Regrets of Iraq Stance
In an article first appearing on the website of Vanity Fair in November 2006, Adelman wrote that he regrets urging military action in Iraq and feels that he overestimated the abilities of the Bush administration leadership. He was quoted as saying "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent." He also added, "They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional." He wrote that the conduct of the war "just breaks your heart," and it "didn’t have to be managed this bad; it’s awful." In an article in The New Yorker, Adelman said of Rumsfeld, a friend and associate of 36 years: “How could this happen to someone so good, so competent? 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.”
Read more about this topic: Kenneth Adelman
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