Growing calls for Bush to sack Rumsfeld

The White House reaffirmed President George Bush’s support of his embattled Defence Secretary today as pressure mounted on him to sack Donald Rumsfeld over the military’s abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin demanded 71-year-old Rumsfeld’s sacking “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, who spoke as White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush “absolutely” wants Rumsfeld 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.

He declined to characterise Bush’s comments to Rumsfeld in a private conversation between the two men yesterday, 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 cancelled a scheduled speech in Philadelphia in order to prepare for the hearing.

Harkin, a critic of the administration’s foreign policy, said “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.

The top Democrat in the House of Representatives also called for Rumsfeld to go.

“I think that Mr. Rumsfeld should step down,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

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 Republican Senator John Moccasin.

White House aides said that privately, Bush 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.

The president, in an interview with Arab TV 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 he prepared for the congressional hearing on the prison abuses, the chorus of criticism gathered strength.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch called for Rumsfeld’s resignation not only because of the prisoner abuses but also because he “seriously underestimated” both the number of US 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,” an editorial said.

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 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.