More retired generals are calling for the resignation of the U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over his handling of the Iraq War, BBC reported.
Top Democrats, including Senator John Kerry, Democratic contender at the last presidential election, have joined recent calls for a change of Pentagon leadership.
And the number of retired generals who call for Rumsfeld’s resignation has risen to six, many of them perceive the Defense Secretary as arrogant and dismissive of military advice.
Correspondents say it is a rebellion led by those who know Rumsfeld’s handling of the Iraq War.
The two most recent generals to call for Rumsfeld to be replaced are retired army Maj Gen John Riggs and retired Maj Gen Charles H Swannack Jr.
Maj Gen Riggs, a former division commander, said in a radio interview that it was time for Rumsfeld to go because he fostered an atmosphere of “arrogance” among the Pentagon’s top civilian leadership.
"They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda. I think that's a mistake, and that's why I think he should resign," he told National Public Radio (NPR).
Maj Gen Swannack Jr, who led the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq, also questioned Rumsfeld’s right to lead the war on terrorism. "I really believe that we need a new secretary of defense because Secretary Rumsfeld carried way too much baggage with him," he told CNN.
"Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces."
The fresh resignation calls add to those already made by four other retired generals with direct experience of the Iraq War and its planning.
Retired Marine Gen Anthony Zinni told CNN that Rumsfeld should be held responsible for a series of mistakes, beginning with "throwing away 10 years worth of planning, plans that had taken into account what we would face in an occupation of Iraq".
Rumsfeld, who has had prickly relations with the military and Congress almost from the start of his first term in 2001, has survived previous calls for his resignation. He offered his resignation in 2004 over the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, but President Bush turned it down.
Despite the mounting pressure, the White House said it was happy with the way Rumsfeld is handling his job and the situation in Iraq.
Spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush believed Rumsfeld was doing a "fine job" at a very difficult time, when the country was at war and the army undergoing major transformation.
When asked if the resignation calls were affecting his ability to do his job, Rumsfeld simply answered “no“. And his spokesman, Eric Ruff, said that the Defense Secretary wasn’t even considering resignation.
Analysts say the recent resignation calls represent a difficult political challenge for the Bush Administration in the middle of war.
Richard Kohn, a military historian at the University of North Carolina, said the problem is bigger that just the disaffection of a few retired generals.
"It is serious, very serious in the growing civil-military tension of this administration, which has been considerable from the very beginning," he said, according to AFP.
"Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who retired in late 2002, also called for replacing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and "many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach." He is the third retired senior officer in recent weeks to demand that Mr. Rumsfeld step down.
In the essay, in this week's issue of Time magazine, General Newbold wrote, "I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat — Al Qaeda."
The decision to invade Iraq, he wrote, "was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results."
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