After years of repeated reports of sexual assaults
-- and years of promises to prevent them, and then years of studies and
commissions to find the best way of doing so -- a Defense Department study
released Tuesday estimates that some 26,000 people in the military were sexually
assaulted in the last fiscal year, up from about 19,000 the year before.
Moreover, it turns out the Air Force lieutenant
colonel in charge of preventing sexual assault has been arrested for ... sexual
assault. According to the police
report, a drunken Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski allegedly approached a woman in a
parking lot in Arlington, Va., Sunday night, and grabbed her breasts and buttocks.
Why has it been so difficult for the Air Force or
the Defense Department to remedy this problem?
Speaking of which, the Air Force has just removed
from duty seventeen launch officers at the Minot nuclear missile base in North
Dakota -- one of three bases responsible for controlling, and, if necessary,
launching, strategic nuclear missiles -- for violating weapons safety rules.
The base commander characterized their negligence as "rot."
One officer was found to have intentionally broken a
safety rule that could have compromised the secret codes enabling missiles to
be launched.
Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley points to
the removal of the seventeen as evidence that the Air Force has strengthened
its oversight of the nuclear force. And he explains that members of the launch
crew are usually relatively junior officers with limited service experience.
Further steps will be taken to prevent one of our
missiles from accidentally causing a nuclear holocaust. But I hope the Air
Force does a better job remedying this problem than it's done preventing sexual
assaults.
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