Scandal not Rumsfeld's fault

PRO

The prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was not Donald Rumsfeld's fault.

Could he have acted quicker, informed more people and made a more convincing apology? Probably. Should he take full responsibility for something that a few miscreant solders decided to do on a whim? No.

As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld's job is not to micromanage and baby-sit the entire armed forces - a logistic impossibility. Rather, his job is to guide and oversee military operations on a much larger scale. During an election year, as the campaign in Iraq winds down, there seems to be no convincing reason to fire Rumsfeld or demand his resignation.

To appease the international community, justifiably upset at the treatment of the prisoners, many left-wingers in Congress are demanding Rumsfeld's head on a pike. But the fact remains that he had no more to do with the prisoner abuse than Ted Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi. The unjustifiably cruel and idiotic abuse of those prisoners was not a lack of training - you don't need "training" to understand that building naked human pyramids is wrong.

Rumsfeld also has been under fire recently because of accusations by Richard Clarke about comments Rumsfeld supposedly made during briefings pertaining to his alleged, zealous wish to bomb Iraq. I don't think we should accept at face value the accusations from Clark - a bitter, book-peddling, Benedict Arnold, who totes a huge private agenda with him.

By no means do I think that the President and his Secretary of Defense should be untouchable, but we can't be so willing to crucify them that we latch onto every ex-insider who wants to sell us a book.

Rumsfeld is a good Secretary of Defense. He has help cut inefficiencies and is helping to build a more "fast attack" and specialized military - ready to meet today's threats. His brazen, in- your-face-style has never been popular with the press, and they have been all to ready to go for the jugular.

If Rumsfeld really had direct evidence and knowledge of the prisoner abuse and simply ignored it, then maybe Bush should start to look for a replacement. But Bush cannot disable his foreign policy team right before an election. Almost seven in 10 Americans do not think Rumsfeld should be held accountable for the prisoner atrocities, according to a recent ABC/Washington Post poll. Americans understand that Rumsfeld cannot be omnipresent in Iraq, micromanaging every misbehaving private assigned to mop floors in a few isolated prisons.

We do not need to put the heads of our leaders on platters when a few incidents of idiocy occur in our armed forces. We should instead focus on publicly apologizing and bringing those to justice who commit these atrocities. It is unfair of the left to politicize these incidents and take potshots at President Bush and his Secretary of Defense- as if they are somehow responsible.

For now, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal should not be sufficient cause to force Rumsfeld's resignation.

See opposing view under headline: Secretary should pay for mistakes

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