Who's calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to step down now? What bunch of whiny liberal hippies is it? The editorial will run in the 250,000 copies of Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times. The newspapers are published under the umbrella Military Times Media Group by Gannett Co. Inc., not by the U.S. military, and have been popular among American forces since World War II.

When you screw something up so badly, there have to be consequences. When your leadership has failed and when people have lost confidence in your abilities, it is time to stop being stubborn and time to step aside. This is what kills me about our current leadership. There is no willingness to accept accountability, to admit what we all know already, and to take the appropriate action.

Once again, we'll take this to a business scenario. If you worked in a company where the CEO continued to support the customer service manager after complaints continued to rise about the lack of customer service, your sales began to drop off and staff turnover was increasing to record levels...you, as an employee, would begin to doubt the leadership of the company and the strategic vision of that company. You have two choices, stand up and demand appropriate action to address these issues or just leave and find a new job while that company continues to implode. How do we apply that logic and scenario to this situation? We are not powerless but we each have a responsibility to do the right thing. We begin that process by voting.