A Good Grilling

The US military deserves a good grilling for its handling of sexual assault, and Senator Gillibrand did a nice job here:


Her two key points:

• what does success look like?  Given the existing reality that there are tens of thousands of sexual assaults and only two hundred or so are prosecuted, it seems like the status quo is not so terrific--good order and discipline?  
• if the court martial rules x and the "convening authority" says not x, then we have a contradiction, right?

Together, these points are used to attack the key dynamic here--that the senior officer has complete authority to throw out convictions. It may be the case that there are good arguments to be made about unity of command or whatever, but clearly the system as it is currently designed is not working well in this area.  To say otherwise is to be in denial.

And, yes, given my previous rants about the US Air Force, I am most pleased to see it take the hit here.