Month: March 2014

The Mysterious Fate Of Flight 370, Ctd

by Jonah Shepp

The story keeps getting weirder, but there are no answers yet:

Over the weekend, the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 became a criminal investigation as Malaysian officials said they had “conclusive” evidence that the flight had been hijacked. They also said that a final message had been received from the pilot after the plane’s signaling apparatus had been disabled, raising suspicion that the flight was intentionally diverted by crew. There have also been numerous reports this morning that plane may have flown as low as 5,000 feet, in order to avoid all radar detection, a maneuver that would require considerable skill from the pilots, while also putting the plane itself in considerable danger, as it is not designed for long travel at that altitude.

Passing along the map seen below, Derek Thompson notes that the clues about where the plane might be are still very broad:

map-malaysia

The precise location of the flight at 8:11 AM is still a mystery. But officials provided a map (above) that shows the plane’s possible location along one of two red semi-circles, based on a “ping” from a satellite orbiting 35,800 kilometers above the Indian Ocean. As you can see, this final data point indicates two possible flight paths: one northwest stretching toward Kazakhstan and another southwest into the Indian Ocean.

The northern flight path is above land, which would raise the odds that officials find the plane or its remnants. But The New York Times points out that it’s unlikely that air-defense networks in India, Pakistan, or Afghanistan failed to pick up on a rogue 777. This makes the southern path more likely. Bloomberg‘s analysis of the last satellite “ping” tracked the plane’s last known location to about 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia.

Patrick Smith addresses some misconceptions regarding the plane’s transponder:

The media is throwing this term around without a full understanding of how the equipment works. For position reporting and traffic sequencing purposes, transponders only work in areas of typical ATC radar coverage. Most of the world, including the oceans, does not have ATC radar coverage. Transponders are relevant to this story only when the missing plane was close to land. Once over the ocean, it didn’t matter anyway. Over oceans and non-radar areas, other means are used for position reports and tracking/communicating (satcomm, datalink, etc.), not transponders.

Many readers have asked why the capability exists to switch off a transponder, as apparently happened aboard Malaysia flight 370. In fact very few of a plane’s components are hot-wired to be, as you might say, “always on.” In the interest of safety — namely, fire and electrical system protection — it’s important to have the ability to isolate a piece of equipment, either by a standard switch or, if need be, through a circuit breaker. Also transponders will occasionally malfunction and transmit erroneous or incomplete data, at which point a crew will recycle the device — switching it off, then on — or swap to another unit. Typically at least two transponders are onboard, and you can’t run both simultaneously. Bear in mind too that switching the unit “off” might refer to only one of the various subfunctions, or “modes” — for example, mode C, mode S — responsible for different data.

Previous Dish on the missing plane here, here, and here. Update from a reader, who ramps up the wild speculation:

Check this out.  It’s the most convincing thing I’ve read in the last ten days about the flight’s disappearance. He’s an aviation hobbyist who plotted times and air routes and came up with a theory that Flight 370 shadowed a scheduled flight (appearing with it as a single signal) over all the countries that should have picked it up on radar.

Why Don’t Republicans Talk More About The Rural Poor?

by Chris Bodenner

A reader makes an important point:

While I’m sympathetic to Andrew’s broader argument that liberals are far too quick to attack opponents with the sexist/racist/homophobic label, and am even sympathetic to his narrower argument that Paul Ryan’s statement wasn’t really all that exceptional or offensive, I think he’s missing the point of what gets liberals so riled up about statements like Ryan’s. It is not that he critiques the culture of the urban poor (a well-established code for black people); it is that Ryan does so to the exclusion of everyone else. Various reports (such as this one – pdf) track the poverty rates between urban and non-urban centers and tend to find a persistently higher poverty rate in non-urban areas:

A higher proportion of nonmetropolitan households (28.2 percent) are near poverty as compared to metropolitan households (24.0 percent).

