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"Despite strict US Army rules on communications, modern soldiers are relatively free to express their opinions about the validity of their operations and their leaders - provided they have the anonymity of a blog, as American Soldier acknowledges. In contrast, infantry in the Roman army may have been less likely to criticise their leaders or their mission. The practice of decimation, in which every tenth soldier would be beaten to death by the other soldiers was used during republican times up until the Augustan era. It was chosen as a method of punishing a cohort or group of soldiers for cowardice and, while it was a brutal punishment, it was chosen by commanders as an alternative to killing the whole group. "