Harsh words from the CS Monitor

What Bush left out of his address

Many Americans inside and outside the military have vowed that when US troops are deployed on multilateral missions overseas they should never come under the command of a non-US general. That is one issue, and it's possible that as Secretary of State Colin Powell continues discussions with other nations about the new UN resolution on Iraq, they can all find a way to deal with it.

But there's a larger issue, too. At the end of the day, every military commander reports to a political leadership. To whom will the commander of the new, mixed, US-UN force in Iraq be responsible? Right now, both the US commander on the ground and the civilian head of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) report to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But once there's a new power-sharing agreement with the UN, will the people in these two jobs report to Mr. Rumsfeld or to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan?

Let's be frank. Many key members of the UN Security Council would find it hard to lend their troops, the UN's name, and the enormous legitimacy that the UN enjoys around the world to a venture headed by Rumsfeld, a man who has gratuitously denigrated many friendly countries in public.

It would be easier to reach the needed agreement if Rumsfeld were no longer secretary of Defense. But there are other reasons, too, that Bush should consider letting Rumsfeld go. It was, after all, his decisionmaking at key points in the past two years that led the US into the present mess in Iraq.