From Volume 3, Issue Number 52 of EIR Online, Published Dec. 28, 2004

Rebellion against Rumsfeld builds both in and out of the military
by Carl Osgood

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (EIRNS)—The campaign to oust Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has gone into high gear over the past week, as a growing number of members of Congress from both parties are calling on President Bush to fire him. Retired military officers, however, are the driving force behind the campaign, as one source close to the torture investigations has told this news service. Retired officers often serve as the voice of the active-duty officers who cannot speak up, and in this case, they're particularly targetting Southern Republican senators, telling them to "get rid of this man before there's mutiny."

While Rumsfeld's arrogance and callousness, in response to a question about armor from a National Guard soldier in Kuwait, is getting the media play, it's his callous disregard of the officer corps, his refusal to listen to them, that is the real issue for the retired officers. And their campaign appears to be bearing fruit. Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss) told the Biloxi, Miss. Chamber of Commerce Dec.15, "I am not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld. I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers." He said he wasn't calling for Rumsfeld to resign, but "I think we do need a change at some point." - Northerners and Neo-Cons -

Nor is the campaign limited to Southern Republicans. Senator Susan Collins (R-Me) told a journalist, "I think there are increasing concerns about the Secretary's leadership of the war, the repeated failures to predict the strengths of the insurgency, the lack of essential safety equipment for our troops, the reluctance to expand the number of troops—all of those are factors that are causing people to raise more questions about" Rumsfeld.

Not only is Rumsfeld's "you go to war with the Army you have" assertion drawing fire, but so even is his standard reply that "I give the commanders everything they ask for," which he proffers when questions about troop levels in Iraq come up. Retired Gen. Normam Schwarzkopf, the U.S. commander in the 1991 Gulf War, told MSNBC on Dec. 13 that he was angered "by the words of the Secretary of Defense when he laid it all on the Army, as if he, the Secretary of State, didn't have anything to do with the Army and the Army was over there doing it themselves, screwing up."

Even neo-con William Kristol is taking aim at Rumsfeld. During an appearance on Fox New Sunday Dec. 19, he said, "I don't think he's been a very good Defense Secretary, frankly, for the last two years, and I think if you combine the misjudgments with the arrogance and the buck-passing, his claim ... that he's not responsible for how many troops there are ... I think the President can do better in his second term." Lest there be any confusion that Kristol may have had a change of heart about the war itself, he made clear that he hasn't. "But, for me," he said, "it's about winning the war. I think we'll win it better and more easily and do better at other areas pf defense planning over the next four years with a new Secretary of Defense."

Besides Lott, Collins, and Kristol, Senators John McCain (R-Ariz) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb), while not calling outright for Rumsfeld's resignation, have also expressed a "lack of confidence" in his leadership. Hagel, appearing on CBS's Face the Nation Dec. 19, noted the same failures Kristol had mentioned. "They underestimated ... the complications, and the difficulties and the dangers," he said, in invading Iraq. "How this could have happened, I don't know, but I think there's a manifestation of a clear lack of cogent, clear, straight-talking planning in a post-Saddam Iraq." - Really Bush's Fault -

Not surprisingly, the calls for Rumsfeld's resignation have been much more direct from the Democratic Party side. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), appearing with Hagel, reflecting the concerns of military officers, noted that Rumsfeld "hasn't accepted the kind of advice that's necessary to get the job done." Appearing on Fox News Sunday a week earlier, Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) said that Rumsfeld should be held responsible for the entire Iraq war. "The miscalculation and interpretation of the intelligence before the war there, was a failure to secure all the weapons dumps that are now being used for all the IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," he said. "There has been a problem with administration of the prisons, and no one has been held accountable. There is no exit plan. Now we find that there has been underinvestment in protecting our men and women on the ground, and as we have said, there has been an underinvestment in the number of troops on the ground to actually protect themselves. I think at some point someone needs to be held accountable for all the series of mistakes and miscalculations we've had."

While Rumsfeld certainly bears his share of the responsibility for the Iraq disaster, it's not his alone. Also Dec. 19, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich), appearing on "Meet the Press," noted that the policy mistakes "which have put us into this war with inadequate equipment ... were policy decisions of the President of the United States." While Levin said that he had a lot of disagreements with Rumsfeld, "unless those policies change, which is a Presidential decision, it's not going to help simply to change the leadership in the Pentagon."

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