Half of all rural African Americans (50.5 percent) live near poverty; rural Hispanics are at 47.0 percent, followed by whites at 23.5 percent, and Asians at 19.9 percent. In nonmetropolitan areas, 38.2 percent of children under the age of 18 live below 150 percent of the poverty line compared to 32.5 percent in metropolitan areas.  Over one quarter (26.2 percent) of elderly people live near poverty in nonmetropolitan areas, up by 1.5 percent from 2009. In metropolitan areas 20.6 percent of the elderly live near poverty.

Now, are poverty rates the whole story? Of course not. There are intersections of unemployment, family structure, race, and a whole host of other things to explain the difference. However, when you look at the statistics between urban and rural areas, you kind of have to ask yourself: “Why is Ryan only focusing on black people when the problems of poverty and poverty culture clearly impact millions of rural whites as well?”

Does he do that because he’s a racist? Probably not. However, it’s pretty clear he’s doing that because it’s “safe” for someone from his party to bash heavily-Democratic minorities like blacks. If he applied the same critique to rural whites, part of his party’s base, he would likely be losing votes and support from people he needs to win elections.

How Bad Might It Get In Ukraine?

by Jonah Shepp

Very bad, says Paul Hockenos, who compares the situation today to the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s:

[A]nyone who followed the unfolding of the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Kosovo is surely horrified today by the dynamics between Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Ukrainian leadership, the people of Crimea, and citizens in the rest of Ukraine. The similarities to the Balkans of the 1990s are, in many ways, striking: Just as Serbia and Croatia cynically exploited the presence of their compatriots outside the borders of their republics, so too is Putin manipulating the welfare of the Russophone Crimeans as justification for cross-border military operations, the seizure of territory, and a phoney referendum. As in the Balkans, the media has been turned into the mouthpiece of extreme nationalists. Once again, there’s inadequate security architecture to defuse tensions; and then there’s the radicalization of nationalism which, when fanned so fiercely, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and, in the Balkans, led to Europe’s worst bloodshed since World War II.

Alexander Motyl fears ethnic strife in Crimea:

Unsurprisingly, Ukrainians are terrified by Putin’s warmongering. A friend in Lviv, which is as far as one can be from Ukraine’s eastern border (or is it front?) with Russia, tells me that “people are petrified and believe war is inevitable.” So are Crimean Tatars, whose ancestral land has already been occupied by Putin’s troops and who remember Stalin’s genocidal policies in 1944, when the entire Tatar population was deported to Central Asia and half died.

What if Crimean Tatars, who have already begun forming self-defense units (and some of whom have begun talking of an anti-Russian jihad), take to the streets after Putin wrests Crimea from Ukraine? How will Putin respond? His warmongering statements suggest that mass internments of Crimean Tatars in concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide are no longer inconceivable.

Oleg Shynkarenko expects a mass exodus from the region:

In the run-up to the vote, Russian media has been churning out non-stop propaganda about how thousands of Ukrainians are fleeing into Russia proper to escape neo-Nazis and fascists. But the reality is that many Crimeans are fleeing north to other regions of Ukraine, to escape the local militias manned by Russian separatists. This weekend, as reports surfaced of Russian armed forces landing in Kherson, the escape to safety seemed even more pressing for the region’s pro-Kiev activists and ethnic minority Tatars. …

Taras Beresovets is a political analyst of Crimea origin. He is sure that Ukraine is now witnessing the beginning of a long process of annexation and flight. He predicts that after the March 16 referendum, the suppression of dissidents and even ethnic cleansing could become more common. “At least 100,000 people will leave Crimea then”, Beresovets said.

