The White House defended Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday from criticism from Republican Sen. John McCain that he was one of the worst U.S. defense secretaries ever for his handling of the Iraq war.

McCain, one of President George W. Bush’s key allies in the U.S. Congress on Iraq, is running for his party’s nomination to be president in 2008.

“I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history,” the Arizona senator and Vietnam War veteran said on the campaign trail in South Carolina on Monday.

The White House, caught between a rock and a hard place, backed Rumsfeld but was careful not to criticize McCain in doing so.

“We think Donald Rumsfeld was an enormously consequential and effective secretary of defense and somebody who led to the transformation of the
Department of Defense. Senator McCain holds a different point of view,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Rumsfeld, the second-longest serving defense secretary, was widely blamed for the U.S. failure to bring stability to the Middle East amid growing public discontent over the administration’s Iraq war policy.

A day after Republicans lost control of Congress in elections last November due largely to concern about Iraq, Bush accepted Rumsfeld’s resignation and replaced him with Robert Gates.

George W. Bush needs McCain’s support in his efforts to secure $100 billion in new funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Asked if McCain’s comments should be chalked up to his jockeying for position in the 2008 election, Snow quipped: “I left the chalk at home.”