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430 Comments
- inactive, on 04/01/2008, -2/+111And the military was worried about homosexuals....
- francis7, on 04/01/2008, -6/+111This is - for lack of better words to put it - shockingly sad...
- OptimisticCynic, on 04/01/2008, -16/+107Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm told by female friends of mine both in and associated with the military that woman soldiers are not put in front-line conflicts or other high-risk combat situations (mostly for medical reasons). So, the occurrence of women being killed by enemy fire should be pretty low, making it more likely that the number of them being sexually assaulted will be higher than that.
- Homerr, on 04/01/2008, -18/+101I'm ok with a firing squad for any a-hole US soldier that rapes another soldier when they are deployed overseas.
- whuddafugger, on 04/01/2008, -4/+69Dick Cheney: "They volunteered."
- SOS84, on 04/01/2008, -7/+68I am a fourteen year veteran. I have served both on active duty and in the National Guard as a 13F and an 11B, and I can honesty say that I am not surprised by this story. The military culture by far and large is discriminatory against women and promotes mistreatment and violence against them. When asked why an E-6 that is one long contract from retirement has declined promotion and opting to ETS, I state that the military's culture of sexual, religious and racial bigotry is one of my primary reasons along with the rampant misuse of the military, unconstitutional deployment of the National Guard and the never ending occupation of Iraq that puts soldiers in no-win situation.
- KraftDinner101, on 04/01/2008, -9/+67Why am I not surprised by this statistic?
- inactive, on 04/01/2008, -9/+54This is sad and troubling. But don't take the tone of this message as shocking. First of all, women are kept from front-lines combat as much as possible. So their rate of dying by enemy fire is lower. Plus, if someone told you that more civilian women are raped, than killed in our most crime-ridden cities, I doubt we would be shocked.
Rape is a terrible crime, but to paint the service as an unusually bad place because more women are raped than killed is not accurately depicting the truth, but rather playing on everyone's already negative emotions towards the war and military activity in general.
I make no excuses for the tragedy of rape in any theater of life...but lets be honest with each other and ourselves and not make this out to be any more tragic than civilian rape. - racco, on 04/01/2008, -22/+65who would have thought that people that sign up to go to war and kill people could be so violent and evil
sick *****! - blah247, on 04/01/2008, -8/+48I was in the military as well. In '96 a friend of mine went to the brig for rape. He was there for 7 months while the trial was pending. Later it came out that they returned to base together at about 6 am and then she went to sleep in her room. She got awaken by her NCO at about 10 am with the threat of charges of AWOL and such... she then said she was raped by my friend. She ended up getting discharged probably as honorable. He had all charges dropped and got all back pay and was allowed to pick his next orders. Needless to say he left the service.
While I agree sexual assaults happen I also believe some women use this as leverage to get out of trouble of their own. - Deaus, on 04/01/2008, -13/+49I'm going to play Devils Advocate here for a minute. Let me preface by saying that I'm NOT saying that real rapes don't happen or that they aren't horrible crimes, and that I am a soldier who has deployed to Iraq for a year. However, this is a BS statistic. For starters the odds of dying by enemy gunfire are exceedingly low. Soldiers are more likely to die from alcohol in the first month back from Iraq, or on their 2 weeks of leave during the year in Iraq than they are by any other means. We had 2 soldiers in my brigade die during our tour, by by drinking themselves to death during their 2 weeks leave.
Second, and you aren't going to like this, but women WILL cry rape to get out of Iraq. We had one girl in my company alone who tried to claim she was sexually assaulted on four separate occasions to get out of her tour. Once she even claimed she was assaulted by a soldier in our company, and we later came to find out that the date she claimed she was assaulted the accused had been out of country for more than 2 weeks. Everyone avoided her. The other females in the company hated her because she was so transparent. Each time her claim was treated seriously and investigated to the fullest. And each time the accused after being found innocent was told that there is no recourse and there would be no punishment against the female soldier for making false claims.
What I'm trying to say is don't whip yourselves into a frenzy just because someone drops the rape word. Most people around here are smart enough to see past the terrorism BS. Dont fall for other kinds either. - SwedishNinja, on 04/01/2008, -0/+26"Look to your left, now look to your right. Statistically, both these men will rape you."
"I'm not going to rape you!"
"...I might." - whereiseljefe, on 04/01/2008, -4/+29Sadly khail250 has a point.
False rape allegations are estimated at anywhere between 20% to 60%, depending on how strict your definition of rape is and how you interpret cases with no corroborating evidence.
