US: Pressure on the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, to resign is intensifying, not just because of the prisoner abuse scandal, but because of a growing perception that America is losing the war in Iraq after a series of catastrophic Pentagon blunders.
The Bush administration, badly shaken by the prison affair, has rallied around Mr Rumsfeld on this issue, but the debate is fast shifting to the conduct of the war itself. Several military commanders were quoted in yesterday's Washington Post saying that the US faces years of casualties without achieving its goal of an independent Iraq.
US Army Maj Gen Charles Swannack, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who was based in western Iraq, said the US was winning at a tactical level. However, he said he thought it was "strategically" losing the war.
Army Col Paul Hughes, former director of strategic planning for US forces in Iraq, agreed with Maj Gen Swannack, saying a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterised the US failure in Vietnam.
"Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he told the Post.
The fact that senior military officers are prepared to go on the record with their criticisms is an indication of a profound anger in the US army at the conduct of the Iraqi operation by civilian chiefs, ranging from a lack of a post-invasion plan to a shortage of armour and personnel.
A senior general, who did not want to give his name, was more blunt in predicting that the US was on the road to defeat, and accused Mr Rumsfeld and the Deputy Defence Secretary, Mr Paul Wolfowitz, of not having an exit strategy. Mr Wolfowitz said he did not think the US was losing in Iraq, and said no senior officer has expressed that view to him.
Support for the war among hawks in Congress also shows signs of fraying.
Democratic Congressman John Murtha, a former marine and staunch supporter of the Pentagon, caused consternation when he said last week that the war was unwinnable without a large injection of troops and more international help, neither of which are seen as attainable at present. "We cannot prevail in this war as it is going today," he said. "We have to get out." Some analysts of the war predict that history will see the marines' recent failure to occupy Falluja as the beginning of a US withdrawal.
No senior Republicans have called for Mr Rumsfeld's removal, but the Defence Secretary has been portrayed as the personification of the scandal and will become more vulnerable if the prisoner abuses are seen as systemic rather than isolated.
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, took offence yesterday at the Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, for saying in defence of the Defence Secretary, "People ought to get off his case and let him do his job."
"That really bothered me," Senator Graham told NBC's Meet the Press yesterday. "That was just as inappropriate as calling for his resignation. Nobody's on his back. We're doing our job."
In his support for Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Cheney, who was deputy to Rumsfeld as White House chief of staff under former President Gerald Ford, said in a statement: "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defence the United States has ever had." Republican Senator John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, which summoned Mr Rumsfeld to testify on Friday, said the committee had called for a further hearing on the scandal tomorrow.
President Bush is to make a rare visit to the Pentagon today for a briefing on Iraq, and any joint appearance with Mr Rumsfeld there will be taken as a show of support for his Defence Secretary.
The National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, said on Saturday that Mr Rumsfeld "has the strongest possible support here in the White House". She challenged a report in the New York Times that quoted a person close to her as saying she might not be unhappy if Mr Rumsfeld resigned.
On Friday Mr Rumsfeld told Congress he took responsibility and apologised for what happened in Iraqi prisons and said he would step down if he could no longer be effective, but that he would not resign to satisfy political enemies." Ms Rice also took issue with Democrats who said Mr Rumsfeld's resignation would send a strong signal overseas about how seriously the US takes the prison abuse scandal.
"You don't have in dictatorships young soldiers who come forward to their superiors to expose behaviour they believe to be wrong," she said. "You don't have a Congress to ask tough questions of the administration. You don't have investigations."