GOP Allies in Congress Shore Up Rumsfeld

With the presidential election five months away, Republicans generally rallied around Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as he appeared before two congressional committees Friday to address the growing prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

But Republicans and Democrats expressed anger at Rumsfeld’s failure to warn congressional leaders of the firestorm. And members of both the House and Senate Armed Services committees made it clear they still were not satisfied with what they have been told.

Moreover, the tenor of GOP support for Rumsfeld suggested it might not withstand new revelations of mistreatment, which Rumsfeld repeatedly warned could be expected in the weeks ahead.

“I thought he did a good job saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ ” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), though dissatisfied that Rumsfeld “did not know who was in charge” of the prison guards, said the secretary “manfully” apologized not only for the abuses but the Pentagon’s failure to inform Congress sooner.

McCain said he hoped that Rumsfeld was up to the difficult task of helping America recover from the scandal and succeed in Iraq. But he said, “I still need to know who was in charge of the guards who committed these obscene acts. I was unable to get an answer to that question.”

McCain said his greatest concern was that the scandal would make Americans stop supporting the U.S. military in Iraq. “As Americans turned away from the Vietnam War, they may turn away from this one unless this issue is quickly resolved with full disclosure immediately,” he told Rumsfeld during the hearing.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said he was surprised by Rumsfeld’s saying that he had not seen the prisoner abuse photographs until Thursday night. Asked if he thought Rumsfeld could stay effective as secretary of Defense, Roberts said, “He thinks so. The president thinks so. I guess that’s what counts.”

Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) said, “I think he’s helped secure his job.”

Allard said Rumsfeld should be judged by his overall performance and dismissed calls for the secretary’s ouster as election-year politics. “Nobody’s perfect,” Allard said.

“There’s too many people around the Capitol and Washington who want to get the secretary’s head on a platter without giving him a chance to tell his side of the story, which I thought he did well today,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

“He’s a human being,” Cornyn added.

Cornyn said the Defense Department “all the way up and down the chain of command” responded in a “responsible manner” to the prisoner abuse allegations, announcing that an investigation began early this year.

“But I don’t think he could be expected to reveal the contents of a confidential criminal investigation prematurely,” Cornyn said. “But once they knew that they had gone public, when they were in the hands of the media and the broadcast was imminent, he acknowledged that he should have told Congress and the president sooner. And I think hindsight is always 20/20.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) made an unscheduled stop at the committee hearing to show his support for Rumsfeld.

Graham, who predicted that “the worst is yet to come” from undisclosed photos and videotape, said that “changing the secretary of Defense in the middle of a war is a big deal. It shouldn’t be done for political spin purposes or to make a point.”

But Graham added: “At the end of the day, you just can’t be the Republican secretary of Defense.”

When pressed by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Rumsfeld said his resignation could demonstrate to the world how seriously the U.S. government took the situation.

“That’s possible,” he said.

At one point, asked directly whether he could still do his job effectively, Rumsfeld said, “It’s a question that I’ve given a lot of thought to.” Then he added: “Needless to say, if I felt I could not be effective, I’d resign in a minute. I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it.”

Although the question of Rumsfeld’s fate seemed to be on everyone’s tongue, even most Democratic critics of the Bush administration at the hearings stopped short of demanding Rumsfeld’s resignation. But they clearly suggested that they believed his job was on the line.

“The forthright statement of the secretary of Defense that his effectiveness going forward is at issue now is one that I agree with,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee’s top Democrat, said, “If I thought that his resignation would change the policies of this administration relative to Iraq, I’d be all for it.”

But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) for the first time called on President Bush to fire Rumsfeld.

“We need a new beginning,” Kennedy said. “The war on terror has been made much more complicated and difficult because of this torture scandal.”

Friday’s hearing was interrupted by protesters chanting, “Fire Rumsfeld!”