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Rumsfeld resigns as Defense Secretary

BY CRAIG GORDON | Newsday Washington Bureau

11:05 PM EST, November 8, 2006

WASHINGTON - He survived the Abu Ghraib scandal and a chorus of top-brass criticism over Iraq, but Donald Rumsfeld couldn't survive the Democrats.

President George W. Bush finally dumped his lightning-rod defense chief Wednesday just hours after a Republican drubbing at the polls, and then turned to his father's foreign policy team for a replacement.

Bush's choice of his father's CIA chief, Robert Gates, came after four years in which the younger Bush had turned aside the go-slow calls on Iraq from foreign policy heavyweights loyal to the first President Bush.

But with the current president's Iraq policy in tatters on the ground -- and at the ballot box, where anger over the war fueled major Democratic gains Tuesday -- Bush's move Wednesday raised the prospect of a significant change in course on Iraq, though exactly what the change would be remained unclear, analysts said.

In addition, Bush is expected to face growing pressure from the newly empowered Democratic majority in the House -- and perhaps the Senate -- to speed up the pace of troop withdrawals in Iraq, something Bush has strenuously resisted.

Gates, 63, the president of Texas A&M University, is a Bush family friend who sits on a blue-ribbon panel preparing recommendations in coming weeks for a change of U.S. strategy in Iraq -- recommendations several Republicans said Wednesday will provide Bush with a justification to shift course in the increasingly unpopular war.

"Secretary Rumsfeld and I agree that sometimes it's necessary to have a fresh perspective, and Bob Gates will bring a fresh perspective," Bush told reporters at the White House in making the surprise announcement of Rumsfeld's resignation.

The bipartisan commission, known as the Iraq Study Group, is headed by another Bush I official, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. Bush is meeting next week with commission members, who have signaled they may recommend talks with Iraq's neighbors to forge a regionwide solution to problems there.

Some military analysts predicted that the confluence of events -- the Baker commission report, Rumsfeld's replacement with someone less wedded to current policy and the midterm "thumping" of Republicans, to use Bush's term -- would lead to troop cuts in Iraq.

"It all leads you to the same conclusion -- U.S. troops are going to start coming home, within months. We're going to see a gradual drawdown of forces as the U.S. slowly backs out of the debacle," said military analyst Loren Thompson of the conservative Lexington Institute.

For his part Wednesday, Bush offered something of a mixed message on the way ahead -- a reiteration of his call to stay until victory in Iraq is reached with a recognition that "Iraq is not working well enough, fast enough." But he mentioned Baker's commission several times Wednesday and said he looked forward to working with its members.

Rumsfeld's departure marks the end of the Pentagon career of one of most recognizable defense secretaries in the nation's history, a sharp-tongued septuagenarian who became a "matinee idol," as Bush once noted, during daily briefings on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Rumsfeld, 74, dispensed war news wrapped in homespun phrases, often dismissing a question he found frivolous or just didn't want to answer with a simple, "My golly."

When the wars were going well, Rumsfeld was a hit. But as the Iraq war began to deteriorate into full-blown guerrilla war, with deadly consequences for more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Rumsfeld came to take much of the blame for promoting a strategy of fighting with smaller, leaner forces and failing to adjust to the insurgency.

Earlier this year, several retired generals mounted a call for Rumsfeld's ouster, but Bush held firm. Bush has resisted dumping Rumsfeld at least four times in the past three years -- twice when Rumsfeld submitted resignation letters after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and twice more despite a push to oust Rumsfeld by members of his senior staff.

But for the past month, White House insiders say, Bush has been contemplating the move as the situation in Iraq deteriorated.

In fact, it appears Bush was less than truthful when he told three wire-service reporters last week that he intended to keep Rumsfeld around for the rest of his term. On Sunday, just a few days later, Bush interviewed Gates at his Crawford ranch.

Democrats, many of whom had called for Rumsfeld's ouster, cheered the news Wednesday, but said it would matter only if it came with a change in course. "I think it is critical that this change be more than just a different face on an old policy," said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Senate Republicans said they hoped to hold confirmation hearings for Gates this year, but Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, whose party could control the Senate next year based on voting results in Virginia, said he had questions about Gates' ties to the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan administration.

Gates won confirmation as CIA director in 1991, but only after hearings in which he was accused by CIA officials of manipulating intelligence as a senior analyst in the 1980s.

More than a few politicos around Washington were scratching their heads over the timing of Bush's announcement, given that the Iraq war was the single biggest issue weighing on Republican fortunes.

Bush insisted he didn't want to inject such a weighty matter into the political cycle. But Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Fox News he doesn't know why Bush didn't fire Rumsfeld weeks ago. "He could have saved the elections," Schumer said.