St. Patrick’s Day Drinking

by Tracy R. Walsh

Denver St. Patrick's Day Parade

Scott Bixby tsk-tsks from his perch at McSorley’s, the venerable New York tavern:

On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish – except for the gays – but mostly, everyone is just drunk. In one hour, the East Village street that lays claim to McSorley’s saw three people vomiting, four young men belligerently insisting that every stranger within arm’s distance give them a high five, two public urinations, one apparent breakup, and two more young men losing their Lucky Charms behind parked cars. … Underneath the Irish pride and the excitement about the coming spring, St. Patrick’s Day is a childish spectacle of obnoxious behavior celebrated by inebriated manchildren who could use a few whacks with a shillelagh.

But not everyone is so sour on the revelry. Over at Next City, Jake Blumgart makes “the urbanist case for rowdy-ass bars”:

Let’s call it the Jane Jacobs Theory of Drinking:

It’s good to have eyes on the street, even if they are seeing double, and especially because many non-drinking businesses are closed after 9pm or 10pm on weeknights. Jacobs famously lived at 555 Hudson Street in Greenwich Village and wrote of the “sidewalk ballet” that made her block a joy to live on. One of the businesses she names as a neighbor in good standing is the White Horse Tavern, where according to literary legend Dylan Thomas drank himself to death (“I have had 18 straight whiskies, I think that’s the record”). In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs speaks highly of the influence of bars on her block:

Strangers become an enormous asset on the street on which l live … particularly at night when safety assets are most needed. We are fortunate enough, on the street, to be gifted not only with a locally supported bar and another around the corner, but also with a famous bar that draws continuous troops of strangers from adjoining neighborhoods and even from out of town … this continues until the early hours of the morning … The comings and goings from this bar do much to keep our street reasonably populated until three in the morning, and it is a street always safe to come home to.

She may have felt differently if the shop below her apartment sold shots and not lollipops, but from a utilitarian perspective the point is good.

Update from a reader:

Check out what happened in 24 hours this past weekend on Chicago’s north side, from Wrigley Field to Lincoln Park, the “safe” part of town.

The title of that play-by-play post: “St. Pat’s Festivities Rack Up 21 Arrests, 17 Ambulance Runs In Wrigleyville”.

(Photo: Revelers lead the Pedal Hopper ‘party bike’ down Denver’s Blake Street during the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. By Craig F. Walker/Denver Post)

Putin Is Just Getting Started

by Jonah Shepp

Looking north from Crimea, Jon Lee Anderson points out that the stage is already set for Russia to occupy the rest of eastern Ukraine:

Beyond Crimea, in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donestk and Kharkiv, where there is also a large ethnic Russian population, public calls are being made for Crimea-style “referendums” to accede to Russia. Today, as if on cue, [Crimean prime minister Sergey] Aksionov’s deputy openly suggested that eastern Ukraine would follow Crimea’s example.

If snap referendums are called, will the Russian troops that are now massed on eastern Ukraine’s borders move into those areas in the name of protecting ethnic Russians from Kiev’s “provocateurs,” as in Crimea? Putin has reserved the right to intervene on their behalf. If Ukraine’s borders change yet again, what happens next?

Noting that there is no road linking Russia directly with the Crimean peninsula, Julia Ioffe thinks an invasion is geographically inevitable:

[W]hat happens if, as is quite likely, Kiev cuts newly-Russian Crimea off from gas, electricity, and water, which Crimea has none of on its own? How will Moscow, the new owner, supply its latest acquisition with the necessities? …

If you’re Russia, do you really want to ferry the necessities across the bay, or build an expensive bridge, or lay down expensive new pipelines? Wouldn’t you rather use pre-existing land routes (and pipelines)? Wouldn’t it just be easier to take the land just north and east of Perekop and the Swiss cheese area, now that you’ve already put in the effort to massively destabilize it? And while you’re there, wouldn’t you want to just take the entire Ukrainian east, the parts with the coal and the pipe-making plants and the industry? You know, since you already have permission?

Marc Champion considers how Europe would respond to further escalations:

Should Putin choose to escalate by moving troops into Ukraine beyond Crimea, even Germany has pledged to hit Russia with painful sanctions. This would damage the economy seriously: Former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has forecast $50 billion in capital flight per quarter this year, “in a mild scenario.”

