A Seattle daily newspaper is calling on President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, because of their handling of the Iraq conflict.
 Donald Rumsfeld |
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city’s second largest newspaper, said in an editorial yesterday the president must “examine a Defense Department leadership that thought it had Iraq well under control.”
There is still a question whether more troops are needed, said the Hearst Corp. paper.
“With Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in charge, the public has reason to doubt the answers,” the editorial said. “They ought to be relieved of duty.”
Noting the urgent White House meetings this week with top administrator L. Paul Bremer, the P-I said regardless of what progress is being made, “success cannot be achieved when Americans, allied troops and cooperative Iraqis face increasing dangers.”
Meanwhile, House Democrats, led by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., have targeted Rumsfeld in a resolution submitted Monday.
“This resolution would make official what so many members of Congress already believe – that the soldiers in Iraq and America’s foreign policy would be helped greatly if Donald Rumsfeld would leave,” Rangel said in a statement.
The bill, currently in the House Armed Services Committee, urges Bush to fire Rumsfeld for his “gross mismanagement” of the war in Iraq.
It is co-sponsored by 25 Democrats “willing to stand up and say what so many policy makers know, that the first step to bringing our troops home is to send Donald Rumsfeld home,” Rangel said.
They include Democrat presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, Rep. Major Owens, D-N.Y., Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
The resolution asserts Rumsfeld purposefully deceived the American people about the war and contends he allowed military personnel to go to Iraq “without adequate planning and sufficient equipment.”
Rangel also complained, “Disproportionately, the young men and women who are making the ultimate sacrifice are from minority groups, and the lower socio-economic classes of whites.”
“By and large, the children of America’s affluent families, who are not drawn to military service, are least represented among the casualties,” he said in an interview with Black Entertainment Television. “This defies the American principle of shared sacrifice.”
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WND Staff