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Lott joins growing ranks of GOP’s Rumsfeld critics

Jim VandeHei and Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post

WASHINGTON – Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., joined a growing chorus of Republicans urging the removal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld because of the Pentagon chief’s failure to call for more troops in Iraq and to properly equip troops serving there.

Speaking to a local Chamber of Commerce in Mississippi, Lott said on Wednesday, “I am not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld. I don’t think he listens to his uniformed officers.” Lott said Rumsfeld should not be forced to resign immediately but that “I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so.”

In recent days, conservative GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska raised public concerns about Rumsfeld’s management of the war. William Kristol, a former Republican White House aide and a leading conservative commentator, and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, senior commander during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, also have offered harsh indictments. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a prominent moderate, criticized the Pentagon on Thursday for providing inadequate armor protection for troops in Iraq.

Republicans have been largely supportive of President Bush’s Iraqi policies, despite widespread violence by insurgents and U.S. troop fatalities that are nearing 1,300.

But there appears to be growing Republican concern about the conduct of the war.

And Rumsfeld, who has not had warm relations with Congress in recent years, appears to have become the target of the pent-up GOP anxieties and dissatisfaction.

Lawmakers who returned home after Congress adjourned last week also are hearing from constituents about the growing number of National Guard and Reserve casualties.

White House officials said Thursday that Bush is unfazed by the intraparty attacks on Rumsfeld and believes the secretary is doing a “great job” running the Iraq war and overseeing the transformation of the military.

Bush’s top advisers said criticism of Rumsfeld has come largely from a few Republicans with reputations for challenging White House policy, even as the list of those attacking the defense secretary grew to include Lott and Collins, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank with close ties to the administration.

But Lott’s comments – which were reported by the Sun Herald of Biloxi, Miss. – stirred attention in political circles because, unlike many other recent GOP critics of Rumsfeld, he is seen neither as a moderate nor a maverick, but rather someone near the center of his party’s thinking.

Also, he was a Senate majority leader.