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May 17, 2003

Luckovich Has a Field Day with Military Chiefs

By Mike Luckovich
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had requested the original drawings of a couple of cartoons I had done recently, and I had been glad to oblige. So with the war now on, Torie Clark, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, invited me to come up to Washington for a visit.
I guess she thought that having a cartoonist hanging around the Pentagon might lighten the mood a bit. She also mentioned something about a one-armed push-up contest with a Marine in her office.
After arriving and waiting to attend my first briefing, a massively muscled Marine asked if I was ready for "the contest." I thought Clark had been joking, but I thought wrong. So, in the middle of her office, the one-armed competition began. I did six more than the Marine.
Short cartoonists are so often underestimated.
As it happened, President Bush was coming to the Pentagon that morning to give a pep talk to the assembled brass. Alongside him at the podium would be Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld’s right-hand man Paul Wolfowitz, and six or eight generals.
The best part of the event was watching the preparation, because I had no idea it would be so choreographed. White House advance personnel spent 45 minutes rearranging pieces of masking tape on the floor. The tape contained the names of all the generals, and the advance crew had to make sure they’d all fit in the camera angle with Bush.
After the speech, I was standing in the hall when Rumsfeld, his aides and a photographer friend of mine, David Kennerly, walked by. "C’mon," Kennerly said, and I followed. Rumsfeld saw me and said, "What’s he doing here?"
For the rest of the day, he said the same thing whenever he saw me.
We went to Rumsfeld’s office. I was told to make sure my cellphone was off because of security reasons. Alarms sound if a cellphone is on in his office. We walked past Rumsfeld’s desk and into a small side bathroom. Rumsfeld showed me early photos of himself with the German rocket designer Wernher Von Braun and past presidents. On the adjacent wall were cartoons. Rumsfeld pointed out two of mine that I’d recently sent.
I was escorted out shortly after that, as if he had more important things to do. Sheesh.
At 11:30 I was brought back to Rumsfeld’s office to watch a "pre-briefing" to prepare Rumsfeld for the actual press briefing he would be giving 20 minutes later. Besides Rumsfeld, the meeting included Clark, Gen. Richard Myers (the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Paul Wolfowitz and four or five other aides. The purpose of the gathering is to anticipate what the press will ask and go over the best answers.
"What’s he doing here?" Rumsfeld asked as soon as he saw me. "Draw us however you want, but whatever you do, don’t make Gen. Myers look bad."
Clark threw questions at Rumsfeld: "Wasn’t this war supposed to be a cakewalk?" she asked. Then Rumsfeld, Clark and Myers decided on an appropriate response – in this case, stressing that the war had been going on only a few days.
Rumsfeld has a desk in his office, but he doesn’t use it. Instead he stands at a chest-high table. As I drew this scene, Wolfowitz inquired whether I might be able to come by his office later and do a sketch.
As the pre-briefing ended, I showed Rumsfeld my drawing and pointed out how "pretty" I’d made Myers.
We left Rumsfeld’s office and headed to the briefing. Clark had been right; many of the questions she had asked Rumsfeld were asked by the press as well.
After the briefing, Rumsfeld, Clark, the general, assorted aides, my photographer friend and I all headed back to the defense secretary’s office. I moved up next to Rumsfeld as he conversed with Myers and Clark. I leaned in as if I were part of the discussion, hoping Kennerly would take a picture. Rumsfeld stopped and pointed to a photo in the Pentagon hallway of him and some old dude.
"Who am I with?" he asked me.
"That’s Eisenhower," I answered.
And we walked on.
At 1:15 I was ushered into a lunch meeting with former defense secretaries and national security officers. Madeleine Albright, Frank Carlucci, James Schlesinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert McNamara, William Cohen and R. James Woolsey were being briefed on the administration’s vision of a postwar Iraq.
They were hard to draw because they were all chewing.
That was my last official event, so I wandered over to Wolfowitz’s office. He’s the architect of "pre-emptive" war. He asked if I’d draw some of his staff. I said sure, if he’d draw a cartoon of himself.
He kept saying, "Gee, I can’t draw, do I really have to do this?"
This guy is so powerful, but he was really in knots about having to draw.
He reluctantly agreed, so it was Wolfowitz and me seated side by side at a little round table in his office drawing cartoons. I ended up drawing him and his entire staff, spending an hour with him. We discussed Iraq and North Korea. I think I straightened him out.
He gave me a little blue hard-covered book called "Rumsfeld’s Rules" by the defense secretary. When I got back to Atlanta I opened it up and noticed it was signed, "To Paul for all you do and do so well – Donald Rumsfeld." Maybe he gave me the wrong one.
At 3:30 I left Wolfowitz and went back to Clark’s office to say goodbye and to thank her. You have to be escorted out of the Pentagon. The sergeant who escorted me out said, "This is the most fun we’ve had here."
–The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 2003