Arizona Senator John McCain has said he’s in agreement with the retired generals who are suggesting that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should consider moving onto new challenges or suddenly decide to spend more time with his family.
But he has a qualifier: the President, he says, has the right to have whomever he wants as Secretary of Defense, the East Valley Tribune reports:
Sen. John McCain joined the ranks of retired generals who have said they have no confidence in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Or more precisely, the generals are falling in line with McCain’s long-standing assessment, McCain said Friday.
“I was asked a long time ago, I think a year and a half or two years ago, if I had confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld. I was asked that directly. I said, ‘No,’ � the Republican senator said during a news conference at his Phoenix office.
“But the president has the right and earned the right as the president of the United States to appoint his team — and he has confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld.
“I will continue to work with Secretary Rumsfeld as much as I can as long as he is secretary of Defense. We have to, because we need to win this war.�
That’s actually a very nimble position: he doesn’t like Rumsfeld, doesn’t have any confidence in him, but he’s not demanding his resignation on the basis that GWB has the right to have his choice at the helm of Defense.
On the other hand, if the priority is competently executing the Iraq war and there is a growing controversy over whether Rumseld is doing just that then McCain seems to be shirking his responsibility to DEMAND that the Pentagon has as its chief someone who is considered more skillful — given the fact that each day lives are at stake. This appears to be yet another stand where McCain has tried to maintain his long held political tenets but in a way so he doesn’t burn his bridges with the White House. MORE:
As long as Rumsfeld retains Bush’s confidence, he will keep his Cabinet position, despite sharp criticism that the defense secretary has mishandled the Iraq war and ignored the advice of field commanders, McCain said.
“The whole issue of Iraq, which is what this is all about, is having difficulty in the polling numbers. So I don’t think there’s any doubt that that reflects on Secretary Rumsfeld as well as all of us who support the war in Iraq,� McCain said.
Once again, McCain has depersonalized this issue. But clearly the ongoing debate about Rumsfeld is personal…since it’s about quality personnel (whether the current Secretary of Defense should still be Secretary of Defense).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.