Press puts Rumsfeld in dock

Mr Rumsfeld can expect some hostile questions

As US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prepared to defend himself before the Senate and House Armed Services committees on Friday, newspaper columnists were sharply divided over demands for his resignation.

And the Washington Post reported that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate were describing the appearances as critical to his survival.

"There's growing anger" at the sometimes prickly defence secretary, it quoted one senior Senate Republican staff member as saying.

"Republicans' instinct is to throw him a lifeline, but he's not giving them anything to deal with."

Another staff member stressed to the Post how important it was for Mr Rumsfeld to be open, candid and responsive to senators' questions. "If he says anything arrogant, it's over."

'Time to go'

The New York Times, in an editorial, is in no doubt the defence secretary should stand down.

"It is time now for Mr Rumsfeld to go, and not only because he bears personal responsibility for the scandal of Abu Ghraib," it says.

The world is waiting for a sign that President Bush understands the seriousness of what has happened New York Times

"That would certainly have been enough. The United States has been humiliated to a point where government officials could not release this year's international human rights report this week for fear of being scoffed at by the rest of the world.

"The reputation of its brave soldiers has been tarred, and the job of its diplomats made immeasurably harder because members of the American military tortured and humiliated Arab prisoners in ways guaranteed to inflame Muslim hearts everywhere.

"The world is waiting now for a sign that President Bush understands the seriousness of what has happened.

"It needs to be more than his repeated statements that he is sorry the rest of the world does not understand the true nature and heart of America.

"Mr Bush should start showing the state of his own heart by demanding the resignation of his secretary of defence."

Neck and neck

An opinion poll published in USA Today on Thursday indicated that the president's popularity is on the slide as a result of events in Iraq.

Lynndie England is described by her mother as "a pen pusher"

The poll, conducted by Gallup, suggested that 55% of Americans disapproved of the way he was handling the situation there, compared with 42% who approved. This is the highest disapproval score since October 2002.

It also indicated that, if the presidential election were held now, Mr Bush would be running neck and neck with his likely Democrat challenger, John Kerry, with each attracting 47% support.

That is a significant swing since mid-April, when Mr Bush led Mr Kerry 50%-44%.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr believes the images of prisoners being abused and humiliated at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad have taken their toll.

"The president has called this 'abhorrent' and has gone on Arab television to express remorse. Among the soldiers involved, heads are rolling. Some think the beheading should include Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, too.

"Yet even as you watch the recriminations and the punishments unfold, you are seized with a sense that it won't be enough. You wonder if, at this point, anything can be.

Hearts and minds

"Experts have told us the war on terror cannot be won solely by guns. Victory will also depend on convincing the Arab world that ours is a better way. Except that, suddenly, we don't look better. Indeed, we look like everything we said we were not."

But Midge Decter, author of Rumsfeld: a Personal Portrait, dismisses the latest scandal as no more than "an election-season opportunity seized by certain serious opponents of the war, along with many more unserious opponents of the Bush administration".

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, he says: "No-one doubts that the behaviour of that handful of prison guards is impermissible and must be punished.

"Virtually everyone in the Bush administration, from the president and his Cabinet on down to the janitors in the White House, has by now declared it an outrage...

"Given the speed of all the apologies, what are those hoping to re-create the kind of public outcry that once greeted the revelations about the My Lai massacre... now to do? The answer seems simple: call for the head of Donald Rumsfeld."

Less is being said about US army private Lynndie England, who featured in several of the notorious photographs taken inside Abu Ghraib.

Her mother Terrie, who lives in a mobile home in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, told the Baltimore Sun that her daughter was "a pen-pusher" who booked prisoners and did not guard them.

"She just happened to be there when they took these photos," she said, adding that the abuse was "stupid kid things, pranks".

And the Charleston Gazette, reporting from Private England's home town of Fort Ashby, West Virginia, says the soldier's parents "have had enough of the media circus" and have "taken a few days off to visit family members".