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With Saddam Hussein deposed in Baghdad, and Iraqis increasingly voicing gratitude to intervening American troops, the earliest and fiercest advocates of the war are claiming vindication. Chief among them is Kenneth Adelman, a former arms control director in the Reagan administration, who predicted in February 2002 that U.S. forces would enjoy ''a cakewalk' ' in Iraq. That remark, along with predictions by other hawkish former and current government officials, was ridiculed by a flood of commentators and retired generals during the early days of the war in southern Iraq, when Saddam's paramilitary fighters seemed to be putting up resistance that was stiffer than ...