Rumsfeld offer to resign twice

[Crown]

The Beeb

Rumsfeld twice offered to resign
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has revealed he twice offered to resign during a crisis last year over prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail.

In a CNN interview, Mr Rumsfeld said he was ready to take responsibility for the scandal over pictures showing US troops and staff mistreating prisoners.

But he said each time he offered to go, President Bush asked him to stay on.

The BBC's Adam Brookes at the Pentagon says Mr Rumsfeld's position now looks even more secure.

Last year was a bruising year for the combative defence secretary, our correspondent says.

In Iraq, the insurgency inflamed cities across the country and then lurid photographs of American troops abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison were published around the world.

But the Bush administration has been much encouraged by Sunday's elections in Iraq.

'No regrets'

Mr Rumsfeld did not specify when he offered to quit.

"I submitted my resignation to President Bush twice during that period and told him that ... I felt that he ought to make the decision as to whether or not I stayed on. And he made that decision and said he did want me to stay on," he told the programme Larry King Live.

But he said his conscience was clear.

"What was going on in the midnight shift in Abu Ghraib prison halfway across the world is something that clearly someone in Washington DC can't manage or deal with. And so I have no regrets," he said.

But Mr Rumsfeld said steps had been taken to prevent a recurrence of such abuses.

"We've made a lot of corrections to make sure that those kinds of things [that] happened either don't happen again or are immediately found out and limited and contained," he said.

In August an investigation found that senior Pentagon and military officials contributed to an atmosphere in which prisoners suffered abuse and failed to properly monitor conduct of detention policies.

One wonders if he used an 'automatic' resignation machine if he had offered his resignation in writing.

[HemlockGrey]

From a CNN article on the subject:

But Rumsfeld said he felt he could continue to do his job.

"If I felt I could not be effective, I'd resign in a minute," he said, answering one lawmaker's query.

So obviously he doesn't really feel that it's not his fault, that he's responsible for what is happening, and he's either lying about the resignations or simply submitted them as a matter of form, because if he really wanted to quit he could.

[Durandal]

"What was going on in the midnight shift in Abu Ghraib prison halfway across the world is something that clearly someone in Washington DC can't manage or deal with. And so I have no regrets," he said.

But Mr Rumsfeld said steps had been taken to prevent a recurrence of such abuses.

"We've made a lot of corrections to make sure that those kinds of things [that] happened either don't happen again or are immediately found out and limited and contained," he said.

Hey Rumbag, I thought you said you couldn't deal with what goes on half-way around the world during the midnight shift at Abu Ghraib prison. If you can't deal with it, how can you take steps to prevent it from happening again?

[Mayabird]

I had this mental image of Rumsfeld sending in resignation offers the same way Caesar pushed the crown away. Shall I be heading to the reeducation center?