And yet, sanctions too can add to the logic of escalation. Serious economic sanctions would, as the most fervent Soviet die-hards and Russian nationalists have been hoping ever since the 1990s, create a full break with the West and return Russia’s economy to a less extreme version of its Soviet-era isolation — or, in their view, self-sufficiency. Sanctions would also force corrupt businessmen either to repatriate their ill-gotten gains or flee the country. The “liberals” who have, according to conservatives, held the country ransom for private gain since the collapse of the Soviet Union and prevented Russia’s return to greatness would be routed.

Andrew Bowen notes that, if Putin wants to risk an all-out invasion, he has the military power to do it:

Since few predicted the Russian occupation of Crimea, it would be premature to rule out the possibility of a full-scale invasion. While it would seem unlikely that Russian troops would march on Kiev, some sort of limited incursion into the Russian leaning east of the country is a very real possibility. The airborne forces and Spetsnaz units that would spearhead such an assault are available and close to the border. But those units would need to be backed up by larger regular Russian military formations after the initial incursion.

Whatever the future holds for the rest of Ukraine, it’s clear that Russia is staying put in Crimea.

Anna Nemtsova takes a closer look at what the Spetsnaz, Russia’s special forces, are already up to in Ukraine:

This week the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) arrested a group of people led by a Ukrainian citizen who were said to be scoping out three of its most crucial military divisions in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.

In Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, press reports from the ground say that Russian provocateurs have attacked Ukrainians who organized anti-Russian street protests.

The forces behind these operations, according to U.S. officials briefed on the updates in Ukraine, are likely the Spetsnaz, the Russian military’s highly trained saboteurs, spies and special operations forces who may change the face—and the borders—of Ukraine without once showing the Russian flag on their uniforms. Or, for that matter, without wearing any particular uniforms at all.

The Return Of A Deadly Disease

by Patrick Appel

Russell Saunders blames anti-vaxxers for the measles outbreak in NYC:

This is not some inconvenience to be laughed off. Measles is a highly-contagious illness caused by a virus. It usually presents with a combination of rash, fevers, cough and runny nose, as well as characteristic spots in the mouth. Most patients recover after an unpleasant but relatively uneventful period of sickness.  Unfortunately, about one patient in every 1,000 develops inflammation of the brain, and one to three cases per 1000 in the United States result in death. …

Just over a dozen years ago this illness was considered eliminated in our country, and this year people are being hospitalized for it. All due to the hysteria about a safe, effective vaccine. All based on nothing.

Brian Palmer fears such outbreaks could get more serious:

Falling vaccination rates are now an urgent concern in public health. Measles incidence dropped 99 percent after the vaccine was introduced in 1963. Between 2000 and 2007, the United States saw an average of just 63 measles cases per year, and almost all of those victims brought the disease into the United States from abroad. In 2013, however, the incidence of measles tripled. Unlike in previous years, the majority of the victims contracted the disease here in the United States, meaning that measles outbreaks are now a serious national problem. It could get worse. Vaccination rates in the United States remain at about 90 percent, but in the United Kingdom, where vaccination has fallen below 80 percent, the disease is once again endemic.

Tara C. Smith spells out why she vaccinates:

I’ve spent almost 20 years of my life studying infectious diseases up-close and personal, not from random websites on Google. I’ve worked with viruses and bacteria in the lab. I respect what germs are capable of. I worry about vaccine-preventable diseases coming back because oflow levels of herd immunity. I cry over stories of babies lost to pertussis and other vaccine-preventable diseases. As I’ve noted before, chicken pox has played a role in the deaths of two family members, so I don’t view that as just a “harmless childhood disease.” Vaccines have eradicated or severely reduced many of the deadliest diseases from the past: smallpox, polio, measles, diptheria.

