Kerry says Rumsfeld should resign over Iraq inmate abuse

COLTON, Calif. -- John F. Kerry yesterday called for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in US custody. He also criticized President Bush for not knowing about the abuse until last week and for delaying an apology to the Arab world.

"As president, I will not be the last to know what is going on in my command," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said to hearty applause during an appearance at a high school in this swing-voting district.

Kerry noted that after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, "John F. Kennedy told America, 'I am the responsible officer of this government.' "

He added, "Today, I have a message for the men and women of our armed forces: As commander in chief, I will honor your commitment and I will take responsibility for the bad as well as the good."

About the time Kerry spoke, Bush appeared at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan and said he had told the king he was sorry for the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of US soldiers. Photographs of the abuse, which have been widely published and broadcast, have prompted protest throughout Europe and the Middle East. Bush did not apologize directly for the abuse until yesterday, although he had previously labeled it "abhorrent."

The president also declared that Rumsfeld would remain a member of his Cabinet, even though he chastised him a day earlier in the Oval Office for not notifying him quickly enough of the abuse, and despite criticism from Congress that Rumsfeld also withheld the information from senators during a meeting hours before it was made public by the New Yorker magazine and the CBS News program "60 Minutes II."

Those acts led Democrats to call for Rumsfeld's resignation. Last fall Kerry had called for Rumsfeld to quit over what he said was poor planning for the postwar period.

When asked by reporters whether Rumsfeld should quit, the Massachusetts senator said, "He should have long ago."

Kerry said Rumsfeld had failed in his handling of the prison abuse in "the lack of information to the Congress, the lack of information to the country, not managing it, not dealing with it, recognizing it as an issue." He added, "But look, . . . this is the frosting. I think Iraq and the miscalculation, and the overextension of the armed forces, and the entire way in which they rushed the nation to war under these assumptions that [Rumsfeld] was making -- which were incorrect -- is a huge, historic miscalculation. And I thought he should have resigned then. Period."

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney reelection committee, noted the president's support for Rumsfeld but replied to the criticism of Bush by saying: "If Senator Kerry wants to take responsibility for his choices, he can start by simply taking one position and sticking to it. John Kerry has consistently played politics with Iraq -- voting for the use of force, then voting against support for our troops in the field, then declaring himself an antiwar candidate."

The dual criticism of the administration came as Kerry wrapped up three days of campaign appearances focused on improving the US education system. After previously proposing to reduce the number of high school dropouts by 1 million over five years, and declaring his commitment to spend at least $26 billion to fully fund the No Child Left Behind education overhaul law, the senator yesterday focused on teachers.

A day before he was to address the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Phoenix, Kerry called for improving teacher standards and teacher accountability. He suggested mentor programs to improve teacher retention as well as $5,000 bonuses to attract math and science teachers and to reward good performers. At the same time, he also supported adoption of standards that would remove poor-performing teachers from the classroom.

"There is a reason that No Child Left Behind came into existence," Kerry said in a crowded auditorium at Colton High School, as his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, sat behind him on the stage.

"We knew we weren't doing what we needed to do, and parents knew it, and too many parents were in fact voting with their feet, with their children, by going elsewhere or seeking something else or fleeing an inner city," Kerry said. "Some people who choose to go into teaching will be great. But some will not. It's like any profession. . . . I want to make certain we have no arbitrary dismissal because people deserve protection as we have always protected them against politics and personality and whimsical decision-making. But at the same time, no one can have a lock forever, no matter what, and I believe we need to acknowledge that."

Earlier, during a brief visit to a group of juniors and seniors in a joint economics and history class, Kerry was asked about a news conference this week in which some of his past commanders during the Vietnam War had declared him unfit to be commander in chief because he accused troops after the war of committing "atrocities." Kerry replied, "What they're trying to do is sort of, you know, mess me up, throw up mud."

When asked to name three presidents who would set an example for him, he cited five: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Kennedy -- "for their sense of global leadership."

Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.