Frankly even 20% is far too high of a number, thought I'm inclined to believe 40%, as a false allegation creates 2 victims: The reputations of the innocent men accused (remember the suicide story stemming from a false allegation earlier on digg) and the many actual victims of rape who suffer from increased skepticism and devaluation of the impact of rape. As more and more women cry wolf, or lower the standards of what is called rape (regretting sex you had while drunk is unfortunate, any man will tell you this, but not rape if the inebriation was mutual), TRUE victims of rape see their crime as less important, devalued, and criticized (due to the increased need to weed out false claims) and will be less likely to come forward and put a rapist behind bars and receive treatment and counseling.
Women taking advantage of victim status and gaming the system to their advantage is well documented and hurts the true victims be devaluing their claims. It's a sad case. - 2gunnZ, on 04/01/2008, -8/+33This isnt to shocking to me, you put a bunch of men over here for 15 months, then add in a few women and boom,instant problem.
- DaDiggydiggyDOC, on 04/01/2008, -3/+24I have learned of this from a friend of mine when she returned from iraq ;unfortunately she'll never be the same mentally or emotionally and neither will any of those other victims. I find it strange that this isn't a bigger story too, with it being a political year and all.
- whereiseljefe, on 04/01/2008, -7/+28And we would assume this is so given the percentage of women that are actually on the front lines where they even have the equal opportunity to get killed.
- OnAnyMouse, on 04/01/2008, -14/+35You haven't been raped. I have. I would rather have been killed.
- Kurlumbenus, on 04/01/2008, -2/+22If you add a keg, it's a frat party.
- BohicaTwentyTwo, on 04/01/2008, -1/+20FTA: 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist.
Maximum punishment for an Article 15 (nonjudicial punishment) is loss in rank, loss of 1 month's pay, extra duty for 45 days and restriction to quarters for 60 days. - igyigyigy, on 04/01/2008, -2/+21I don't think anyone thought that was what he meant.
- OptimisticCynic, on 04/01/2008, -0/+17Uh, no. Thats not what I meant at all. What I'm justifying is why the number of them sexually assaulted may be higher than the number of them killed by enemy fire in Iraq.
How exactly did you make that inference? - Murple, on 04/01/2008, -6/+22I am really pissed off at all the comments about "This is why women shouldn't serve." That's *****, and it's only a short step to victim blaming. Women who want to serve their country have every right to do so. It's the culture of patriarchy in the military that contributes to the acceptance of rape and abuse. Rape is not about horny soldiers wanting a piece, it's about power. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way soldiers are trained. Do you think they stop thinking of women as powerless and fragile when they return from overseas? Military wives/girlfriends are at a much higher risk of rape and abuse than civilian wives and girlfriends.
- jehan60188, on 04/01/2008, -3/+18Don't try to justify one horrible act by comparing it to another.
- tuflehundon, on 04/01/2008, -1/+16Unfortunately, most women cannot handle being in a front line combat unit. They are just built differant. When I was in the Marines they did an experiment were they integrted women into our unit, this was during peace time in California. Of the 50 women they attached to our battalion, only 2 or 3 could hack it. I'm not tryingto put women down, cause 95% of the men in America couldn't do the job either. Having a women next to me in combat who can't carry the same load and amount of ammo makes her a liabilty. I will admit also that the 2 or 3 women who did do well were very, muscular bull dikes.
- Brownds, on 04/01/2008, -3/+18I don't know how accurate this could be considering what I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. At Bagram Airbase right before I got there the Army busted a bunch of female soldiers for running a prostitution ring on base. I know of 1 chick that cheated on her husband, she was giving this dude a BJ in our movie tent a like 3am. She tried to call it rape when she heard her husband found out. They put the poor guy through the ringer before she admitted it was consensual. I am sure accrual rape took place but If I learned anything from 9 years of service that is 99% of girls that join the armed service have A LOT of emotional baggage and issues at home that they are running away from. Joining the armed forces took them away from said issues.
- SgtBulldog, on 04/01/2008, -3/+17It absolute sucks that so many women are raped in the military. It is a despicable and awful truth. However, I don't see why this statistical comparison is valid. Do you really want MORE women to be killed than are raped? I'm sure that more women are raped than killed stateside too, but where are those glaring headlines? This headline is pure sensationalism, plain and simple.
- inactive, on 04/01/2008, -16/+30Shocking?
Not if you know anything about any army that ever existed in the history of mankind.
War turns people into animals. Doesn't matter what side they're on. And honestly, this is going to sound horrible but I'm glad that this time around it's soldiers getting raped instead of civilians. It's a first in human history. - dmadiedo, on 04/01/2008, -1/+15Although I haven't been raped, a person very close to me was, and I understand you. Maybe some of you can't realize this, but this person was emotionally dead, she almost lost the will to live, and couldn't start a relationship, or even stand the contact of her relatives for a long time. Maybe some people shouldn't do comments so light about a harsh event like a rape.
- Kurlumbenus, on 04/01/2008, -6/+19Because soldiers aren't exactly skimmed from the cream of the crop?
