GOP blocks vote on Rumsfeld
WASHINGTON – The Senate’s Republican majority on Wednesday blocked a no-confidence vote on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but the fact that the issue was even raised underscored the Democrats’ increasing efforts to turn the controversial Pentagon chief into the focus of public discontent with the war in Iraq.
The Democratic-sponsored resolution called on President Bush to replace Rumsfeld as a tangible way of showing that the administration is willing to change its Iraq policies.
“This is about … the president demonstrating to the American people he understands America cannot ‘stay the course’ when the present course is taking our country in the wrong direction,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in promoting the measure.
The resolution carried no force of law, and Bush for months has scoffed at the growing clamor among Democrats – and even among some Republicans – for Rumsfeld to go.
But the measure offered Democrats a chance to decry the continued turmoil in Iraq 3 1/2 years after the U.S. invasion – and an opportunity to portray Rumsfeld as a key symbol of the problems that have hampered the administration’s goal of establishing a stable democracy there.
Democrats hope to turn public disaffection of the war into gains in November’s midterm congressional elections.
But the GOP also has welcomed debate on the issue. In arguing against the resolution, Republicans reiterated the administration argument that the U.S. mission in Iraq was “critical to the war against terrorism.”
“The Democrat amendment may rile up the liberal base, but it won’t kill a single terrorist or prevent a single attack,” said Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., dismissed the Democratic effort as a “political stunt.”
Rumsfeld’s handling of the war has come under fire since the early days of the invasion. Most recently, he was attacked for a speech last week that compared those who opposed the administration’s Iraq policy to those who sought to appease the Nazis in the late 1930s.
Two years ago, Rumsfeld was assailed for using an automated signature machine to sign condolence letters to the families of troops killed in combat. He also was criticized after telling a soldier concerned about the lack of armor for vehicles in Iraq that “you go to war with the army you have … not the army you might want.”
“Apart from President Bush, no one embodies the administration’s failures in Iraq more than Secretary Rumsfeld,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said during the debate Wednesday.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, in supporting the resolution, argued, “If you look at the polls, they are begging us, begging us, to change course.”
Two prominent Senate Republicans – John McCain, of Arizona, and Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska – have expressed a loss of confidence in Rumsfeld’s leadership but have said that it is up to the president to decide who is on his team.
McCain, saying it was important for the president to have a team around him that he can trust, said Wednesday, “The president should be able to keep that team until such time as the president of the United States loses confidence in that team.”