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Friday, May 7, 2004

He planned to deliver the apology in a Capitol Hill appearance demanded by angry lawmakers. Rumsfeld was expected to call for formation of an independent commission to look into the abuses and how the Defense Department handled them, one Pentagon official said on condition of anonymity.

Leading Republican committee chairmen tried Friday to hold off a rush to judgment of Rumsfeld, but some top Democrats were clamoring for his resignation over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers.

The New York Times seconded those demands with a Friday editorial headlined "Donald Rumsfeld Should Go."

On Thursday, President Bush gave his embattled defense secretary a vote of confidence. Bush told reporters in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday that Rumsfeld had done a good job during two wars and would stay in his Cabinet.

Rumsfeld spent Thursday with aides preparing for his appearance. It was a day when a new cache of photographs surfaced, and Bush offered an outright apology to the Iraqi prisoners and their families.

Friday morning, Sen. John Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was prepared to support the president's decision to retain Rumsfeld.

"I've had a good working relationship over these many years with Secretary Rumsfeld myself," Warner told ABC's "Good Morning America." "I know his deep commitment to the men and women of the armed forces and to the goals of the president."

Warner said it was too early to say whether the abuse of prisoners was an isolated incident at Abu Ghraib prison or systemic in many facilities.

"I do not possess any of the facts to lead to the conclusion that this is systemic and ranges far and wide in the military prison system," he said just hours before Rumsfeld's appearance before his committee. "We will probe very deeply, get all the facts we possibly can out into the public domain no matter where they lead."

On the CBS "Early Show," Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said it would be premature to call for Rumsfeld's resignation, "but the secretary does have a lot of questions to answer."

"He ought to outline the events as he knows them, what did he know and when did he know it," Roberts said, echoing the famous questions asked about President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Armed Services committee, said: "People have got to be held accountable, that accountability has got to go right up the chain. It's not just the people who perpetrated the despicable conduct."

"There's strong feeling there's been a significant mismanagement of the war right from the beginning," he said.

McCain: 'Get All the Facts'

"We need to get all the facts. We need everybody to just take a deep breath and get all the facts," added Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a senior member of the same panel and himself a former prisoner of war.

Other Republicans expressed concern that military officials knew in January about the abusive and sexually humiliating treatment of prisoners, but did not inform Congress about it or about a subsequent investigative report prepared by a Pentagon official.

Rumsfeld stayed out of public view Thursday and spent part of his time looking ahead to Friday's pair of command congressional appearances. "Get it all out. Be open," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he urged the defense secretary in a meeting at the Pentagon.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, meanwhile, said the Justice Department stood ready to prosecute any civilians or former military personnel suspected of criminal conduct in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Speaking with reporters, Ashcroft would not confirm whether the Defense Department or CIA had formally referred any individual cases to federal prosecutors for potential charges. But he said there was ample jurisdiction to move against civilian contractors and others, including laws that forbid torture.

"We will follow evidence and act in accordance with evidence," Ashcroft said. "We will take action where appropriate."

The CIA inspector general is investigating three prisoner deaths that might have involved its officers or contract personnel, intelligence officials have said.

Six months before the national election and dogged by persistent violence and rising U.S. casualties in Iraq, Bush was unflinching Thursday in his defense of Rumsfeld.

He "is a really good secretary of defense. Secretary Rumsfeld has served our nation well. Secretary Rumsfeld has been the secretary during two wars. He's an important part of my Cabinet and he'll stay in my Cabinet," the president said during a Rose Garden appearance with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Bush: 'I Should Have Known'

At the same time, Bush confirmed for reporters that he had expressed his unhappiness with his defense secretary privately earlier in the week. He said he told him that "I should have known about the pictures and the report" done by the Pentagon before they turned up in news reports.

With Bush and lawmakers concerned about the impact of the controversy on America's image around the globe, graphic new photographs surfaced Thursday that served only to compound their worries. One showed a naked prisoner handcuffed to a bed with women's underwear over his head.

In his Rose Garden appearance with Abdullah, Bush shed his customary reluctance to apologize or acknowledge mistakes. "I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families," the president said.

Sen. John Kerry, Bush's Democrat opponent-to-be for the White House, pushed for Rumsfeld's ouster.

"It's the way it was handled," Kerry said on a campaign stop in California. "The lack of information to the Congress, the lack of information to the country, not managing it, not dealing with it, recognizing it as an issue."

"The Pentagon Secretary Rumsfeld oversees has become an island of unaccountability, ignoring the Geneva Conventions, our allies and common sense," added House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Congress should impeach Rumsfeld if he declined to resign and Bush refused to fire him.

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Editor's note: