(CNN) — An editorial to be published Monday in Army Times, newspapers that serve the four main branches of the U.S. military, will call for President Bush to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
“Basically, the editorial says, it’s clear now, from some of the public statements that military leaders are making, that he’s lost the support and respect of the military leadership,” said Robert Hodierne, senior managing editor for the publications’ parent company Army Times Publications.
“That they’re starting to go public with that now, with their disagreements, added up with all of the other missteps we believe he’s made, that it’s time for him to be replaced,” Hodierne.
Army Times Publications publishes the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and the Marine Corps Times.
Bush has maintained that Rumsfeld will stay on the job until 2008.
The timing of Monday’s editorial was prompted not by midterm elections, scheduled for Tuesday, but by Bush’s statement earlier this week that he intends to keep Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney in their posts through the end of his term, Hodierne said.
No one running for midterm elections, he noted, would have the power to replace Rumsfeld.
Swaying conservative voters “is not our aim,” said Hodierne. “Our aim is simply to say, for the good of the service, for the good of the country, it’s time for this guy to go.”
Owned by the Gannett Company, Army Times Publishing is the world’s largest publisher of defense and military-related periodicals, Hodierne said.
The four weekly newspapers are distributed in the general stores and commissaries on military around the world. They have a combined circulation of about 250,000, he said.