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Donald Rumsfeld's legacy should be no more marred by mistakes in Iraq than any member of the U.S. armed forces, Utah's senior senator said Tuesday.
"You'd have to tarnish every young American who served over there," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, responding to questions about how the situation in Iraq would affect how the outgoing defense secretary would be remembered.
Hatch, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, acknowledged mistakes had been made but said the country owed Rumsfeld "a tremendous debt of gratitude," citing the way the defense secretary had prosecuted the war in Afghanistan.
"You don't hear much about Afghanistan," Hatch said. "We certainly won that war."
The Defense Department on Tuesday announced the death of Sgt. 1st Class William Brown of Fort Worth, Texas, the 91st American to die in Afghanistan so far this year. At least 179 coalition combatants have been killed in Afghanistan so far in 2006, making it the deadliest year so far in the five-year-old war.
Hatch went onto say the United States also has "won the war in Iraq by ending Saddam's reign, where we didn't win it is in not understanding these religious insurgencies."
David Irvine, a member of a group of retired generals that has asked for accountability among senior defense leaders for mistakes and scandals in Iraq, found Hatch's comments offensive.
Mistakes made in planning and prosecuting the war in Iraq by Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration "are no detraction from the heroism of our troops or of their commitment to serve this nation," said Irvine, a retired brigadier general in the Army Reserve who is one of many former flag officers to have called for Rumsfeld's resignation in the past two years.
As for the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Irvine said, "we may have won Afghanistan in 2002, but at the moment we're losing it and it is absolutely a loss that Rumsfeld's fingerprints are all over," he said.
Todd Taylor, executive director for the Utah Democratic Party, expressed shock at Hatch's remarks.
"What Orrin Hatch doesn't understand about accountability could fill volumes," Taylor said.
He said troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - "a war that is not over, last I checked" - should share no blame, notoriety or tarnished legacy for mistakes made by civilian commanders.
Jared Jones, an Apache helicopter pilot in the Utah National Guard who served in Afghanistan in 2004, agreed that many people don't realize that the war there continues today, but said he believes he understands what Hatch meant.
"It's by no means final, but I do believe we're winning there," he said.
Hatch spokeswoman Heather Barney said her boss didn't intend to suggest the war in Afghanistan was over. She noted the senator went on to speak about long-term problems in Iraq, which she said were meant to include problems in Afghanistan.
And Barney said Hatch, in his comments regarding Rumsfeld's legacy, "meant that no one serving honorably should be blamed in any way."