- Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is under attack
from fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill for not sending more troops to
Iraq, and for failing to provide enough protection for those who are there.
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- Only a fortnight ago, the White House announced that
President George Bush had asked Mr Rumsfeld, 72, to stay on into his second
term. Since then at least four senior Republican senators, as well as William
Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, the neo-conservatives' house
magazine, have called for his dismissal.
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- Mr Rumsfeld's latest troubles began when he shrugged
off a US National Guardsman's complaint that military vehicles did not
have adequate armour. "You have to go to war with the army you have,
not the army you might like," he responded in words seized on by critics
as evidence of arrogance and being out of touch with the reality of a war
in which some 1,300 US soldiers have been killed.
-
- The remark was "very troubling", said Senator
Susan Collins of Maine, adding her voice to those of John McCain, Chuck
Nagel and Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader.
-
- The US National Guard also announced yesterday that its
recruiting was running 30 per cent below requirements, raising the risk
of manpower strains. The Guard accounts for a quarter of total US troop
strength in Iraq, crucial in the run-up to the elections scheduled for
the end of January.
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- But for Mr Rumsfeld to step down now would amount to
an admission that major mistakes had been made in Iraq - highly unlikely
from a president who is famously reluctant to admit to the slightest error.
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- The grumbling is also audible within the military high
command at the Pentagon, which has long been unhappy at Mr Rumsfeld's insistence
on fighting the war in Iraq with what, in their view, is too small a force
without enough armour.
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- General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander in the 1990-91
Gulf War, said: "I was angry when he laid it all on the army, as if
he, as the Secretary of Defence, didn't have anything to do with the army."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=594304
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