But that’s not the only reason I vaccinate. I vaccinate because I’m all too aware of the nasty diseases out there that still don’t have an effective vaccine. My current work focuses on a germ called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (“MRSA”), a “superbug” which kills about 11,000 people every year in the United States. We have no vaccine. I previously worked on two different types of Streptococcus: group A and group B. Group B is mainly a problem for babies, and kills about 2,000 of them every year. It leaves many others with permanent brain damage after infection. We have no vaccine. Group A kills about 1,500 people each year in the U.S. and can cause nasty (and deadly) infections like necrotizing fasciitis (the “flesh-eating disease”). We  have no vaccine. These are all despite the fact that we still have antibiotics to treat most of these infections (though untreatable infections are increasing). Infectious diseases still injure and kill, despite our nutritional status, despite appropriate vitamin D levels, despite sanitation improvements, despite breastfeeding, despite handwashing, despite everything we do to keep our kids healthy. This is why protection via vaccination is so important for the diseases where it’s available. If vaccines were available for the diseases I listed above, I’d have my kids get them in a heartbeat.

 

About Last Night …

by Jonah Shepp

https://twitter.com/shaunwalker7/status/445308236867325953

Leonid Bershidsky summarizes how yesterday’s referendum in Crimea went down:

According to preliminary results, 96.6 percent of Crimea’s population voted in a hastily arranged referendum on Sunday for their territory’s secession from Ukraine and inclusion in Russia. The plebiscite was, predictably, a farce, with the votes counted behind closed doors in the absence of observers or the press, and with almost the entire indigenous population of Crimean tatars failing to turn out.

There were, however, fireworks on Sunday night, and locals celebrated in the streets. Most of them do want Crimea to be part of Russia, and it’s anybody’s guess why Russia and the pro-Russian authorities on the peninsula decided against arranging a real, honest, transparent vote. For some reason, Russia appears to be full of resolve to become an international pariah or expose the cynicism of Western politicians if they do not confer that status on Moscow. The Russian parliament is promising to act quickly to make Crimea part of Russia. The die is cast, and the Kremlin is now waiting to see what the costs will be, pretending as best it can that it does not care one way or another.

Oliver Bullough examines how this “unconstitutional sham” was orchestrated:

Some polling stations—such as the one in the village of Arpat—have helpfully laid out campaign literature. One leaflet had a BuzzFeed-style list of “10 reasons to be together with Russia.” These ranged from the spiritual (“In our many centuries of history, tens of thousands of sons of Russia have sacrificed their heads to give [Crimea] freedom”) to the practical (“Pensions in Russia are almost twice as high as in Ukraine”) to the rhetorical (“Today the people of Crimea have the chance to restore historical justice”).

There were no leaflets supportive of the constitution of 1992, incidentally.

The presence of international observers was also, of course, a joke:

[T]hey’re a very select group of about 30 international observers authorized by the Crimean government, who were paraded to the press at a news conference yesterday. “Speaking near-flawless Russian and repeating Russian talking points on the Ukrainian crisis word for word, a motley team of foreign election observers lined up to praise the referendum at a press conference Saturday evening,” Buzzfeed’s Max Seddon reported from the scene. The OSCE tried to get a team of 40 observers into Crimea, but warning shots were fired when the group tried to pass through a checkpoint last week. Crimea has since “invited” OSCE observers to attend the referendum.

Eric Posner passes along an e-mail from a Ukrainian reader highlighting even more brazen abuses:

If you follow the Russian and Ukrainian language press as well as Crimean groups on social-networking sites (such as SOS_Krym), you already realize that large scale attempts at voter fraud are under way. Several of my friends in Crimea (this has been verified by reports throughout the peninsula) have been visited by unidentified individuals who either make off with their passports or damage them. This just so happens to coincide with an announcement by Sevastopol city authorities that any form of photo ID will be accepted during the referendum, given what has been happening to passports. This is a clear invitation to “Russian tourists”, many of whom have already created problems in Donetsk and Kharkov.

