Whitehouse: Rumsfeld Testimony Shows Need for Change in Washington

Whitehouse: Rumsfeld Testimony Shows Need for Change in Washington

Reiterates Call to Fire Defense Secretary Over Failures in Iraq

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse reiterated his call for President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld today in the wake of Rumsfeld's testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"Secretary Rumsfeld's initial refusal to publicly testify before Congress was disappointing. Unfortunately, his actual testimony was even worse," Whitehouse said. "Instead of telling Congress and the American people how we're going to fix our broken strategy in Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld was a broken record, offering the same old sound bites and evasive responses. Secretary Rumsfeld's testimony is just one more sign of George Bush's refusal to face reality and set a new course in Iraq. It is well past time for Mr. Rumsfeld to go."

After claiming that his "calendar was such that to do it [testify] … would have been difficult," Rumsfeld appeared yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee for the first time in public since February 2006. At the hearing, committee Democrats sharply criticized Rumsfeld for serious reported lapses in military equipment readiness that have left as much as two-thirds of the Army's operating force unprepared for wartime missions.

The Army has estimated that it faces a shortfall of more than $17 billion to repair or replace equipment to get it ready for battle. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker testified before Congress that the Army is using up its equipment four times faster than it was designed for.

Whitehouse called on President Bush to fire Rumsfeld in April, writing that "[t]he longer Rumsfeld stays - and the longer President Bush insists that he's doing a heckuva job and isn't going anywhere - the clearer it becomes to the men and women on the ground over there that this administration has no interest in acknowledging its mistakes or in moving to correct them."

In an Associated Press interview in April, Chafee "stopped short of calling for Rumsfeld's resignation. … ‘it's the president's choice,' he said." [Associated Press, 4/21/06]

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