WASHINGTON – The retired commander of key forces in Iraq called Wednesday for Donald Rumsfeld to step down, joining several other former top military commanders who have harshly criticized the secretary of defense’s authoritarian style for making the military’s job more difficult.

“I think we need a fresh start” at the top of the Pentagon, said retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-05. “We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork.”

Batiste noted that many of his peers feel the same way. “It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense,” he said earlier Wednesday on CNN.

Batiste’s comments resonate especially within the Army because it is widely known there that he was offered a promotion to three-star rank to return to Iraq and be the No. 2 U.S. military officer there, but declined because he no longer wished to serve under Rumsfeld.

Also, before going to Iraq, he worked at the highest level of the Pentagon, serving as the senior military assistant to Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense.

Batiste said that he believes the administration’s handling of the Iraq war has violated fundamental military principles, such as unity of command and unity of effort. In other interviews, Batiste has said that he thinks that the violation of another military principle of ensuring there is an adequate number of forces helped create the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal by putting too much responsibility on incompetent officers and undertrained troops.

His comments follow similar recent high-profile attacks on Rumsfeld by three other retired flag officers, amid indications that many of their peers feel the same way.

“We won’t get fooled again,” retired Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who held the key post of director of operations on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2000 to 2002, wrote in an essay in Time magazine this week.

Listing a series of mistakes such as “McNamara-like micromanagement,” a reference to the Vietnam War-era secretary of defense, Newbold called for “replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach.”

Last month, another top officer who served in Iraq, retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he called Rumsfeld “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically.” Eaton, who oversaw the training of Iraqi army troops in 2003-04, said “Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.”

Also, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, a longtime critic of Rumsfeld and the administration’s handling of the Iraq war, has been more vocal lately as he publicizes a new book. “The problem is that we’ve wasted three years” in Iraq, said Zinni, who was the chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, in the late 1990s. He added that he “absolutely” believes that Rumsfeld should resign.

Other retired generals said they think it is unlikely that the denunciations of Rumsfeld and his aides will cease. “A lot of them are hugely frustrated,” in part because Rumsfeld gave the impression that “military advice was neither required nor desired” in the planning for the Iraq war, said retired Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, who until last year commanded Marine forces in the Pacific theater.

He said he is sensing much anger among Americans over the administration’s handling of the war, and thinks the continuing barrage of criticism from military professionals will fuel that anger as the November elections approach. He declined to discuss his own views.

Another retired officer, former Army Maj. Gen. John Riggs, said he thinks his peer group is “a pretty close-mouthed bunch,” but even so his sense is that “everyone pretty much thinks Rumsfeld and the bunch around him should be cleared out.”

He emphatically agrees, he said, explaining that he thinks that the defense secretary and his advisers have “made fools of themselves, and totally underestimated what would be needed for a sustained conflict.”

On Tuesday, Gen. Peter Pace, the first Marine to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, attempted to tamp down the revolt of the retired generals. No officers were muzzled during the planning of the invasion of Iraq, he said.

“We had then and have now every opportunity to speak our minds, and if we do not, shame on us,” he said at a Pentagon briefing.