Eyeing 2008, 2 Top Dems Slam Rumsfeld

(AP)  Two Democrats lining up support for potential presidential runs took aim at Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said Rumsfeld should resign as a way to own up to his failures in Iraq.

A speech last week in which Rumsfeld likened critics of the Bush administration's war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis in the 1930s prompted many Democrats to call for his resignation and boosted support for a congressional resolution expressing no confidence in him. Rumsfeld later said his remarks were misrepresented and that he was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in the past, not accusing the administration's critics of trying to appease the terrorists.

"I think Donald Rumsfeld needs to be gone for reasons much more important than anything he said in a speech," Edwards said after attending a Labor Day breakfast. "He's been one of the architects of this mess in Iraq, and he takes absolutely no responsibility for any of the mistakes he's made."

Also Monday, while marching in a Labor Day parade in Milford, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said he believes there is very little chance of winning the war in Iraq. He defined victory as leaving behind a stable country that has secure borders and is no longer a haven for terrorists.

He said even Rumsfeld has concluded that his comments about war critics and World War II were "over the top"

"The most significant comparison with World War II is that we soon, will have been in Iraq as long as World War II, with much less success," Biden said.

And worse, he said Iraq is headed toward civil war.

"If civil war breaks out, all the king's horses and all the king's men aren't going to get this country back together again."

Biden conceded some progress has been made in restoring order to Baghdad, but said other political solutions must be enacted, including giving Iraqis more authority in setting local laws and doing something to generate jobs.

Edwards, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004, voted in favor of going to war in Iraq as a senator but since has said he made a mistake. He has called for the immediate removal of 40,000 to 50,000 troops, with the rest returned home over the course of 12 to 18 months.

"The best way to show we're going to leave is to start leaving," he told several hundred union members at the New Hampshire AFL-CIO's annual breakfast. "It is the only way we're going to get other people in that part of the world to step up to the plate."

American forces came under twice as many attacks in July than they did six months earlier, he said.

"This is not rocket science. What we're doing now is not working," he said. "I don't know how anyone in his right mind can argue things are going well."

As he decides whether to make another run for the White House, Edwards has been traveling the country on behalf of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, an institute he founded at the University of North Carolina.

Preaching to Monday's choir, he called organized labor the nation's "greatest anti-poverty movement."

The manufacturing jobs that everyone is so worried about losing to overseas competition "weren't good jobs before the union," he said.

Edwards said he favors increasing the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour and banning the hiring of permanent replacements for striking workers. He also backed making it easier for workers to unionize.

"If Americans can join the Republican Party by signing their name to a card, they should be able to sign a card to join a union," he said.