WASHINGTON, 19 October 2003 — Once basking in public approval, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is finding the ground slippery as discontent over the situation in Iraq seeps into opinion polls here.
He emerged from a scuffle with the White House last week with his authority over Iraq reaffirmed and analysts insist that his job is secure. But as President George W. Bush’s approval ratings have dropped, Rumsfeld has become a lightning rod for criticism of the US-led occupation of Iraq.
For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, his standing in the administration has become the subject of serious speculation.
Anti-war activists on the left are campaigning for his resignation in full-page newspaper advertisements and leading members of Congress have urged the president to assert control over Iraq policy.
“Life’s a roller coaster,” Rumsfeld said earlier this month when asked about the reversal of fortunes.
Characteristically, Rumsfeld has blamed media coverage of Iraq for the public’s increasingly negative perception of the situation there and brushed aside the calls for his resignation, saying he serves at the pleasure of the president.
A one-time college wrestler with a marked pugnacious streak, Rumsfeld often has seemed to take pleasure in mixing it up with any and all comers: The press, retired military officers, members of Congress, not to mention opponents within the administration.
But his zest for combat has given way to irritable outbursts in recent weeks as pointed questions have piled up on Iraq: Rising US casualties, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, a surge of terrorist attacks and a litany of Iraqi complaints about the US-led occupation.
A request for an additional $87 billion for Iraq, a bill even Republicans have found hard to swallow without complaint, has been the latest occasion for controversy.
Polls, meanwhile, have registered a dramatic drop in the public’s approval of Bush’s performance since Baghdad fell in April, from 70 percent to 56 percent this week.
Apparently unnerved, the White House leaked plans to bring oversight of Iraq policy under the National Security Council to the New York Times, setting off speculation that Rumsfeld was being reined in.
A cartoon in the Oregonian summed it up. It showed a giant statue of Rumsfeld with a rope around its head and White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tugging at the other end. The caption read: “Condi Rice Observes the Six Month Anniversary of the Fall of the Saddam Statue.”
Rumsfeld added to the perception the White House had undercut him when he told reporters at a meeting of NATO defense ministers last week in Colorado Springs that Rice had not consulted him.
Senior defense officials pointed out that the Iran Contra scandal, which threatened the presidency of Ronald Reagan, was the last time the White House became directly involved in operations.
Rice cleared the air this week, reaffirming that Rumsfeld would continue to run the post-war operation in Iraq “as he has done and as he has done well.”
“I want to be very clear,” she told White House reporters. “I’m the national security adviser. What I do is coordinate policy. I don’t operate, I don’t implement, I coordinate policy.” Rumsfeld’s battles with the State Department are legendary, but never before had he tangled publicly with the White House.
Still, analysts say his position is solid.
“I think he wields more power and has more influence than anybody else in the Bush administration other than the president and the vice president,” said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a Washington public policy group.
Thompson said he believed the White House action on Iraq was only a cosmetic effort intended to mollify the US public.
“What tends to happen in these situations is that the appearance of what is transpiring ends up being more important than the substance,” he said.
“In this case, I think the Pentagon had a legitimate concern that, whatever the real intention of the White House, the message sent was losing confidence in the secretary,” he said.
“That’s not good because, for example, on the ground in Iraq it could be interpreted as maybe their efforts to create chaos and stymie the reconstruction was having a political effect in Washington.”