Britain’s influential Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday demanded the resignation of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners and issued a stinging criticism of his boss, George Bush.
”Donald Rumsfeld professes to take responsibility for the outrages at Abu Ghraib prison [near Baghdad]. But nobody will believe it until he and others at the top of the command chain are fired,” the FT said in an editorial.
The paper gave a damning assessment of the US-led occupation of Iraq, which it called ”a seamless catalogue of errors and misjudgements, of arrogance and ignorance”, and said Bush should take the blame for the failure.
”If he cannot take the essential minimum of measures to restore his country’s reputation, he does not deserve to stay in the White House,” the daily said.
”He [Bush] is not up to the job. This is not a moral judgment, but a practical one. The world is too complex and dangerous for the pious simplicities and arrogant unilateralism of George W. Bush,” the FT said in a separate article. – Sapa-AFP