A senior US Democratic senator renewed his call on Thursday for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign for all the misjudgments and mistakes he had made in handling the Iraq war.

Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, had a contentious exchange with Rumsfeld at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing over the situation in Iraq.

"Secretary Rumsfeld, you know we are in serious trouble in Iraq, and this war has been consistently and gross mismanaged. And we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire," Kennedy said.

"And the American people I believe deserve leadership worthy of the sacrifices that our fighting forces have made, and they deserve the real facts, and I regret to say, that I don't believe that you have provided either," he said.

After listing the mistakes Rumsfeld had made, including his claim before the war that Iraq was escalating its weapons programs and his refusal to deploy a larger number of troops after the war as suggested by senior military officials, Kennedy asked: "In baseball, it's three strikes, you're out. What is it for the secretary of defense?"

Rumsfeld retorted Kennedy's remarks, item by item. "So I think I must say that I think that the comments you made are certainly yours to make, and I don't agree with them."

In his response, Kennedy contended: "I'm talking about the misjudgments and the mistakes that are made ... and there have been a series of gross errors and mistakes. Those were on your watch."

"Isn't it time for you to resign?" Kennedy asked.

Rumsfeld shot back: "I've offered my resignation to the president twice, and he has decided that he would prefer that he not accept it, and that's his call."

Kennedy and other Democrats called for Rumsfeld's resignation during the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal last year. Rumsfeld offered his resignation twice but Bush declined to accept it.

Source: Xinhua