Rumsfeld may not lose job for now, but many issues remain after his testimony
Enduring a pounding from congressional critics, first in the Senate and then in the House of Representatives, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared to soften, at least for now, the clamor for him to lose his job.
Enduring a pounding from congressional critics, first in the Senate and then in the House of Representatives, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared to soften, at least for now, the clamor for him to lose his job.
But questions left unanswered - and Rumsfeld's own hints that worse may be yet to come in terms of photos and videotapes - left many members of his own party unsettled and gave new ammunition to Democrats.
A famously cantankerous witness, Rumsfeld was both contrite and combative in testimony before Armed Services panels in both the Senate and the House.
After he completed his Senate testimony, both Majority Leader Bill Frist and committee chairman John Warner said Rumsfeld should stay on and not resign.
James B. Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said, "It doesn't matter whether Rumsfeld goes if we don't have a change in policy."
"If he stays and we change the policy, that's better than if he goes and we don't change the policy," said Steinberg, who is now director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. "The place to begin is to recognize that our policy has failed, that we came in with enormous good will, and it's all gone." Rumsfeld repeatedly apologized and accepted personal responsibility.
"We could have done a better job of informing Congress of these pictures and this situation," he told the Senate committee, referring to gruesome images beamed around the world of U.S. soldiers, both men and women, gloating over naked, bound and sometimes hooded Iraqi prisoners.
"These events occurred on my watch. As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility for them," he told the House panel.
That, for Rumsfeld, is contrition and probably will help him keep his job, suggested Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
"I think he's probably done enough with his testimony that you're not going to see any significant Republicans calling for his ouster," Ornstein said.
Rumsfeld had a rocky exchange with Sen. John McCain over exactly who was in charge of those in the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
Rumsfeld sought to have military brass accompanying him answer the question, but McCain said, "Secretary Rumsfeld, in all due respect, you've got to answer this question. ... This is a pretty simple, straightforward question. Who was in charge of the interrogations?"
The defense secretary didn't have a direct answer, although he noted "that the guards are trained to guard people" and not to serve as interrogators. There have been allegations that military intelligence officers urged prison guards to "soften up" the prisoners.
McCain said later that it "would be premature" to call for Rumsfeld's removal. But, McCain added, "I still need to know who was in charge of the guards who committed these obscene acts." On the House side, Rep. Ike Skelton, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, thanked Rumsfeld for taking responsibility and announcing creation of an oversight panel of retired officials. "But this is not enough," said Skelton, who wants a full-fledged congressional investigation into the abuse issue. While Rumsfeld seems unlikely to lose his job for now, the issue of the additional pictures and videotapes is casting a shadow over his tenure.
"If I could not be effective, I'd resign in a minute," Rumsfeld told the Senate panel.
But, he added, "I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it."