Center Ring of the Republican Circus & The NYT Editorial Board Get It Right 9MAI14

IN the center ring, wasting taxpayer money and squandering time that could be better spent actually governing (if they actually knew how to do the latter), the repiglicans and tea-baggers of the benghazi-gate house "investigative" committee will show the nation how they are able to shove their heads up their own asses and then through massive group hypnosis broadcast on fox will get everyone watching to do the same. The grand finale will be hannity interviewing house speaker rep john boehner, while they both have their heads up boehner's ass, on the complicity in and coverup by the Obama administration of the the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. And here's a review of the New York Times editorial on the committee.....

Fri May 09, 2014 at 02:40 AM EDT

The NYT Editorial Board Get It Right

by LaFeminista

Bang on the money if you ask me
The Republican Party whilst doing nothing for the nation have decided a fun way to do less than nothing and with complete disregard to any costs incurred.
On the kangaroo court

Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal.

All because the frothing at the mouth brigade smell blood where there is none. Of course the GOPs  persecution complex is also fed.

The day before, they voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

As for Democrats joining in the Benghazi Circus

Democrats who are now debating whether to participate in the committee shouldn’t hesitate to skip it. Their presence would only lend legitimacy to a farce.

As for Republican disregard of others rights

Little nuisances like constitutional rights or basic facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way when House Republicans need to whip up their party’s fury.

Republicans have demonstrated yet again that when they cannot start preemptive wars, torture, give the wealth of the nation to the rich, persecute anyone not like them, they fall into their standard set of procedures: 1] If we cannot impeach a President we will just fuck up government.
2] Hold pointless proceedings to stir up the crazy.
3] If all else fails throw a wrench into the works and then go on Fox Noise to complain that the wrench has broken the works.
It is astounding that they look at science as a conspiracy.
It is funny [in a sick kind of way] how they regard equality for all as infringing upon their rights.
It is going to be an ugly couple of years.

Thu May 08, 2014 at 11:57 PM PT: A useful plan from Lying eyes in the comments
House Switchboard 1-202-224-3121
How about each of us making two calls,  one telling Nancy to just say NO and one to our Democratic representative urging him/her to encourage the leadership to say HELL NO.

UPDATE: 13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush's Watch Without a Peep from Fox News & The Truth About Attacks on Our Diplomats & FOTZE Megyn Kelly Says Media Issued 'Collective Yawn' On Benghazi, Even Though It Was Covered Extensively 9MAI13, 3OKT12&10MAI13

THANK YOU +Bob Cesca for providing more evidence for what should be obvious. This is a witch hunt created by the gop / tea-bagger right wing extremist in Congress and fox "news".  The main stream media is almost as guilty, "reporting" the story without questioning the "facts", just like they did in the months of bush-cheney-fox news propaganda leading up to the Iraq war. From +HuffPost and +Mother Jones....
 The Republican inquisition over the attacks against Americans in Benghazi has never really gone away, but it appears as though in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the House Oversight Committee's Benghazi hearings this week there are renewed psycho-histrionics over Benghazi.

Lindsey Graham and Fox News Channel in particular are each crapping their cages over new allegations from an alleged whistleblower, while they continue to deal in previously debunked falsehoods about the sequence of events during and following the attacks. Fox News is predictably helming the biggest raft of hooey on the situation -- turning its attention to Hillary Clinton in an abundantly obvious early move to stymie her presidential run before it even begins.

So I thought I'd revisit some territory I covered back in October as a bit of a refresher -- especially since it appears as if no one, including and especially the traditional press, intends to ask any of these obnoxious, opportunistic liars about why they're so obsessed by this one attack yet they entirely ignored the dozen-plus consulate/embassy attacks that occurred when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were allegedly "keeping us safe."

The Benghazi attacks (the consulate and the CIA compound) are absolutely not unprecedented even though they're being treated that way by Republicans who are deliberately ignoring anything that happened prior to Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009.

January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.

June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al Qaeda attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.

October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of "Bali Bombings." No fatalities.

February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.

May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al Qaeda terrorists storm the diplomatic compound, killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.

July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.

December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.

March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name "David Foy." This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what's considered American soil.)

September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting "Allahu akbar" storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.

January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.

March 18, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.

July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.

September 17, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.

A few observations about this timeline. My initial list was quoted from an article on the Daily Kos which actually contained several errors and only 11 attacks (the above timeline contains all 13 attacks). Also, my list above doesn't include the numerous and fatal attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the Iraq war -- a war that was vocally supported by Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Fox News Channel.

Speaking of Graham, I ran a search on each attack along with the name "Lindsey Graham" in the hopes of discovering that Graham had perhaps commented about the attacks or raised some questions about why the administration didn't prevent the attacks or respond accordingly to prevent additional embassy attacks. No results. Of course. Now, this could mean the search wasn't exhaustive enough. But one thing's for sure: neither Graham nor any of his cohorts launched a crusade against the Bush administration and the State Department in any of those cases -- no one did, including the congressional Democrats, by the way.

