U.N. suspends peacekeepers amid sex abuse charges

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"Those who are found guilty will be sent back home."The world body said the measure was in addition to a decision to confine the entire battalion of 734 soldiers to barracks.

U.N. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday the investigation involved Moroccan soldiers having sex with a large number of underage girls in the West African country's northern rebel stronghold of Bouake.

Toure said the allegations had come to light after the mission ran a campaign against sexual exploitation in which it asked local people to inform it about abuses. It then sent a team to carry out interviews and gather information.

I'm not the first one to question U.N.-related behaviors. One question I ask is this: Will there be equal outrage for these incidents as those at Abu Ghraib? Here's what happened to our guys who were sick enough to do what they did in Iraq:

The U.S. Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and seven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault, and battery. Between May 2004 and September 2005, seven soldiers were convicted in courts martial, sentenced to federal prison time, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner, and his former fiancée, Private Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison, respectively, in trials ending on January 14 2005 and September 26, 2005.

The commanding officer at the prison, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was demoted to the rank of colonel on May 5, 2005. Colonel Karpinski has denied knowledge of the abuses claiming that the interrogations were authorized by her superiors and performed by subcontractors, and that she was not even allowed entry into the interrogation rooms.

A lot of heads rolled. And the should have. We believe in accountability. What about the U.N.? The Abu Ghraib scandal rocked the U.S. Armed Forces and Bush administration. The story pulsed around the world by a media bent on amplification.

We don't know the scale of this story. Yet, "a large number of underage girls" sounds as bad as it gets. Up to 734 guys involved?! That's immensely larger than the number involved at Abu Ghraib. Where does the buck stop at the U.N. for disasters such as this?