When is this going to stop? Is rape a part of the "fabric" of American "life and values" we want to export to all of the "lesser" nations we preach to and the others we threaten to remake in our image by force? This is not street crime, which is all but impossible to prevent; apprehension of perpetrators is about the most we can expect of our criminal justice system in civilian society. But in our highly regimented and monitored armed forces prevention should be doctrinal if not doctrinaire by definition, particularly in a combat theatre of operation where watching one another's back is the code, not aping the beast with two backs by force. Sexual assaults in these numbers are symptomatic of something very wrong that goes very deep.
There have been 112 reports of sexual misconduct over roughly the past 18 months in the Central Command area of operations, which includes Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, military officials said on Wednesday.
The Army has reported 86 incidents, the Navy 12, the Air Force 8 and the Marine Corps 6.
Military officials said that the bulk of the charges were being investigated and that some had already resulted in disciplinary actions, but they could not provide specifics. They said a small number of the reports had turned out to be unfounded.
In addition, about two dozen women at Sheppard Air Force Base, a large training facility in Texas, have reported to a local rape-crisis center that they were assaulted in 2002. The Air Force Academy in Colorado is still reeling from the disclosure last year of more than 50 reported assaults or rapes over the last decade. ...
The issue came to a boil at a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, where Senate Democrats and Republicans sharply questioned the Pentagon's top personnel official and four four-star officers for what the lawmakers said were lapses in the military's ability to protect servicewomen from sexual assaults, to provide medical care and counseling to victims of attacks and to punish violators.
Lawmakers said they were particularly appalled by reports that women serving in roles from military police to helicopter pilots had been assaulted by male colleagues in remote combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, where immediate medical treatment and a sense of justice seemed to be lacking.
"No war comes without cost, but the cost should be born out of conflict with the enemy, and not because of egregious violations by some of our own troops," said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican on the Armed Services personnel subcommittee.