This leads us to the ultimate point here. Not only have numerous sources previously debunked the Benghazi information being peddled by the Republicans and Fox News (for example, contrary to what the Republicans are saying, yes, reinforcements did in fact arrive before the attack on the CIA compound), but none of these people raised a single word of protest when, for example, American embassies in Yemen and Pakistan were attacked numerous times. Why didn't the Bush administration do something to secure the compounds after the first attacks? Why didn't he provide additional security?

Where was your inquest after the Karachi attacks, Mr. Graham? Where were you after the Sana'a attacks, Mr. Hannity? What about all of the embassy attacks in Iraq that I didn't even list here, Mr. McCain? Do you realize how many people died in attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates when Bush was supposedly keeping us safe, Mr. Ailes? Just once I'd like to hear David Gregory or George Stephanopoulos or Wolf Blitzer ask a Republican member of Congress about the above timeline and why they said nothing at the time of each attack. Just once.

Nearly every accusation being issued about Benghazi could've been raised about the Bush-era attacks, and yet these self-proclaimed truth-seekers refused to, in their words, undermine the commander-in-chief while troops were in harm's way (a line they repeated over and over againduring those years).

So we're only left to conclude the obvious. The investigations and accusations and conspiracy theories are entirely motivated by politics and a strategy to escalate this to an impeachment trial. In doing so, the Republicans have the opportunity not only to crush the president's second term, but also to sabotage the potential for a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Even if they never arrive at that goal, they have in their possession a cudgel formed of horseshit -- a means of flogging the current administration with the singularly effective Republican marketing/noise machine, including the conservative entertainment complex. Very seldom does this machine fail to revise history and distort the truth. Ultimately, they don't even need a full-blown impeachment proceeding when they have a population of way too many truthers and automatons who take all of these lies at face value -- not to mention dubiously sourced chunks of "truth" proffered by radio and cable news conspiracy theorists who, if nothing else, are masters at telling angry conservatives precisely what they want to hear: that the probably-Muslim president is weak on terrorism. And so they'll keep repeating "Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate!" without any regard for history or reality. Like always.

Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.

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The Truth About Attacks on Our Diplomats

Shocker: When terrorists attack US interests abroad, they don't distinguish between administrations that are "projecting weakness" or practicing "peace through strength."

—By Adam Serwer

| Wed Oct. 3, 2012 

Protesters throw rocks at the US Embassy in Cairo, September 2012. Amanda Mustard/ZUMAPress

To hear Republicans explain it, the protests at US embassies around the world and the attack on a US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead are a result of the Obama administration "projecting weakness."

"When we project weakness abroad, our enemies are more willing to test us, they are more brazen and our allies are less willing to trust us," said vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan at an event in Colorado last week. "[T]hat will not happen under a Mitt Romney administration because we believe in peace through strength." Ryan was referring to potential defense cuts, so if Al Qaeda pays enough attention to American budget politics to base its strikes on funding cuts then they probably know Ryan projected weakness by voting for them in the first place. Romney adviser Richard Williamson went so far as to suggest to the Washington Post last month that under a President Romney, no protesters would dare defile an American embassy. "In Egypt and Libya and Yemen, again demonstrations—the respect for America has gone down, there's not a sense of American resolve and we can't even protect sovereign American property," he said.

As the details behind the Benghazi attack come to light, it's becoming increasingly clear that the White House's initial assessment of the attack as spontaneous rather than preplanned was inaccurate. But behind thecomparisons to Jimmy Carter and the references to "peace through strength" is a dubious policy critique: not just that Obama is Carter and Romney is Reagan, but that somehow sufficient man-musk from an American president can dissuade any potential terrorist from laying his finger on an American diplomat.

It's true that during Carter's term, several major attacks occurred at US embassies. The most famous is the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, but rumors that the United States was involved in the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, led to attacks on embassies in Pakistan and Libya as well—in late November, after Reagan was elected president.

Wendy Chamberlin, a career foreign-service officer who was serving as the US Ambassador to Pakistan when Al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center on 9/11, says being a target is part of the job for diplomats serving in risky areas.

"High-profile targets like ambassadors have always been in danger because they're the symbol of the United States," Chamberlin says. "What you don't want to represent is that you distrust the people, that you don't want to engage with the people, that you hate being there. It's an important part of your mission and get out and mix with the population." Moreover, under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations it is actually the host country that is responsible for the security of diplomatic facilities, not the Marines. The primary responsibility of the Marine Corps' Embassy Security Group states that its "primary mission" is "to prevent the compromise of classified material vital to the national security of the United States," while their "secondary mission" is to "provide protection for US citizens and US government property" during "exigent circumstances." Their first responsibility is to guard secrets, not diplomats.

“High-profile targets like ambassadors have always been in danger because they’re the symbol of the United States.”

