Adelman reportedly said that resigning Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in "deep, deep denial" about the status of the war in Iraq.

"I suggested that we were losing the war," Adelman, a longtime friend of Rumsfeld, told The New Yorker magazine in an interview posted online Saturday.

Snip...

"He was in deep denial -- deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did 15 or 20 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."

Adelman's prognosis of the situation in Iraq was a major departure from his now-famous 2002 prediction that invading the country would be a "cakewalk."

And it angered Rumsfeld, who complained that Adelman had become "disruptive and negative."

Adelman told The New Yorker that he replied: "'I'm negative about two things: the deflection of responsibility, and the quality of decisions.' He (Rumsfeld) said he took responsibility all the time. Then I talked about two decisions: the way he handled the looting" after the invasion of Iraq, and the
Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

"He told me that he didn't remember saying, 'Stuff happens'" with regard to the looting, Adelman said.

"He was really in denial that this was his fault," Adelman said, adding that it occurred to him at that time that Rumsfeld might really think that "things are going well in Iraq."

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