ISOLATED, under fire from insurgents and uncertain whether the looming khaki-clad figure ahead of him is friend or foe, Donald Rumsfeld may at last be discovering what life is like for the soldiers he sent to Iraq.

The US Defence Secretary is facing apparently concerted calls from the American military establishment for his resignation. In the past month no fewer than four recently retired generals have openly criticised his management style and handling of the war in Iraq.

On Wednesday, MajorGeneral John Baptiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-05, said: “I believe we need a fresh start at the Pentagon . . . We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them.”

Last weekend Lieutenant-General Greg Newbold, the former director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in Time magazine that the invasion of Iraq “was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results”. He added: “The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood”.

Before that, Marine General Anthony Zinni, the former chief of US Central Command, had accused the Defence Secretary and his civilian advisers of a “dereliction of duty” in failing to prepare adequately for war.

Major-General Paul Eaton, who oversaw the training of Iraqi troops in 2003-04, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times calling for Mr Rumsfeld to go because he was “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically”.

The charge against Mr Rumsfeld is that he dismissed his senior officers’ reservations about the Iraq battle plan. His critics cite the treatment of General Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff, who was sidelined after telling Congress before the war that he believed that several hundred thousand troops — many more than were used — would be required for a successful operation.

General Baptiste’s comments have particular resonance within the Army because he was offered a promotion if he returned to Iraq as second-in-command. He declined and quit the military in November, reportedly because he no longer wished to serve under Mr Rumsfeld. He said that the lack of adequate troop levels was among a series of mistakes that helped to create the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal by giving too much responsibility to incompetent or undertrained troops. Many serving officers, he said, felt the same way.

He told CNN: “It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defence.”

Although there have been regular calls for Mr Rumsfeld’s resignation in the past three years, the conviction that he made strategic errors by insisting on invading Iraq “on the cheap” has taken root in the past month.

There has even been “friendly fire” from within the Administration. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, acknowledged on a recent visit to Britain that the US had made “tactical errors, thousands of them”, in Iraq.

Mr Rumsfeld later retorted that errors were inevitable in war. “If someone says, well, that’s a tactical mistake, then I guess it’s a lack of understanding of what warfare is about.”

But at a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday, General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, leapt to the defence of Mr Rumsfeld, saying that the country was “exceptionally well served” by him.

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