Morrissey doubts any western countries will recognize the outcome:

The [Crimean] parliament has formally requested recognition for its new status at the UN and with Western nations, but they’re not going to get it — and that will extend the diplomatic issues with Russia. If Putin and Russia’s Duma annex Crimea, it will technically be a seizure rather than a legitimate annexation in the paradigm of self-determination. No Western nation is going to recognize the legitimacy of a plebescite held under occupation by foreign troops, no matter how many ethnic Russians live on the Crimean peninsula.

But Posner writes off the peninsula as lost:

It doesn’t matter that the referendum did not allow voters to express a preference for the status quo, that many of the 90+ percent who favor annexation by Russia (according to (possibly questionable) exit polls) may have been trucked in, that international election monitors were not used, that ballot boxes may have been stuffed, that Tatar groups refused to participate, that the public debate was drowned out by pro-Russian propaganda, and that Russian soldiers and/or pro-Russia militias roamed the streets. It is sufficient that there wasn’t violence, that western journalists were free to move about and interviewed plenty of ordinary people who strongly favored annexation, that there were enthusiastic public demonstrations in favor of annexation and celebrations after the result was announced, and that the outcome is consistent with demographic realities and what seems plausibly (to us ill-informed westerners) the preference of most Crimeans. Unless large groups of Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians take to the streets to protest the referendum and are clubbed by riot police, any western effort at this point to try to rescue Crimea from the invaders it embraces will be not only pointless but ludicrous.

The Dark Ages Of E-Books

by Tracy R. Walsh

Revisiting the early days of the form, Alison Flood finds that its pioneers weren’t exactly well-received:

When Peter James published his thriller Host on two floppy disks, in 1993, it was billed as the “world’s first electronic novel,” and attacked as a harbinger of the apocalypse which would destroy literature as we knew it. Now it has been accepted into the [London] Science Museum’s collection as one of the earliest examples of the form, as the spotlight of academia begins to shine on the history of digital publishing.

“I got absolutely pilloried,” says James. “I was on Today accused of killing the novel, I was a front-page headline on papers in Italy – 99 percent of the press was negative … one journalist even took his computer on a wheelbarrow to the beach, along with a generator, to read Host in his deckchair.” The digital version of the novel (it was also published physically) went on to sell 12,000 copies, according to James, and two years later, he was speaking on a panel on the future of the novel at the University of Southern California, together with Apple founder Steve Jobs. “I said e-books would catch on when they became more convenient to read than the printed novel,” said James. “It was astonishing the amount of outrage it caused.”

Previous Dish on e-books here, here, and here.

What’s The Best Way To Combat Military Rape? Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader goes in-depth on the issue:

First off, I want to say that military sexual assault (MSA) is a scourge within our military and we must weigh every available option in seeking to eliminate it. That being said, I believe that Sen. Gillibrand’s legislation (and broader campaign) fails in three critical ways: substantively, technically, and stylistically.

1) Substantively – There is really nothing beyond anecdotal evidence backing up Sen. Gillibrand’s claim that the chain of command serves as the main deterrent to reporting. The 2012 SAPRO Report (DoD’s office responsible for collecting data on sexual assault within the military and for developing strategies to curb and combat MSA), 73% of women and 85% of men believe that their leadership does well to create an environment where they would feel comfortable reporting. Those numbers need to be closer to 100% and the gulf between male and female servicemembers is alarming, but that data does not suggest that lack of confidence in command is the central driver of underreporting.

