Pressure grows on Bush to ditch Rumsfeld

Escalating criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners raised new questions today as to whether US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would hold on to his job.

In an editorial, the St Louis Post-Dispatch called for Rumsfeld to resign over the “botched handling” of the investigation into the prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

And, a column in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman called on President Bush to fire Rumsfeld “today, not tomorrow or next month.”

Asked about the column, Republican Senator John McCain said: “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.”

Publicly, President George Bush has stood by his defence secretary, though White House aides said he made it clear to Rumsfeld that he was displeased over not learning about the pictures of US soldiers posing with hooded or naked Iraqi prisoners until the images aired on national television.

“I’ve got some confidence in the Secretary of Defence, and I’ve got confidence in the commanders on the ground in Iraq,” the president said in an Arab TV interview.

Bush promised “people will be held to account” for the prisoner abuses.

Whether Rumsfeld will be one of those people remained unclear.

Two Bush advisers said today that Bush stood firmly behind Rumsfeld despite what one called the “mild rebuke”.

They said it was important that the Arab world and the American people know that Bush was unhappy with the way he was informed of the prisoner abuse, suggesting that leaking word of the rebuke was a political and diplomatic manoeuvre rather than a signal that Rumsfeld job is in trouble.

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

Rumsfeld was the architect of the Iraq war – and his department largely controlled the post-war occupation.

As that occupation has become plagued by wide-ranging problems, including a continued and stubborn insurgency, the criticism of him has grown.

There were complaints that reconstruction contracts were not issued competitively and that there were too few US soldiers on hand to secure the country.

But the complaints have crystallised now – especially among Democrats, but even among Republicans – over the pictures of prisoner abuse by US 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.

Rumsfeld is due to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday.