John McCain Was Wrong Then, And He's Wrong Now

Has McCain explain yet what good it has done this far to leave it in the military chain of command? How many more years does he think it will take SINCE IT HAS BEEN GOING ON ALL THESE YEARS AND HE KNOWS IT.

Kirsten Gillibrand: John McCain Was Wrong Then, And He's Wrong Now
The Huffington Post
By Paige Lavender
Posted: 11/20/2013

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) criticized Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for not supporting her proposal to remove military sexual assault cases from the chain of command, saying this isn't the first time he's been wrong.

“I respect Sen. McCain and we are friends, but with all due respect to him, he was wrong about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and he was wrong about sexual assault in the military,” Gillibrand said in a Wednesday interview with Fusion's “AMERICA with Jorge Ramos.”

“Our job as members of Congress is to provide that oversight and accountability over the military, over the Department of Defense,” Gillibrand said. “And there is a growing chorus of military leaders who have even more experience than Sen. McCain who are saying, 'This should be taken out of the chain of command.'"
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Here are just a few of the headlines going back to 2008

More than anything, Michelle Nagle wants to give her daughter, Jorden, a happy life.

But a memory from Michelle's military life threatens their happiness.

No, it's not the "war;" Michelle wasn't called to Iraq. What haunts her is the day she was sexually assaulted by a fellow soldier.

"I was in the barracks and we were getting ready to watch football and he was making me nervous because he wouldn't sit down, Michelle said. "That's when he threw me on the bed. I'm just begging him to get off me. I guess I was screaming, because my next-door neighbor heard and he came in and got him off me."

The attack traumatized Michelle, especially because it wasn't the first time. Michellle had been sexually abused as a child, and she thought the military would be a safe place. At six-feet-tall, she challenged herself to meet the men's physical standards.

"If I was as strong as them, they can't hurt me. That didn't work out so well," she said.

Michelle was afraid to tell her superiors about the attack, but she couldn't forget.

Keri Christensen spends the day watching her children. She prepares their meals, gets them ready for school and helps them with their homework. Christensen says that she was sexually harassed by a superior while serving in Iraq and that the harassment added to the pressure created by just being in a war zone.

The VA diagnosed 60,000 veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Of those, 22 percent of women suffered from "military sexual trauma," which includes sexual harassment or assault, compared with 1 percent of men.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in a Monday letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that harassment and assault of military women, especially in combat zones, is a “scourge” that needs to be eliminated.

Casey is particularly interested in how the military handles complaints from women in the National Guard and reserve, whose cases may be harder to investigate than those of women on full-time active duty and in the federal civilian workforce.

In the letter, Casey said he knows the military is trying to do more, but added: “I am still very troubled by a process that may dissuade many victims from ever coming forward with claims.”

There are more but you get the point. McCain should have gotten it too but he just refuses to see how little they have done.