SAPRO reported that the top three reasons why women failed to report sexual assault were:

-They did not want anyone to know (70%)

-They felt uncomfortable making a report (66%)

-Did not think the report would be kept confidential (51%)

Likewise, the top three reasons why men failed to report were:

-They believed they or others would be punished for other infractions or violations, such as -underage drinking (22%)

-They would not be believed (17%)

-Their performance evaluations or chances for promotion would suffer (16%)

The data seems to suggest that the chief barrier to reporting is not the chain of command, but the comfort of the individual victim. An appropriate response would demand much more emphasis on supporting the victims of MSA as opposed to tweaking the justice system. Sen. Gillibrand’s legislation does not provide any additional supports for victims at the individual level. Ultimately, it’s a big, unwieldy bureaucratic revamp.

Lastly, the military has wielded the chain of command to affect cultural transformation. Racial desegregation, repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and today’s integration of women into combat forces have all been implemented through – not in spite – of the chain of command. The chain is a means of holding commanders accountable for the actions of their subordinates; now, more than ever before, that includes sexual harassment and all forms of unwanted sexual contact.

2) Technically – Gillibrand’s legislation would create a special office of prosecutors within each Service Secretary’s office to dispose of reported alleged offenses. Prosecutors eligible for assignment to this office would have to be grade O-6 (Colonel-equivalent) or higher. In the Army, for example, there are somewhere around 140 O-6 Judge Advocates. These officers commonly serve as staff Judge Advocates for commanders of larger units (think Brigades, Divisions, sometimes Corps). According to the the SAPRO report, the Army fielded 1122 unrestricted reports of sexual assault/harassment last year. How many Judge Advocates would be tasked with referring these cases? While many public defenders may juggle somewhere around 400 cases a year, that’d be high inadvisable to base a staffing model around; these incidents vary wildly in severity (offensive comments to brutal rapes), geographical location, and cross-jurisdictional concerns. Additionally, the UCMJ requires trials to commence within 120 days of charges being filed. Taking this all together, let’s assume that these O-6s are given 100 cases a year, bringing the number of attorneys in this office to 11.

Sen. Gillibrand’s central claim is that MSA reporting is so low because victims are mistrustful of the chain of command. Consequently, we could expect reporting to increase if we removed disposition of these cases from the chain. Following that logic, a greater reporting level would demand a greater number of these limited O-6 prosecutors. Pulling these prosecutors from the units that they are assigned to into this newly created office would materially degrade the military’s ability to competently and expediently dispense with justice with regards to UCMJ offenses not covered by Sen. Gillibrand’s bill. This would create a situation where the services are forced to rapidly promote junior officers to fill positions typically held by more experienced individuals. Moreover, there are significant concerns about the quality of prosecution that victims would receive under this system. Most O-6s within the services’ respective Judge Advocate corps spend more time behind a desk than before a courtroom and many of these individuals have not argued a case for years.

3) Stylistically – The debate over Sen. Gillibrand’s legislation became all too acrimonious, and I largely blame her for that. While her passion undoubtedly brought much-needed attention to the matter, it also created an unfortunate narrative of “Gillibrand or Nothing” with regards to Congressional action. That could not be further from the truth. The FY14 NDAA contained dozens of provisions addressing MSA and represents the single largest step towards combating the issue. There is still far more work to be done, but it is disingenuous to say that Congress failed to act on the matter. Yeah, this is a historically shitty Congress, deserving of much of the contempt directed at it, but when it comes to MSA, the body shapes up rather well.

Tragically, a lot of these victims were used as pawns by either side of the debate. That’s unconscionable. But on the balance, the attention directed at this issue, one that had reared its gut-wrenching head over and over and over again across the past several decades, was positive and proof that our legislature and nation benefits from a greater number of women filling its halls. If there’s an enduring vision to be had from this whole episode, it’s of the women of the Senate Armed Services Committee grilling the shit out of the Joint Chiefs. That’s why this time is different – the advocates are not only more numerous, but much, much, much more powerful.

Finally, thank you providing a unique and compelling forum for discussing so many diverse, important, and sometimes not-so-important issues. The Dish is definitely one of the better corners of the Internet.

Previous Dish on efforts to combat military rape here.