New Granada
30-11-2006, 07:51
Since the election, the New Yorker magazine has published two excellent pieces on Donald Rumsfeld.
The first was in the talk of the town and sketches rumsfeld through the eyes of his longtime friend, Kenneth Adelman.
The second is a profile aptly titled "Downfall."
Both are below.
Any comments on this, probably the the most disasterously incompetent secretary of defense?
Excerpts from the talk of the town piece:
“When Rumsfeld said, in reaction to all the looting, ‘Stuff happens,’ and ‘That’s what free people do,’ I was just so disappointed,” Adelman recalled last week. “This wasn’t what free people did; it’s what barbarians did.”
"Adelman said that Rumsfeld didn’t take to the message well. “He was in deep denial—deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did fifteen or twenty minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can’t lose it in Iraq. And I tried to interrupt this interrogatory soliloquy to say, ‘Yes, we are actually losing the war in Iraq.’ He got upset and cut me off. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went right on with it.”
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.”
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061120ta_talk_goldberg
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061120fa_fact
The first was in the talk of the town and sketches rumsfeld through the eyes of his longtime friend, Kenneth Adelman.
The second is a profile aptly titled "Downfall."
Both are below.
Any comments on this, probably the the most disasterously incompetent secretary of defense?
Excerpts from the talk of the town piece:
“When Rumsfeld said, in reaction to all the looting, ‘Stuff happens,’ and ‘That’s what free people do,’ I was just so disappointed,” Adelman recalled last week. “This wasn’t what free people did; it’s what barbarians did.”
"Adelman said that Rumsfeld didn’t take to the message well. “He was in deep denial—deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did fifteen or twenty minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can’t lose it in Iraq. And I tried to interrupt this interrogatory soliloquy to say, ‘Yes, we are actually losing the war in Iraq.’ He got upset and cut me off. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went right on with it.”
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.”
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061120ta_talk_goldberg
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061120fa_fact