- DiggyWiggy, on 04/01/2008, -1/+14"I'm glad that this time around it's soldiers getting raped instead of civilians. It's a first in human history."
There's been several reports of civilians being raped too, including the Mahmudiyah killings, where a 14-year-old Iraqi girl was raped, of which the film Redacted is loosely based. I'm sure this happens 10 times more often than is reported too. Are you still glad?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_killings - alittleroy101, on 04/01/2008, -0/+12@inf69
How the ***** did you get that from his post? That's not even remotely close to what he was saying. - Ender008, on 04/01/2008, -0/+12That was an impressive misspelling.
- pintomp3, on 04/01/2008, -3/+15how about when they rape 14 year old iraqi girls and kill their family to cover it up?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_killings - whereiseljefe, on 04/01/2008, -4/+15The Navy did an internal investigation that put the number of situations like this at around a horrific 60%.
- khail250, on 04/01/2008, -45/+56i was in the military, anything is sadly considered rape over there, and no evidence is needed to support it. i even hear crap like "i will say rape, and there is nothing you can do about it to prove it" just to get out of some work.
- saturnx8, on 04/01/2008, -7/+17not even commenting, i wonder how many of them were legitimate rapes, vs "I'm pissed because i was a one night stand" Don't get me wrong rape is terrible and the rapist should be shot but false rape accusations also deserve punishment too.
I'm in the service (armored cav scout 19d) and we haven't got females in the field unit being combat arms. this article paints a picture that the military doesn't care about rape, we are briefed repeatedly for sexual harassment and what is inappropriate. The military is not just a bunch of criminal people hell bent on "total war", its not an ethic that the US military practices unlike 3rd world armies where they encourage rape, drug use kidnappings and other inhumane acts. - bonhoeffer, on 04/01/2008, -6/+16Shocking? 99.9% of women in the military do not face enemy fire in Iraq. More women in the military die in DUI accidents than are killed by enemy fire. More women in the military die from slip & falls than are killed by enemy fire.
Harman discredits her valid concern for rape by sensationalizing it with a fake alarm. - BeatPunchbeef, on 04/01/2008, -3/+13"So?"
/Cheney - khail250, on 04/01/2008, -2/+12no, because they teach of over and over, do this, its sexual harrassment, do that, ANYTHING is considered to be sexual harrasment. any body on digg that was in the military knows exactly what i mean. most guys dont even talk to woman for that fact one way or another they are gonna get screwed (not in a good way) by some chick with an ego, because she knows she will get away with it all for the fact she is a female
- masterofshadows, on 04/01/2008, -1/+11yes, for proof please view national lampoon's animal house
- chochazel, on 04/01/2008, -0/+10http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
- pintomp3, on 04/01/2008, -0/+10are those the only two options for women in the military?
- inactive, on 04/01/2008, -1/+10Well you could say that about anyone. They absolutely deserve respect! And it's definitely not something to sweep under the rug.
But the single mother of two on her way home from her second job deserves more respect than being raped for what she does. The college student deserves more respect. The police officer, the school teacher....they all deserve more respect than to be raped. To base someones level of tragedy on what they do for a living is unfair to the other rape victims.
I know what you're saying and I support it to an extent. But to say that one rape is more serious than another is to roughly say that one person was more deserving of rape than another. I just can't whole-heartedly agree with that.
But to support your comment, it is absolutely ridiculous in any venue. - whereiseljefe, on 04/01/2008, -0/+9Can't correct anything except the "for medical reasons." There's still a lot of "patriarchy" in the military system, which is understandable in that the military is the literal extension of the chivalrous decree to protect women/family at all costs.
Medical issues mainly come into play when you have a sadly high number of women in the armed forces somehow manage to get pregnant right when their being sent on leave, or getting pregnant while on leave, so that they have to be sent home. - AnarkeIncarnate, on 04/01/2008, -3/+12I have said this before and been dug down. This is *****. The numbers are ***** and people who repeat it are repeating *****.
- Habemus, on 04/01/2008, -7/+16Women are far more likely to be raped while at college than in the military. According to generally repsected figures, ONE IN FOUR college college students will be raped at some point. That far lower than Harman's figures for women in the military. Women in the military are SAFER from rape than their counterparts who went on to college!
Does college bring out the worst in people? Does college turn people into animals? - theaceoffire, on 04/01/2008, -2/+11You know what we should do, right?
More Gays in the army! That way, less of them will want to rape women! - WaveyRavey, on 04/01/2008, -1/+10I wouldnt want my brother or my dad to serve on the front line either....whats your point?
- Kurlumbenus, on 04/01/2008, -1/+10Oh, yes, I'm sure the betrayal of being raped by a coworker and ally makes it much better.
- jsgill, on 04/01/2008, -3/+12No, just making a statistical point. Rape is horrific whatever the numbers
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