Kerry Renews Call for Rumsfeld’s Resignation

By Michael Conlon

John Kerry renewed his call on Wednesday for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation and said the official investigation into abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison demonstrated a failure of civilian leadership.

"It’s about leadership and it’s about accountability," Kerry told supporters packed into a Philadelphia steamfitters’ union hall. Americans "want the truth and they want accountability," he said.

The report issued on Tuesday by an independent four-member panel headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger showed there was a "failure of the civilian chain of command," the Democratic presidential challenger said.

"It’s not just the little person at the bottom who ought to pay the price ... the buck doesn’t stop at the Pentagon," he said.

While not mentioning President Bush by name, he said the prison abuse scandal was part of a larger failure involving miscalculations about the troop strength needed in Iraq and the costs involved.

He renewed his call for Rumsfeld to resign "for failure to do what he should have done" and said Bush should conduct his own investigation into the decision making that led to the penal abuses. Kerry called in May for Rumsfeld’s resignation over the abuse scandal and said at the time he had urged Rumsfeld to quit months earlier due to miscalculations on Iraq.

The Schlesinger report said top Pentagon civilian and military leaders and the military command in Iraq contributed to an environment in which prisoners suffered sadistic abuse at Abu Ghraib. It found Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff failed to exercise proper oversight over confusing detention policies at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But panel members said there was no reason for Rumsfeld to step down. "If the head of a department had to resign every time anyone down below did something wrong, it would be a very empty Cabinet table," said one panelist, former Defense Secretary Harold Brown.

Shortly after the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted, Bush rejected calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation, saying he was doing a "superb job."

Kerry made the comments during a campaign stop devoted mainly to jobs and the economy.

"You can have plenty of jobs and do it in a smart sustainable way," Kerry told the union members. Under Bush, he said the economy had produced mainly low-end jobs often temporary or part time and without health and other benefits.

Kerry also released a letter from 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists endorsing him and saying the Bush administration had "embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation."

The laureates cited "poorly designed" tax cuts that instead of creating jobs had turned budget surpluses into enormous budget deficits. (Reuters)

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