Kenneth Adelman, Iraq war promoter, no longer on speaking terms with Cheney

[dajoki]

WP
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15773983/

Embittered insiders turn against Bush
War advocates, other conservatives say president mismanaged their vision

By Peter Baker

Updated: 11:05 a.m. ET Nov 19, 2006
The weekend after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, Kenneth Adelman and a couple of other promoters of the Iraq war gathered at Vice President Cheney's residence to celebrate. The invasion had been the "cakewalk" Adelman predicted. Cheney and his guests raised their glasses, toasting President Bush and victory. "It was a euphoric moment," Adelman recalled.

Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling-out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that "the president is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls "the debacle that was Iraq."

Adelman, a former Reagan administration official and onetime member of the Iraq war brain trust, is only the latest voice from inside the Bush circle to speak out against the president or his policies. Heading into the final chapter of his presidency, fresh from the sting of a midterm election defeat, Bush finds himself with fewer and fewer friends. Some of the strongest supporters of the war have grown disenchanted, former insiders are registering public dissent and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame him for losing Congress.

Trials of a lame duck
A certain weary crankiness sets in with any administration after six years. By this point in Bill Clinton's tenure, bitter Democrats were competing to denounce his behavior with an intern even as they were trying to fight off his impeachment. Ronald Reagan was deep in the throes of the Iran-contra scandal. But Bush's strained relations with erstwhile friends and allies take on an extra edge of bitterness amid the dashed hopes of the Iraq venture.

"There are a lot of lives that are lost," Adelman said in an interview last week. "A country's at stake. A region's at stake. This is a gigantic situation. . . . This didn't have to be managed this bad. It's just awful."

[HaggardsMethDealer]

1. If only we lived in a just society...

These war criminals would be lined up and executed.

[BrotherBuzz]

2. Oh, but to be a fly on the wall....

[NastyRiffraff]

3. Yeah, the war woulda been just GREAT

if only they had done it my way. That's the meme now. This, from the man who said it would be a "cakewalk," then celebrated like a frat boy snappin' towels.

Yes, Bush is ultimately responsible (and of course his puppetmaster, Cheney). But people like Adelman enabled them, and are now denying any responsibility.

But of course, they're Republicans, so this isn't surprising.

[dajoki]

6. Cheerleaders n/t

[whistle]

4. Ken Adelman seems to have CRS disease

...<snip>
Adelman is well known for a pair of editorial columns regarding the Iraq War he wrote for the Washington Post in February 2002 and April 2003 entitled respectively "Cakewalk In Iraq" <2> and "'Cakewalk' Revisited" <3>. In the first he argued that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would be a simple matter to accomplish: "I believe that demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." In the later editorial, published just a few weeks after the invasion, he claimed his vindication and in particular praised key Bush administration players: "My confidence 14 months ago sprang from having worked for Don Rumsfeld three times -- knowing he would fashion a most creative and detailed war plan -- and from knowing Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz well for many years."

Also notable are Adelman's predictions regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Adelman said that weapons were likely to be near Tikrit and Baghdad, "because they're the most protected places with the best troops. I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction." <4>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_L._Adelman

[ninkasi]

5. When we were speaking out against the war

and the way it was being conducted, these same people called us traitors, and claimed that we supported the terrorists. Now they're speaking out against the way the war and occupation is being handled, and we're supposed to consider them patriots? What word describes people who are many degrees worse then hypocrites? Weasels? Whatever the word is, that's what they are.

[calimary]

7. The thing that bothers me most about this asshole and others like him

and what they're saying now with their "mea culpas:" They seem to be preaching the message that it wasn't the IDEA behind the war that was "just awful." It was the EXECUTION. They seem, still, to think that they were basically correct in their assessment of the situation, AND the validity of the PNAC strategy they came up with. The only thing wrong with it, evidently, was that it was implemented by a bunch of doofuses (doofi?) who were agonizingly incompetent. I know richard perle has said, in recent interviews, that if he knew it was gonna turn out this badly, and be handled by such wanton nincompoops, he never would have pushed for it. Well, that's where I'm uncomfortable as hell. Because it indicates that these assholes have not seen their ideas discredited and the reasons for tearing the Middle East from stem to stern as horrid, it's that nothing was wrong with the ideas - they were just carried out badly. Give them a new set of implementers and ball-carriers, and they'll be back. They won't have learned ANYTHING. And they have NOT seen the light. These men remain unredeemed, their souls NOT saved. Because if they thought they had better people in place to carry out their evil, wretched, bloodthirsty, greedy schemes, they'd be pushing those same schemes again IN A HEARTBEAT.

This Mr. "Cakewalk" hasn't learned a DAMNED THING. Nor has any single ONE of his buddies.