An Oral History of the Bush "Error"

Vanity Fair compiles comments from an assortment of Bush insiders and assorted critics to provide context to a chronology of the most disastrous presidential administration in US history. My conservative friends will disagree and blame liberal media bias, liberal elites, secularists, atheists, the homosexual "lifestyle," and a host of ANYTHING BUT a Republican cabal of massive, epic failures.

Appropriate titled, "Farewell To All That," there were so many choice quotes I could highlight here, but this one in particular -- March 19, 2003, when the Iraq War officially began -- stands out:

March 19, 2003 The Iraq war begins. Two weeks of “shock and awe” bombard- ment herald the invasion by ground forces. U.S. and British troops make up 90 percent of the “international coalition,” which includes modest support from other countries. The defeat of Iraqi forces is a foregone conclusion, but within days of the occupation Baghdad is beset by looting that coalition forces do nothing to stop. Rumsfeld dismisses the breakdown of civil order with the explanation “Stuff hap- pens.” Kenneth Adelman, a Rumsfeld-appointed member of a Pentagon advisory board, and initially a supporter of the war, later confronts the defense secretary.

Kenneth Adelman, a member of Donald Rumsfeld’s advisory Defense Policy Board: So he says, It might be best if you got off the Defense Policy Board. You’re very negative. I said, I am negative, Don. You’re absolutely right. I’m not negative about our friendship. But I think your decisions have been abysmal when it really counted.

Start out with, you know, when you stood up there and said things—“Stuff hap- pens.” I said, That’s your entry in Bartlett’s. The only thing people will remember about you is “Stuff happens.” I mean, how could you say that? “This is what free people do.” This is not what free people do. This is what barbarians do. And I said, Do you realize what the looting did to us? It legitimized the idea that liberation comes with chaos rather than with freedom and a better life. And it demystified the potency of American forces. Plus, destroying, what, 30 percent of the infrastructure.

I said, You have 140,000 troops there, and they didn’t do jack shit. I said, There was no order to stop the looting. And he says, There was an order. I said, Well, did you give the order? He says, I didn’t give the order, but someone around here gave the order. I said, Who gave the order?

So he takes out his yellow pad of paper and he writes down—he says, I’m going to tell you. I’ll get back to you and tell you. And I said, I’d like to know who gave the order, and write down the second question on your yellow pad there. Tell me why 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq disobeyed the order. Write that down, too.

And so that was not a successful conversation.

Earlier in the piece, Canadian Defense Minister Bill Graham called Rumsfeld, "obviously an extremely intelligent person." I didn't get the gist of that statement until I read the Adelman quote. Rumsfeld had the balls to portray himself and sell himself as intelligent, but when push came to shove and he got called on his bullshit, he gave himself up as an incompetent boor.