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Rumsfeld dismisses retired generals' calls to step down

"If you started chasing, running around chasing public opinion polls ... you wouldn't get anywhere in this world."

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defense Secretary

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted on Monday that calls from retired generals for him to step down would fade away, and he dismissed the criticism as a standard part of the history of US combat since the Revolutionary War.

"This, too, will pass," Rumsfeld said during an interview with Rush Limbaugh, the conservative nationally syndicated radio host.

"So I'm here at the Pentagon doing my job, working on transformation and seeing that we manage the force in a successful way, and working on things involving Iraq," Rumsfeld said, according to a transcript posted on the radio program's Web site.

Rumsfeld and senior military commanders in Iraq were planning to meet yesterday with a group of retired officers and civilian analysts as part of an effort by the Pentagon to stanch calls for Rumsfeld's resignation from a half-dozen retired generals.

The retired officers and analysts invited to the Pentagon yesterday were among a group that appeared frequently on television, and were invited regularly to meetings at the defense department, some of which have been addressed by Rumsfeld. Some of the television commentators and analysts have visited Iraq on trips organized by the Pentagon.

But the session yesterday was unusual in part because it was to include remarks from commanders in Iraq, who would appear via satellite.

Pentagon officials might be hoping that putting forward senior civilian and military officials at the same time would demonstrate that relations at the top level remain unaffected by the recent calls for the defense secretary's resignation.

Topics for the closed session, scheduled to last several hours, were to include the war in Iraq and the broader campaign against terrorism, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Monday.

Whitman described yesterday's meeting as part of "a regular program" intended to provide the analysts and commentators with "factual information, statistics, to keep them in a position where they can add some value and context to the reporting."

In his radio interview, Rumsfeld said that those who had spoken out against him represented "the same kinds of criticism that occurred in the Revolutionary War and World War I and World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War; it's not new."

While acknowledging that "wars are terrible things," Rumsfeld added, "On the other hand, if every time there were critics and opponents to war, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War and we wouldn't have been involved in World War I or II, and if we had, we would have failed, and our country would be a totally different place if it existed at all, if every time there were some critics that we tossed in the towel."

The effort to counter global terrorism is "a test of wills," Rumsfeld said, and cautioned that "if you started chasing, running around chasing public opinion polls or a handful of people who are critics of this or critics on that, you wouldn't get anywhere in this world."
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