Free Republic

Ken Adelman Backing Obama By Michael D. Shear First Colin Powell. Now Ken Adelman? Adelman is the latest Republican foreign-policy heavyweight to endorse Sen. Barack Obama, telling the New Yorker's George Packer that he intends to vote for the Democrat in two weeks. "When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird," Adelman wrote, according to Packer. "Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I've concluded...

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...

<p>This adage comes from Rumsfeld’s Rules (search), which the Defense Secretary currently under fire attributes to that other Illinois politico Abraham Lincoln, who was once under even more fire than Rumsfeld is today.</p> <p>Don Rumsfeld is seldom portrayed as a friend. He’s had so many roles in public life — and been so public in that life — that little ink is left for personal pieces on the man, up-close-and-personal.</p>

Iraq's a major problem for the presidential candidate, one he'd better fix long before November. What's the poor fellow to do? Sure, that applies to George W. Bush. But - amazingly enough - it also applies to John F. Kerry.

US neo-conservatives jubilant over WMD agreement By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 22 December 2003 After months on the defensive because of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the neo-conservative hawks responsible for the Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emptive warfare were quietly jubilant over the weekend following Libya's climb down over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and other significant gestures by Iran and Syria. The Libyan leadership's decision to abandon its weapons programme was a vindication, they said, of the long-standing argument that invading Iraq would give other countries an unambiguous signal of what they could expect if they pursued...

What went wrong with the pre-war intelligence on Iraq? That debate's now swirling around Washington. The congressional intelligence committees point fingers at the CIA, which is fingering the White House, which, in turn, is rebuking the Congress. Beneath the normal Washington sport of blamesmanship lies something far more important -- the future of the preemption doctrine. Preemption must not become another Washington casualty of the blame game. Yet the doctrine remains on an artificial respirator so long as our pre-war intelligence on Iraq seems so faulty. Arms inspector David Kay recently testified that Saddam did have active biological and missile...

<p>Don’t we, the American people, have a right to know if a “friendly country” bankrolled the Sept. 11 attacks, and funds terrorists bent on destroying more of America?</p> <p>Obviously so.</p> <p>Then why is President George W. Bush hiding evidence of terrorist-funders? He, after all, gave us the sharp moral distinction of countries being “either with us or against us” after Sept. 11, 2001.</p>

Here they go again, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan's famous quip -- bestowing on the United Nations what President Bush called a "vital role." Someone should tell the State Department: Been there. Done that. The only "vital role" the U.N. should play is simply to lift the sanctions. They were pushed by the U.S. and U.K. against a tyrannical Iraq. Now they might be used by France, Germany and Russia against the U.S. and U.K. with a liberated Iraq. Bush turning to the U.N. Security Council before the war proved disastrous. It gave Saddam Hussein yet more months to augment his...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading U.S. hawk on Friday defended an article in which he said a war with Iraq would be a "cakewalk" but said he underestimated the extent to which Iraq would use guerrilla tactics against U.S. forces. Kenneth Adelman, a former Pentagon aide, U.S envoy to the United Nations and arms control negotiator, said he stood by the February 2002 article written to counter critics who believed a war could lead to thousands of U.S. casualties. "They said that Scud missiles would obliterate Israel and American troops in...

Even before President Bush had placed Iraq on his "axis of evil," dire warnings were being sounded about the danger of acting against Saddam Hussein's regime. Two knowledgeable Brookings Institution analysts, Philip H. Gordon and Michael E. O'Hanlon, concluded that the United States would "almost surely" need "at least 100,000 to 200,000" ground forces [op-ed, Dec. 26, 2001]. Worse: "Historical precedents from Panama to Somalia to the Arab-Israeli wars suggest that . . . the United States could lose thousands of troops in the process." I agree that taking down Hussein would differ from taking down the Taliban. And no ...