Republicans Stand by Rumsfeld as Furor Over Abuse Continues
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
Published: May 9, 2004
ASHINGTON, May 9 — The Bush administration signaled strong support for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the weekend but it was bracing for the expected release of more gruesome photos and inflammatory details of prisoner abuse in Iraq.
Anger and irritation continued to pour forth from legislators of both parties over abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and some other detention centers operated by the United States. Democrats, in particular, demanded an accounting from the highest levels, including President Bush.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the abuse reflected a "policy which goes right up to the Pentagon and perhaps even beyond."
On the NBC News program "Meet the Press," Mr. Levin suggested that President Bush "helped to create the atmosphere" in which Geneva conventions might be ignored and military rules broken in an urgent quest for information.
Most Republicans continued to stand by the defense secretary, but a few seemed miffed and offended at Vice President Dick Cheney's suggestion that Mr. Rumsfeld, a longtime friend and colleague, should be spared further criticism.
One Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, cautioned against supposing that the worst of the scandal is over. "This is deeper and wider than I think most in this administration understand," he said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation."
Still, a new opinion poll showed broad public support for Mr. Rumsfeld. Along with the clear backing of the White House, and his own apology and show of contrition on Friday before a Senate committee, Mr. Rumsfeld's chances of riding out the crisis appeared improved.
Mr. Rumsfeld told the Senate panel that photos and videos yet to be released, apparently depicting rape, a severe beating, and in one case a smiling soldier posing with a dead body, were more "blatantly sadistic" than those already seen. It was unclear how damaging these new images might be if they emerge.
Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that the Pentagon would soon give Congress new abuse photos, which legislators would be allowed to view in private.
But another Republican on the committee, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said that any additional photos should be released as soon as possible. "If there's more to come," he said, "let's get it out."
The New Yorker magazine released a photograph today of American guards using large dogs to intimidate a naked and cringing Iraqi prisoner; the reporter Seymour Hersh, who in an article a week earlier revealed aspects of the abuse, said that other photos he had seen indicated the man had been badly bitten. These latest photos, he added, portrayed a military police unit at Abu Ghraib different from the one implicated earlier.
At least seven people have been criminally charged and six military personnel have been reprimanded. As many as 30 investigations are now under way, Senator Hagel said.
The abuse scandal has provoked wider debate about American prospects to pacify Iraq and move it toward democracy. The Washington Post quoted several senior American military officers today as saying that the United States was prevailing militarily in Iraq but failing, perhaps disastrously, to win Iraqis' support.
Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO and an erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate, said on "Meet the Press" that "a failure of leadership" over Iraq "goes right to the top." He said that he would now place as better than 50-50 the possibility of "a catastrophic early end to this mission" — a premature withdrawal under heavy pressure.
"It would be very patriotic if Secretary Rumsfeld resigned," Mr. Clark said.
The Army Times, and affiliated private newspapers widely circulated in the military, was to say in an editorial on Monday that Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were responsible for "a failure that amounts to professional negligence" and that "accountability is essential, even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war," CBS News reported.
But a key Republican senator, John W. Warner of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, strongly warned against such change.
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