Quote of the day: Is it possible that Chimpy thinks we're "winning" in Iraq because his handlers lack the nerve to tell him what's really going on?

"This didn't have to be managed this bad. It's just awful."
--Kenneth "Cakewalk" Adelman, the longtime GOP foreign-affairs stalwart and Cheney-Rumsfeld intimate (who as a member of the Defense Policy Board famously predicted that the invasion of Iraq would be "a cakewalk"), to the Washington Post's Peter Baker in "Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush"

Adelman, as you've probably heard (he's been sounding off a lot lately), is "no longer on speaking terms" with his old chum the vice president. In his interview with the Post and others, writes Peter Baker, Adelman said--

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction disturbed him. He said he was disgusted by the failure to stop the looting that followed Hussein's fall and by Rumsfeld's casual dismissal of it with the phrase "stuff happens." The breaking point, he said, was Bush's decision to award Medals of Freedom to occupation chief L. Paul Bremer, Gen. Tommy R. Franks and then-CIA Director George J. Tenet.

"The three individuals who got the highest civilian medals the president can give [that's Tenet, Franks and Bremer flanking you-know-who] were responsible for a lot of the debacle that was Iraq," Adelman said. All told, he said, the Bush national security team has proved to be "the most incompetent" of the past half-century. But, he added, "Obviously, the president is ultimately responsible."

Adelman said he remained silent for so long out of loyalty. "I didn't want to bad-mouth the administration," he said. In private, though, he spoke out, resulting in a furious confrontation with Rumsfeld, who summoned him to the Pentagon in September and demanded his resignation from the defense board.

"It seemed like nobody was getting it," Adelman said. "It seemed like everything was locked in. It seemed like everything was stuck." He agrees he bears blame as well. "I think that's fair. When you advocate a policy that turns bad, you do have some responsibility."

Most troubling, he said, are his shattered ideals: "The whole philosophy of using American strength for good in the world, for a foreign policy that is really value-based instead of balanced-power-based, I don't think is disproven by Iraq. But it's certainly discredited."