Post by Moses on May 7, 2004 2:58:00 GMT -5
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ON CAPITOL HILL: Michigan's lawmakers are divided about Rumsfeld
BY RUBY L. BAILEY
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
May 7, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Carl Levin didn't join Democratic members of Congress, including at least four from Michigan, calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation Thursday.
That doesn't mean that Levin, a Democrat and Michigan's senior senator who sits on a key committee that will question Rumsfeld today, doesn't have concerns about why American military police abused Iraqis in a prison camp.
Levin said he would be for Rumsfeld's resignation if he thought it would change President George W. Bush's Iraq policy. "But these policies have been wrong from the beginning, " Levin said.
When Rumsfeld comes before the Senate Armed Services Committee today to answer allegations of improper treatment of Iraqi prisoners, Levin, the committee's ranking Democrat, said he wants answers to several questions.
"I want to know how high up the chain of the command the knowledge was," said Levin. "Were the soldiers acting because they believed they were supposed to be softening up prisoners for interrogation? We want to know why private contractors were being used for interrogation."
Calls for Rumsfeld's resignation intensified among Democrats as new pictures surfaced of what appears to be troops abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. Democrats cited the slow response of the Defense Department.
Michigan Republicans urged "swift justice" for any wrongdoers, but said demands for Rumsfeld to resign are election year politics. To date, six military members have been criminally charged and six others have been reprimanded. The pictures depict naked prisoners in demeaning, frightening and possibly painful positions.
Reps. Bart Stupak of Menominee, John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, both of Detroit and Sander Levin of Royal Oak, all called on Rumsfeld to resign Thursday.
Stupak also wants the House Government Reform Committee to hold hearings into questions about the role of government-paid contractors reportedly involved in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. One contractor is under investigation over a death in the jail.
Stupak, not a member of that committee, said there are roughly 25,000 private contractors in Iraq, working as interrogators, guards and military trainers.
Michigan Republican members of Congress had a different perspective.
"You have a handful of individuals who have created a horrific situation for us," said Republican Rep. Candice Miller of Harrison Township. She heads the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in Michigan and is a member of the government reform committee.
U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Brighton Republican, said he still talks to troops he met on trips to Iraq in the past year to monitor police training and security services.
They worry, he said, that this will overshadow the "honorable, decent humanitarian acts" they are doing every day in Iraq. There are about 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
Most of the troops are angrier and more disappointed with the prisoner mistreatment than most civilians, said Rogers, a former Army officer.
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Contact RUBY L. BAILEY at bailey@freepress.com.