"Other Priorities" article by David Hackworth on US Troop rapes

[Skarbrowe]

By David H. Hackworth

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=90&rnd=509.46047373196313

By April 2004, rapes and assaults of American female soldiers were epidemic in the Middle East. But even after more than 83 incidents were reported during a six-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the 24-hour rape hotline in Kuwait was still being answered by a machine advising callers to leave a phone number where they could be reached

“Nobody had a telephone number, for crying out loud,” says Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, then commanding general of the 800th Military Police Brigade, who was in Kuwait preparing to bring her unit home after running the military prisons in Iraq.
Military stupidity at its finest, or senior male brass who chose to shrug and look the other way?



Karpinski believes the latter. “Reports of assault ... were mostly not investigated because commanders had other priorities,” Karpinski says. “The attitude of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez,” then the ground commander in Iraq, “permeated the entire chain of command: The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory.
According to Karpinski, Brig. Gen. Michael J. Diamond, then commander of the 377th Theater Support Command in Kuwait, followed Sanchez’s lead and refused to take any proactive steps toward stopping the rapes.

<snip>



“I reminded BG Diamond he was in Kuwait, not the middle of Iraq,” Karpinski told me, “and there was no excuse for not lighting up the walkways to the showers and latrines. He said he had other priorities, and he didn’t want to call attention to the locations of the facilities.
Meanwhile, the male latrines were well-marked and well-lighted. ( The women's were not. Lost this fact in the snip. )

<snip>


Only after abused soldiers started calling home and contacting the press, their parents and Congress, did the secretary of defense finally appoint a Sexual Assault Task Force last February to “undertake a 90-day review of all sexual assault policies and programs.”
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You should read this article and hope your female family members don't get sent to Kuwait or Iraq. I was in the military, knew women who were raped, was threatened myself a few times and let me tell you, women have to be STRONG in many ways to a member of our fighting forces.


Skarbrowe