WASHINGTON, Aug 25 (AFP) - US presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry on Wednesday renewed his call for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign over the scandal sparked by the abuse of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.
"I call for the resignation of the secretary of defense for failure to do what he should have done," Kerry said during a campaign stop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Kerry called for Rumsfeld's resignation one day after an outside panel said leadership failures at the top levels of the Pentagon contributed to a chaotic environment in which detainees were sadistically abused at Abu Ghraib by US military guards.
"We all know what chain of command means. We know what accountability and responsibility means. And it's not just the little person at the bottom who ought to pay the price of responsibility," the Democratic candidate for the White House said.
Kerry also called on President George W. Bush "to establish a commission that evaluates thoroughly all of the chain of abuse that took place."
The more-than-90-page panel inquiry found "no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities" at US detention centers.