Dean: Rumsfeld must go

Charging that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is guilty of "gross incompetence" and a "pattern of deception" in regard to the Iraq war, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean says he should resign.

Secretary Rumsfeld clearly misled the American people about the reasons for going to war in Iraq," Dean told The Capital Times on Friday, the day after chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay reported that no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found in Iraq.

Recalling pre-war statements by Rumsfeld - including the secretary's increasingly discredited claims about weapons of mass destruction and his boast that he had "bulletproof" evidence of ties between Iraq and al-Qaida - Dean added that "he misled the Congress and perhaps even the president about the need to go to war and the costs of this war. His credibility is gone. He should be gone as well."