US President George W. Bush says Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will stay in his post despite the abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners by US military personnel, but Democrats are clamoring for his resignation and key Senate Republicans want to hear from the man himself.
"At this point in time I do not have any loss of confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld," Senator John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday as a new cache of photographs surfaced and Bush offered an outright apology to the prisoners and their families half a world away.
"We need to get all the facts. We need everybody to just take a deep breath and get all the facts," added Senator John McCain, a Republican senior member of the same panel and himself a former prisoner of war.
Other legislators in Bush's Republican party 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.
For his part, Rumsfeld stayed out of public view Thursday and spent part of his time looking ahead to yesterday's pair of congressional appearances.
"Get it all out. Be open," Republican Senator John Ensign said he told 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 may have involved its officers or contract personnel, intelligence officials have said.
Six months before the national election and dogged by persistent violence and rising US 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 Thursday with Jordan's King Abdullah II.
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.
Bush conceded unprompted that America's reputation had been damaged.
"It's a stain on our country's honor and our country's reputation. I fully understand that. And that's why it's important that justice be done," he said.
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