The Death of a Friendship

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.

"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.

Adelman and Rumsfeld had been friends for 36 years. Adelman first worked for Rumsfeld during the Nixon Administration, and then was Rumsfeld's assistant when he was the Secretary of Defense under President Ford. Later, Rumsfeld drafted Adelman to help him campaign for President, in 1988. They became so close that their families sometimes spent vacations together, and Rumsfeld sought out Adelman for advice. In 2001, Rumsfeld appointed his friend to the Defense Policy Board, a group of lobbyists, defense intellectuals, and politicians of once high standing, who gather periodically to give the Secretary "unvarnished advice" on strategy and management.

Apparently, Rumsfeld saw Adelman's advice as somewhat too unvarnished. Before the war, Adelman famously remarked that the invasion would be a "cakewalk." Seizing Baghdad was easy; but holding it quickly became a nightmare. Adelman recalled his disappointment last week with Rumsfeld's famously remarks; "Stuff happens," in reaction to all the ensuing looting, and "That's what free people do".

"This wasn't what free people did; it's what barbarians did,"Adelman countered.

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 argued that the American military needed a new strategy.

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

Adelman defended himself in The New Yorker article, replying: "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."

Apparently, Rumsfeld was not pleased to be reminded of these events.

Cited story -- it's long but well worth your time to read it.

.