US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has so far survived mounting calls for his resignation over Iraq, is to be pitched into the center of the US midterm election fight by Democrats who are convinced that he is US President George W. Bush administration's Achilles heel.
Senior Democratic members of Congress say they will seek a no-confidence vote in Rumsfeld, who is under fire for a speech this week in which he compared opponents of the Iraq war to those who supported the appeasement of Adolf Hitler before World War II.
Rahm Emanuel, a high-profile member of the House of Representatives, plans to introduce the motion in the presence of 12 retired generals and other officers, who have lent the weight of their military experience to the campaign to force the defense secretary's resignation.
Democratic senators are discussing a similar move. Such a vote could not compel Rumsfeld to quit, but it would be highly embarrassing to the governing party.
The Democrats are mounting an attempt to seize control of Congress in November's midterm elections by engaging the Republicans on their turf -- national security and defense issues.
The strategy comes in response to a new effort by Bush and Rumsfeld to defend the administration's foreign policy record.
In a string of speeches this week the president has sought to bundle Iraq and Afghanistan with crises over Iran and Lebanon, describing current events as "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."
It was as part of this initiative that Rumsfeld told a meeting of war veterans last Tuesday that the world faced "a new type of fascism," and that those who opposed the administration's policies were suffering from "moral confusion" and had "still not learned history's lessons."
He renewed his attack in Friday's Los Angeles Times, singling out Amnesty International for having called Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our times" even though it "includes a volleyball court, basketball court, soccer field and library [the book most requested is Harry Potter]."
Nancy Pelosi, the US Senate minority leader, seized on the remarks.
"If Mr Rumsfeld is so concerned with comparisons to World War II, he should explain why our troops have now been fighting in Iraq longer than it took our forces to defeat the Nazis in Europe," she said.
Rumsfeld has proved durable in office despite bearing the brunt of criticism for failures in Iraq, including the decision to deploy a relatively small number of troops, the disbanding of the Iraqi army and torture at Abu Ghraib prison.
But the Republicans' most influential campaign consultant, Frank Luntz, told the Guardian that Rumsfeld had become a "weak link in an otherwise relatively strong Republican issue.
The Democrats can't win in the war on terror, but they do hold an advantage on Iraq, he said.
Rumsfeld's "confidence and bravado were very much an asset in [the elections of] 2002 and 2004, but the American mindset has moved on," Luntz said.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most