Should he resign? Not just because of this last scandal, but because of all his past mistakes, miscalculations, lies, deceptions, incompetence, and whatever else anyone thinks of.
If he is the top responsable for the US military (not counting the president), shouldn´t he take his fair share of the blame, just like any general or any other officer in charge of the operations?
Presidents have fallen from grace for much less.
But although Bush claims to be angry at him for not having been kept in the loop on the full scope of the abuse issue, it doesn´t seem he´s willing to cut Rummsfeld off, even though it would help minimize some of the huge ammount of pressure.
But if we analize Rummsfeld´s performance, it has been quite below average, sub-par even!
Let´s check out a few of the charges against him:

-He totally miscalculated the costs of the war;
-He misplanned the war, thinking it would take less troops than what actually was needed;
-His post-war planning was non-existent;
-He lied, deceived, misled, or tricked the troops regarding extended tours of duty overseas;
-He allowed situations of appalling abuse on detainees to take place on facilities under his direct jurisdiction;
-He commited troops to the aftermath of the main conflict, that were totally unprepared and untrained to conduct peace-keeping and order-keeping operations;
-He failed to produce any valid evidences to support the subsequent invasion and oiccupation of a sovereign nation;
-He "embezled" funds destined to Afghanistan, and used it in Iraq;
-He failed to conduct a "clean" war, with the US troops oftenlly commiting acts of brutality and targeting civilians, leading to frequent massacres and unnecessary bloodshed amongst the civilian population;
-He failed to rebuild the infrastructures destroyed in the course of the war;
-He failed to supply the US troops with all the necessary means for conducting their field operations (often the troops had to buy their own body armour, and use weapons captured to the enemy);
-He failed to capture and eliminate key taliban and Al-qaeda principles, although he had almost 2 years, almost unlimited funds, and many thousands of troops on the ground to do so, allowing the Taliban to resurface again in the south;
-He conducted media espectacules during certain operations, with the intent of glorifying the US troops, and vilifying the iraqis, namelly the Private Ryan rescue, and Saddam´s capture;
-He totally allowed the international Rules and Laws of War and the Genevre Convention guidelines to be sistematically infringed and violated on the field;
-And finally, he his totally guilty of having a below 80 IQ, a speech impediment, and a poor speech writer, just like his mentor Bush.
Oh yeah, he is also guilty of comming up with the most ludichrist and outlandish comparisons and cockeyed explanations i have ever heard!

Why in hell would anyone want such an incompetent baffoon on his cabinet, is beyond me!

PS: Tried to make a poll for this, but i never did one before, so i don´t know how.

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"Quincitilius Varus, give me back my legions!"
Emperor Augustus of Rome.

Who better to keep company with an incompetent baffoon than another baffoon just like him?

And Bush got at least as long a list full of failures and moronic actions.
So I think they should all be fired, the whole bunch. But they won't be, not even poor Rummy.

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Ahaah, so you think Rummy is a God, do you? Gotcha!!
Only two votes, and i didn´t vote for the Rummy God. So it had to be you!
Now we know your true colours.
So, how´s the preeching going? Bow to the Rummy Dummy God, or be hellbound!
:bow:

__________________
"Quincitilius Varus, give me back my legions!"
Emperor Augustus of Rome.

Damn! I thought it would take longer for you to notice it.

Yup, I'm a certified Rummy, or as I like to call him, Yummy-Rummy lover.
"Ruum-mmy! Ruum-mmy! Ruum-mmy!"

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Rumsfeld does - of course - not need to resign.

The torture and murder of men, women and children is only the tyrant's and dictator's responsibility, because their evil power is so overwhelming that they virtually control the actions of every single human in their country (e.g. Saddam Hussein)

In a democracy, luckiliy, the leaders are of course not responsible for the actions of some individuals, even if they are under their direct command. Why? Because in the ideology of the american oligarchic democracy, torture officially has no place. Therefore, the representants of a democracy cannot be held responsible for such actions.

Well, some things have gone bad in Iraq lately, but at least Saddam's torture chambers are closed forever...and the Iraqi's enjoy their freedom.

Rumsfeld will likely offer himself up as a sacraficial lamb. I'm not completely convinved that it's the rirght thing, or the wrong thing for him to do. He's the fall guy in a situation like this. Having no direct control over the entire military, yet bearing the full responsibility for any mis-actions on their part.

It's unfortunate that things happen, but that's life. You can never rule out a misdeed by an individual in a mass of people. The soldiers who claimed to have had no formal training on what to do and what not to do is a complete crock. Even the reserve units in the US army go through extensive training. So a fresh recruit would know the basics of what was crossing the line. For Rumsfeld to now be responsible for some overzealous 20 year old who went off and did something wrong just seems like a bit of injustice to me.

I'm not saying that the supposed torture of Iraqis was right. I'm simply not convinced that Rumsfeld is 100% to blame for that. Among everything else that he may or may not have done right with running the war, it is this one incident (or incidents) that will ultimately bring him down.

Every human being would know what was crossing the line. You don't need any military training to get a sense of what is right and what is wrong.


That's the way of the chain of command. You don't bear the immediate risk of your decisions, that's the job of your subordinates (and their body armor), but in turn, you're responsible for their actions. If someone doesn't like that, he should stay at the bottom.

He can't be behind every GI and as there are so many he can't prevent some misconducts. I wonder why he apologized. Probably a political matter for the media in the Middle East.
Now some may be responsible : I mean the superiors of those GIs, not generals or high rank officers, just sergeants and warrant and executive officers.

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From SR

I think some people are still oblivious to the fact that this sort of abuse has been going on for longer than you believe. The Red Cross report dating from mid 2003 had already blatant abuses and violations on record, proving this wasn´t some "isolated" incident. There are also plenty of evidence that proves this is more a sistematic pattern, with many high ranking oficials silently aquiescing to many forms of brutal abuse, and even encouraging it.
Several iraqis were mudered, beaten to death, raped and whatever you can think of. And this is not singular to Iraq neither. Similar occurrences have been reported in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The scope of this is huge!
And it is the ultimate responsability of the man in office to answer for such violations.
And besides, if a president was thrown down over a blowjob, don´t you think murder, rape and torture is at least worth a similar ´punishment´?
Or could it be that americans see a blowjob as something way more serious than torture and State sponsored assassination?
Why should the politicians in charge take advantage of the "good" and discard the responsability for the "bad"?

@Boiler
Just out of sheer curiosity, do you think Saddam had signed a piece of paper of preeched some ideology aproving of torture? I expect not.
No country ever announces their willingness to commit acts that go against international guidelines. I would bet that if asked, Saddam would say he was totally against torture, and that he abhorred such treatment. But yet he condones it, behind closed doors. What makes you think the american government could be any diferent? Just because it´s a "democracy"? Do you know how many democracies there are under wich name unspeakable acts have been commited? They are by the dozens, if not more!
Torture is never openly institutionalized. It is kept hidden, behind closed doors. Not even Hitler would ever openly admit and agree to having torture submitted on his prisioners.
I have a method to determine just who does it or not:
Those who speak the loudest against it and denounce it the strongest, are the first to resort to such strategems if the necessity arrises. They try to look shocked and appalled just to deceive the public.

__________________
"Quincitilius Varus, give me back my legions!"
Emperor Augustus of Rome.

@ SwamP_ThinG: ever heard of the term sarcasm?