ABOUT a year ago, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, met Robert McNamara, his predecessor under Lyndon Johnson, at a Washington party. The two looked like brothers, both with wry eyes smiling from behind cruel wire-framed glasses.

At the time Rumsfeld was riding high. He was the Victor of Baghdad and had completed a task which, he felt, should have been taken care of at the end of the first Gulf War.

He was the Liberator of Iraq and was about to install democracy in a part of the Middle East that had so far resisted the embrace of freedom. Rumsfeld was full of hubris in victory. There seemed to be no drawback to the military effort that he could not gruffly dismiss.

When the liberated Iraqis started looting, he said: “Stuff happens. Freedom’s untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

Rumsfeld and McNamara are of the same breed: political technocrats, former corporation men who turned to running the country. As waves of anger about the abuse of prisoners in US captivity at Abu Ghraib began to engulf him last week, Rumsfeld must have thought of McNamara and his abrupt fall from grace.

McNamara, as Defence Secretary under John Kennedy and then LBJ, administered the Vietnam War with the same clinical efficiency with which he had turned around the fortunes of the Ford Motor Company. When in doubt about the best course, McNamara adopted the American way, throwing more and more munitions at North Vietnam and the Vietcong, with diminishing returns.

The Vietnam War took a heavy toll on McNamara, as he revealed in Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, which won the Best Documentary Oscar this year. The stress imposed on his family led his wife to a premature grave. The warm relationship he once enjoyed with his children was soured.

As Vietnam dragged on he became persuaded that, while the American military might have vastly overwhelmed its impecunious enemy, the war was unwinnable. McNamara began to challenge LBJ’s wisdom and to doubt his own resolve. With anti-war protesters camped on the White House lawn, Johnson followed the advice of the RAF officer in Beyond the Fringe who tells an alarmed pilot: “I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage.”

LBJ threw McNamara overboard, hoping the mob would be appeased. Johnson was so skilful with the stiletto that McNamara was left asking Katherine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, whether he had resigned or been fired. “Don’t be silly, Bob,” she told him. “You were sacked.”

A similar dilemma faces George Bush and Rumsfeld. The Defence Secretary appears fatally wounded, a battered, cornered, growling presence in an administration which has become increasingly accident-prone. Rumsfeld, once the most surefooted of the neo-cons, has stumbled and a catalogue of offences has been laid at his door.

He declared in January 2002 that terrorism suspects were no longer protected by the Geneva Convention, a signal that prisoners could be maltreated with impunity. His failure adequately to plan for the occupation of Iraq led troops untrained in prison skills to run amok in Saddam’s hated Abu Ghraib jail.

The invasion force’s chain of command and responsibility was shown to be severely overstretched and woefully defective. Abuse against detainees, 60 per cent of whom were later released without charge, became commonplace, unchecked by senior officers. When, at the third official inquiry, widespread abuses were uncovered by Major General Antonio Taguba, Rumsfeld failed to tell Congress, the press or even the President that America was about to be consumed by a firestorm of anger.

Six days after pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib were screened on television, Rumsfeld had still not seen them. And he has still not read the full Taguba report because it is “too long”.

Notwithstanding these profound errors of judgment and omission, Rumsfeld might have survived if the congressional hearings were the end of the matter, but they are not. He told the Senate that there were hundreds of pictures and video images of abuse still to come.

Rumsfeld was typically candid about remaining at his post. “If I felt I could not be effective, I would resign in a minute,” he told the senators. It will be difficult for Rumsfeld to remain effectual in the current climate and he has many political enemies to ensure that it becomes impossible.

Americans are appalled by the discovery that their heroic military has been cruel and bestial to the very people they saved from Saddam Hussein’s torturers. They believe the country’s reputation has been dragged through the mud on Rumsfeld’s watch. The clamour for his removal will grow louder as the new images of abuse emerge.

Rumsfeld’s departure will be watched with dry eyes by many of his closest colleagues. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, has made little secret of resenting the way that Rumsfeld hijacked foreign policy. Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, has always had a tense relationship with Rumsfeld and will not shed a tear at his passing. Military chiefs will also sigh with relief. They have long complained that Rumsfeld, in his second reincarnation as Defence Secretary, routinely ignores their advice and is hellbent on reforming their free-spending ways.

President Bush may dearly like to rescue one of his most loyal lieutenants, but there may be little option but to hurry Rumsfeld’s departure. Like LBJ’s sacking of McNamara, dumping Rumsfeld will be an act of pointless sacrifice. The President will ensure that policy in Iraq remains unchanged.

Yet, as long as bad news from Iraq continues to sap the President’s popularity, George Bush will be under pressure to make a gesture to halt the slide. That is when the muddle and mis-steps which led to the impugning of America’s moral reputation will be firmly planted at Rumsfeld’s feet.

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