Bush backs Rumsfeld amid calls for resignation

WASHINGTON – The White House reaffirmed President Bush’s support of embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Thursday even as a Democratic senator became the first in Congress to demand Rumsfeld’s resignation over the U.S. military’s abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, demanded Rumsfeld’s ouster “for the good of our country, the safety of our troops, and our image around the globe.”

“If he does not resign forthwith, the president should fire him,” said Harkin, whose statement came as White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush “absolutely” wants his defense secretary to remain in office.

“The president very much appreciates the job Secretary Rumsfeld is doing and the president has great confidence in his leadership,” said McClellan. The spokesman declined to characterize Bush’s comments to Rumsfeld in a private conversation between the two men on Wednesday, though another Bush aide said the president had given his Cabinet officer a “mild rebuke.”

Rumsfeld, scheduled to testify publicly before a Senate committee on Friday, abruptly canceled a scheduled speech in Philadelphia in order to prepare for the hearing, according to a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Harkin, a critic of the administration’s foreign policy, said in his statement that “the secretary must be held accountable” for abuses in military prisons. “The United States Constitution assures civilian control over the military. The blame cannot and should not remain solely with low-level soldiers,” he said.

Reports of abusive treatment of Iraqi detainees, including Iraqis forced to submit to sexual humiliations, have sparked a torrent of criticism in Congress from lawmakers demanding that the administration investigate fully.

Several Republicans have expressed unhappiness in recent days that they were not informed of the abuses until they were disclosed publicly on CBS, which aired photographs as evidence.

“I don’t presume to tell the president what he should do, but it’s obvious that there’s a lot of explaining that Secretary Rumsfeld and others have to do,” said Sen. John moccasin, R-Ariz., in a CBS morning interview.

White House aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that privately, Bush made it clear to Rumsfeld that he was displeased over not learning about the pictures of U.S. soldiers posing with hooded or naked Iraqi prisoners until the images aired on national television.

The president, in an interview Wednesday with the U.S.-sponsored Al-Hurra television network, expressed “confidence in the secretary of defense” and “confidence in the commanders on the ground in Iraq.” He promised “people will be held to account” for the prisoner abuses.

Whether Rumsfeld will be one of those people remained unclear.

Rumsfeld himself has deflected questions about whether he should resign. But as the defense secretary prepared for Friday’s congressional hearing on the prison abuses, the chorus of criticism gathered strength.

In its Thursday editions, the Post-Dispatch called for Rumsfeld’s resignation not only because of the prisoner abuses but also because Rumsfeld “seriously underestimated” both the number of U.S. troops needed in the Iraq conflict and the threat from weapons of mass destruction posed by Saddam Hussein’s government.

“It’s the accumulation of all these miscalculations, misconceptions and missteps – and an arrogant inability to admit his mistakes – that require him to step down,” the editorial said.

Rumsfeld was the architect of the Iraq war – and his department largely controlled the postwar occupation. As that occupation has become plagued by wide-ranging problems, including a stubborn insurgency, the criticism of him has grown. There were complaints that reconstruction contracts were not issued competitively and that there were too few U.S. soldiers on hand to secure the country.

But the complaints have crystallized now – especially among Democrats, but even among Republicans – over the pictures of prisoner abuse by U.S. forces, and whether the Pentagon informed Congress or the president soon enough about the growing investigations.

“The Congress … has been kept completely in the dark,” McCain said.