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Not having much interest in Rumsfield or his escapades in Vietnam, I won't pass judgement as to whether or not he should resign.

One thing that did spark some interest was that you have stated that 10 or 12 men have comitted these crimes in Iraq.

Today's Province newspaper headlined a young female marine who says it has been common practice by everyone in the jails where these Iraqi prisoners are being held. Apparently it is on a MUCH larger scale than previously predicted when stating a few men have been comitting these crimes of torturous humility against Iraqi's.

The main photo was her holding a leash with a naked Iraqi man tethered on it as he crawled on the floor.

As far as war crimes in Vietnam, based on what I've heard from a friend who was a Merc over there, it was VERY common to commit such crimes as rape, torture and group killings. he said those that didn't participate were quickly singled out and basically left to fight their own war as nobody would back them.

If you wanted tp be supported, you also had to accept or participate in such actions.

I believe you also fought in Nam (from what I remember), were you not subjected to such things?

Perhaps it was specific troops or 'classes' of military and not ALL of them, but from what I'm told it was damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So perhaps your "what ever the leaders do." statement is somewhat true in that such situations cause most to just shut up or join in.
This in no way makes it okay by any means, but perhaps explains that some would not have been involved by choice but peer pressure.

What's saddest though is that these crimes in Iraq simply copy exactly what you are there to remove, unfortunately with a force designed to mirror and equal each other, this type of attitude may be simply impossible to avoid when placed in such situations.

It wil be nice to see these people brought to justice immediately so that Iraqi's also get the impression that America does not condone this at all and the US should react with the same 'no questions' reaction that they showed towards removing Saddam and invading Iraq to begin with. Otherwise it is simply hypocritical.

But I think it goes back the administration on how well communication is going, looks like it hasn't improved much, since apparently Rumsfeld didn't bother to bring Congress into it. I think he was hoping the Defense department could quickly fix the problem and hope no one would know about it. Oz is right, we need to punish the people that are responsible for it, not Rumsfeld, that isn't going to be the solution. I think, comparing to what OZ said about Vietnam vets going along with the minority of troops who committed war crimes there, the same could be said about some of these troops. It might have been a small group of soldiers, but others might have joined it for fear of being persecuted by their fellow soldiers. Does that make it okay? Definately not! There needs to be an extensive investigation, so that we can show the Iraqi people that the US will not tolerate this type of behavior.