Friday, May. 07, 2004 The clamor for the head of Donald Rumsfeld may have been cued by revelations of the abuse of military detainees, but it is driven by a deeper grievance — the idea that the Defense Secretary is the personification of a political-military strategy in Iraq that has plunged America into a Middle East quagmire. Even as Secretary Rumsfeld faced his longest day in back-to-back grillings by members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill Friday, the challenge facing tens of thousands of American troops on the ground in Iraq continued to grow, with little sign of respite or resolution. The costs of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in U.S. lives and treasure continues to soar; hostility among ordinary Iraqis to the U.S. presence appears to be growing; hopes have receded that the June 30 transfer of symbolic sovereignty to a yet-to-be determined caretaker government will improve the security situation; and the occupation authority appears to be improvising responses to emerging crises rather than to be pursuing a clear strategy.
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