The White House on Friday, 17 December 2004, again declared its support for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the third such statement in a single week. Spokesman Scott McClellan said President George W. Bush viewed Rumsfeld as the right choice to lead the Pentagon through the challenges of the war on terrorism.
The repeated endorsements arrived as prominent Republicans intensified their criticism of the defense secretary. Senator John McCain, a former presidential candidate, was among those who had recently spoken out. Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said he hoped Rumsfeld would leave office sometime in 2005, faulting him for failing to listen to senior military officers, though Lott stopped short of calling for his immediate removal.
Bush had asked Rumsfeld to remain at the Pentagon after a cabinet reorganization that followed the November elections.
The controversy traced back to a week earlier, when a soldier in Kuwait asked Rumsfeld at a public forum why US military vehicles in Iraq were so poorly armored. Rumsfeld's response, widely broadcast and reprinted, became the flashpoint: "You go to war with the army you have."
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in December 2004, in its own words.