The audience at a Pentagon auditorium rose to its feet in applause after General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged the people to thank Rumsfeld for his leadership.

"There is not a single human being in this government, and certainly not in this building, who works harder or is more dedicated or is a better patriot than is Secretary Rumsfeld," Pace said.

Rumsfeld, who has come under fire from members of Congress for his handling of the scandal, has so far survived calls by leading Democrats that he resign.

On Monday, President George W. Bush publicly praised his embattled defense chief at the end of a rare visit to the Pentagon, saying he was doing a "superb job."

Rumsfeld showed the president over a dozen of the hundreds of photographs taken by soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, showing a range of abuses, including some of a sexual nature.

"It is a body blow when we find that we have -- as we have in past week or so to date -- a few who have betrayed our values by their conduct," Rumsfeld said.

"As Pete Pace can tell you, the look on the face of the people who have viewed the photographs and the videos of what took place there, they were stunned, absolutely stunned, that any Americans wearing the uniform could do what they did," he said.

Rumsfeld said US leaders were "heartsick" for those who were abused and for the cost to the reputation of the US Defense Department "as a force for good in the world."

"And I know I speak for everybody when I say those acts really ought not be allowed to define us," he said.

The display of support from the friendly Pentagon audience appeared to warm Rumsfeld, who went on to deliver a vehement defense of the military's response to the charges of abuse.

"The military, not the media, discovered these abuses," he said. "The military reported the abuses, not the media."

He defended the slow pace of the investigations, insisting that "weeks and months" were needed to ensure that the rights of the accused are respected and that they do not "get off free" because of interference in the process.

"Our enemies will exploit this episode to prove their negative views of our country, but then they were doing that before this episode," he said.

"But friends of freedom will understand that it is a virtue of our system that the president and the most senior officials take responsibility for and are involved in seeing that the punishment for such violations of human rights occur," he added.

His talk came just after Congress heard testimony from a top Rumsfeld aide and Major General Antonio Taguba, who detailed the abuses at the prison in a report in March that Rumsfeld and the top Pentagon brass read only last week.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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