OTTAWA - While former U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was packing his boxes at the Pentagon under a cloud of criticism for his handling of the war in Iraq, a friendly personal letter arrived from Ottawa lauding his "leadership."
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor sent the letter to Rumsfeld two days before his planned departure from his post last December. President George Bush had announced a month earlier that his longest-serving cabinet minister was being replaced to bring "a fresh perspective" on Iraq.
The Republicans had just lost their majority in Congress and Bush said he recognized Americans were registering their displeasure with the war.
O'Connor's letter, recently obtained by the NDP through Access to Information, is a largely complimentary farewell note.
"As you leave office, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your many achievements as Secretary of Defence, and to recognize the significant contribution you have made in the fight against terrorism," O'Connor wrote on December 15.
He goes on to speak of how the campaign against terror has been a "challenging undertaking, one that will require painstaking effort."
Some words and a paragraph of the letter were deleted before release.
"Here we have been privileged to benefit from your leadership in addressing the complex issues in play," O'Connor said.
"Your record of service has been a credit to your country. I wish you well in your future endeavours."
But while O'Connor was praising Rumsfeld's leadership, major voices in the United States were declaring it a disaster.
Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander and Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command, had called for his resignation, as did major military publications.
Critics said Rumsfeld mishandled the war, specifically failing to properly plan for what happened after the initial invasion. He famously referred to destabilizing looting in the streets of Baghdad as "untidiness."
Republican Senator John McCain, now a presidential candidate, recently called Rumsfeld one of the worst defence secretaries in U.S. history.
Former president Bill Clinton has said resources should have been focused on Afghanistan where there was a real al-Qaida threat.
And more light has been shed in recent media reports about his handling the Iraq war.
PBS's Frontline program this week quoted military insiders who said Rumsfeld's plan was to "keep a light footprint" in the country, even as late as the fall of 2004 when bloodshed was on a steady increase.
Jack Keane, a retired general and former army vice chief of staff, told Frontline there was "no plan to defeat the insurgency."
That policy has now been reversed, with a "surge" of troops being sent to Iraq to try to bring order to the shambles.
The New Yorker also has a story this month that a military report on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses along with graphic video and photographs, were sent to the upper echelons of the Pentagon months before the stories emerged in the media. Rumsfeld had testified to the contrary before congressional committees.
"I don't think Canada has benefited from the leadership of Rumsfeld or George Bush and I think I'm with a majority of Canadians in stating that and perhaps now with a majority of Americans," said NDP defence critic Dawn Black.
"The decision to go into Iraq by Rumsfeld and Bush was clearly the wrong decision."
O'Connor's spokeswoman Isabelle Bouchard said the minister wanted to thank Rumsfeld for the use of U.S. medical facilities in Germany, and for facilitating the airlift of casualties from Afghanistan, although he did not refer to those events in the letter.
"Canada and the United States, together with 36 other nations, are part of an important mission in Afghanistan to rebuild that country," Bouchard said in an email.
"The letter you refer to is normal correspondence with an outgoing counterpart."
U.S. military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies agrees.
"It's rare for any senior official to leave office without some sort of flattering letter from the president regardless of what the president thinks,'' said Cordesman. "It would be a little amazing to me if the Canadian defence minister, having worked with Rumsfeld . . . sent him a letter saying 'Thank God you're gone.' Perhaps an Australian might do it, but I can't conceive of a Canadian doing it."
John McCallum, a former Liberal defence minister, agreed that a "good luck" letter would be standard, but said O'Connor's note was "over the top."
"(Rumsfeld's) not a person that will any more have a major influence over U.S. policy so it's not as if one has to do that to curry favour with the Americans," McCallum said. "So I think it probably reflects the Harper government's support for the Iraq war to write such a letter.
"From a logical point of view Rumsfeld was a disaster in terms of the war on terrorism."
