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NYT calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation

By Khalid Hasan

Washington: The pressure on US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign mounted Friday with the New York Times calling for his ouster.

Earlier, Sen. John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic opponent for the White House, called for Mr Rumsfeld’s ouster. “It’s the way it was handled,” Kerry said in California. “The lack of information to the Congress, the lack of information to the country, not managing it, not dealing with it, recognising it as an issue.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday in a prepared statement, “The Pentagon Secretary Rumsfeld oversees has become an island of unaccountability, ignoring the Geneva Conventions, our allies and common sense.” Another voice added to the chorus was that of New York Democratic congressman Charles Rangel who suggested that Congress should impeach Rumsfeld if he declined to resign and Bush refused to fire him.

The New York Times in its lead editorial Friday wrote, “It is time now for Mr Rumsfeld to go, and not only because he bears personal responsibility for the scandal of Abu Ghraib. That would certainly have been enough. The United States has been humiliated to a point where government officials could not release this year’s international human rights report this week for fear of being scoffed at by the rest of the world. The reputation of its brave soldiers has been tarred, and the job of its diplomats made immeasurably harder because members of the American military tortured and humiliated Arab prisoners in ways guaranteed to inflame Muslim hearts everywhere. And this abuse was not an isolated event, as we know now and as Mr Rumsfeld should have known, given the flood of complaints and reports directed to his office over the last year.”

The newspaper said the world is waiting for a sign that President Bush understands the seriousness of what has happened. It needs to be more than his repeated statements that he is sorry the rest of the world does not “understand the true nature and heart of America.” The editorial observed sardonically that President Bush “should start showing the state of his own heart” by demanding the resignation of his secretary of defence. It added, “Mr Rumsfeld’s blithe confidence that he could run his war on the cheap has also seriously harmed the Army and the National Guard … Mr Rumsfeld’s second in command, Paul Wolfowitz, is certainly not an acceptable replacement because he was one of the prime architects of the invasion strategy. It is long past time for a new team and new thinking at the Department of Defence.”

In what has become a campaign to expose the shameful conduct of American troops in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, the New York Times Friday printed as many as 14 letters from disturbed and angry Americans on the issue. Blake Lemberg from Chicago asked, “How is it that President Bush can go on Arab TV to address the abuse without offering America a formal apology - beyond his comments at a news conference today - when his administration knew of these improprieties months ago? Is our President no longer accountable to his electorate? Certainly, this scandal deserves to be answered for, and the explanation should be delivered not only to the Arab world but also to us.” Mary Ellen Reese from Washington wrote that chastisement of Mr Rumsfeld by the President was not enough, adding, “George W. Bush must accept responsibility for the actions of the military. If Mr Bush wants us to re-elect him, he must show us that he understands what being President entails and acknowledge his responsibility publicly.” H.D. Schmidt from California, while declaring that he was a Republican, demanded, “As a conservative Republican, I have come to the point where I doubt that a behind-the-scenes scolding is sufficient, if even true. President Bush must face me and all Americans, as well as the whole world, and publicly rebuke Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for failing his own President.”

Jane Henderson from Pennsylvania said she was no longer sure America’s honour and credibility could be reclaimed, but “firing Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would certainly be one small but significant step in the right direction.” She wrote, “From the beginning, Mr Rumsfeld has displayed a deplorable lack of human understanding and feeling. He characterised the widespread looting and vandalism that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein as the ‘untidiness’ of freedom, and brushed off the reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib as ‘a mountain of paper’ that he had neither the desire nor the inclination to read. He should be removed from office immediately. Then maybe I’ll feel better about continuing to fly the American flag in front of my house.” Alan Wells from Pennsylvania suggested that the principles “both military and contract personnel,” should be handed over to the Iraqi council that will be installed on June 30. “Let the Iraqis conduct the investigations and the trials, and find and carry out the sentences.

For good measure, appoint an Iraqi in charge of all prisons. Anything short of a dramatic, sincere show of understanding and atonement will only further inflame the world, and with it a large part of America. Such atrocities demand unprecedented sacrifice by our administration,” he added.

Lyle Gary from Florida wrote to assert that the administration knew at the highest levels about abuse and torture of Iraqis had never been challenged. Now that the evidence had been displayed for the world to witness, the administration was “shocked” that something like this could happen. “This administration seems to believe that if the evidence of its misdeeds cannot be produced, it has nothing to hide,” he added. Anna Reisman from Connecticut said, “I am sick about this, scared and mortified that we are doing some of the very things that we went into Iraq to stop.” Nancy McIntyre from Alabama, while denouncing the actions of the American soldiers said that the Iraqis should also be held accountable for what they did to captured or dead Americans. Abigail Waggoner from Massachusetts wrote, “Abu Ghraib has become synonymous with terror under two regimes. We can give all Iraqis a reason to say that something good distinguishes the United States occupation from the rule of Saddam Hussein by closing the prison now,” while Gina Kim, also from the same state, said, “But why arbitrarily draw the line at the secretary’s door? The chain of command points only one way: to the White House, and then to the people.” Michael Curry from Texas wrote, “The horrors of Abu Ghraib prison are just discrete examples of the horrors of war. They are no more horrific than a body’s being dismembered by a rocket grenade. War should be a last resort, brought in self-defence. One who chooses war as a tool for building a decent society cannot act surprised at its cruelty.”

Bruce Long from Arizona observed, “The current administration has been able to ‘accomplish’ what the Soviet propaganda machine at the height of the Cold War could not,” while Reese Lloyd from Georgia wrote, “The entire world feels the consequences of the inflexible, shortsighted views held by only one-half of all Americans and the secretive, isolated (and isolating) administration they reflexively support.”

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