[thinkfurther]

You cannot "take" responsibility. You can face the responsibility you have, or don't. You cannot shed one iota of it, or take one additional iota. And "subordinates" or also responsible for the orders they follow. Their leader cannot absolve them.

[bitexploder]

This seems like digging at meaningless pedantry now. We are arguing over phrasing and not intent. In almost any corporate or military environment it is extremely common for leaders to blame some external circumstance for the failure of a given project or mission, instead of looking at themselves as the root cause of failure. I think it is "understood" that this is the common definition of "taking" responsibility vs. displacing it to some external entity (a subordinate). This is not about absolution for mistakes but how a leader is the ultimate responsible party for leadership decisions that put subordinates and projects into a box that can define the ultimate success or failure of goals.