I will sign any petition to this effect that you draw up, provided that we are also allowed to change the locks on all of the government buildings while they are gone.

Is that really the argument for Rumsfeld's resignation? That he should resign because some people in his department "committed illegal acts"? I'm not so sure.

Seems to me that the claims are as follows:

Rumsfeld's cavalier attitude toward international treaty obligations helped to contribute to the culture of "softening up" prisoners using torture,

he and the Pentagon generally have not been forthright about the problem of torture,

he's not clearly on top of the situation now, and wasn't on top of it when the torture allegations were made last year (by ICRC among others),

and his resignation would send an important diplomatic signal that we are serious about being not just better-than-Saddam but as-good-as-we-claim-we-want-others-to-think-we-are.

Seem like good arguments to me. At the very least, they're not really balanced out by your concern (setting a bad precedent for future resignations).

Ah, this stuff happens all the time. It's just one or two of the 5K criminal investigations the millitary does every year. Heck, it even happens in our own prisons.

What're you guys getting so worked up about? Quit your whining and get with the program.