Having Ronald Reagan in office didn't mean an end to attacks on US diplomatic targets. Despite Reagan’s refrain of "peace through strength," several high-profile attacks on US diplomatic facilities occurred on his watch, including the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by Islamic militants. Twice. According to the Global Terrorism Database compiled by the University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism(START), attacks on American diplomatic targets actually rose during Reagan's term—before beginning to subside in the mid-1990s.

"That follows the trend of terrorism generally," says Erin Miller, a research assistant at START who manages the Global Terrorism Database. "In the early 1990s there's a drop-off worldwide in terrorism against pretty much all target types." Miller cites the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a subsequent wane in leftist terrorism as one possible explanation for the downturn beginning in the mid-1990s.

The decline is probably not because terrorists were intimidated by Bill Clinton more than they were by George H.W. Bush. Two of the worst terrorist attacks on American diplomatic targets,Al Qaeda's bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, happened on Clinton's watch. It does however, make the Romney campaign's claim that having a Republican in office will frighten terrorists out of striking at American diplomats or staging violent protests at American embassies extremely dubious. The UMd. database lists 64 attacks on American diplomatic targets during the George W. Bush administration, including car bombs at the US embassy in Yemen and armed attackers assaulting a US consulate in Saudi Arabia.

It's currently unclear to what degree mismanagement, security lapses, or intelligence failures meant the United States failed to anticipate the attack on the consulate in Benghazi. But no matter which party is in office, no matter who is president, terrorism and violence are always going to be a potential risk for foreign-service officers serving in troubled areas. The important thing, Chamberlain says, is to stay engaged.

"Every ambassador and [foreign-service officer] understands the risks we take in being abroad," Chamberlin says. "I don't know any ambassador who hides in his embassy. Getting out with the public and speaking is our job, it's why we're there. If you don't want to do that you shouldn't go."

Reporter

Adam Serwer is a reporter at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter. Email tips and insights to aserwer [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | TWITTER

• The US Embassy Attacks, Explained

  Four Americans are dead. What went wrong?

• Obama Official Says No Evidence Gitmo Detainee Behind Benghazi Attack

  An administration official disputes a Fox News report that a former Gitmo detainee led the attack that killed the US ambassador to Libya.

• US Ambassador to Libya Killed in Benghazi; Romney Says Obama "Sympathizes" With Attackers

  Trouble in the Arab world.

• Corn on MSNBC: Why Won't Mitt Apologize for Politicizing the Libya Attack?

• Responding to Embassy Attacks, Romney Goes the Full D'Souza

  Romney's reaction to American deaths in Benghazi echoes Dinesh D'Souza's recent film.
  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/libya-consulate-embassy-attacks-obama-romney

Megyn Kelly Says Media Issued 'Collective Yawn' On Benghazi, Even Though It Was Covered Extensively

Where was fox "news" during the bush administration when there were 13 attacks on American embassies and consulates from JAN 2002 to SEP 2008, one of which resulted in the death of U.S. diplomat David Foy and three other Americans in Karachi, Pakistan on 2 MAR 2006? Foy was the target of suicide bomber that struck the consulate. Where was the outrage about these attacks and the absence of Congressional investigations? 

Megyn Kelly claimed on Thursday that the mainstream media issued a "collective yawn" about the Congressional hearings — a contention that drew scrutiny from some media-watchers.

Kelly quoted headlines from outlets like the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and The Huffington Post which she felt underplayed the drama of the hearings.

"If you look at, sort of, across the mainstream media, it was a collective yawn," she said.

The Washington Post's Erik Wemple took the claim head-on in a Thursday blog post. Wemple—who has followed the Benghazi story very closely—noted that the hearings had been given top billing on the front pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. These are probably the three most important and influential newspapers in the country, and they all had straightforward, non-dismissive headlines that Kelly did not cite, such as "In Riveting Account Of Benghazi Raid, Official Knocks Administration Response," and "Officials: Facts on Benghazi withheld."

In her segment, Kelly also criticized outlets for focusing on the Jodi Arias trial and the story of the three women kidnapped in Cleveland.

"When you look at what folks chose to concentrate on, they were much more interested in Jodi Arias and what happened in Cleveland," she said. "In neither case were four Americans killed in a terrorist attack on our country!"

Kelly failed to note that she was one of the anchors who turned their focus to Arias and Cleveland. On Thursday, Newsbusters rapped MSNBC's Chris Hayes over the knuckles for playing footage of Kelly updating viewers on both stories. The entire network also turned to Arias when she was declared guilty. Fox News even led the ratings with its Arias coverage.

The media's investigations into Benghazi continued on Friday morning, as ABC's Jon Karl published an exclusive story about the State Department's revisions of talking points. That would suggest that reporters are still looking into things.

Wemple wrote that Fox News was resorting to an old pattern:

Forgive Fox News for its analytical blindness. For years, the network has been shredding the mainstream media for ignoring its pet issues. It’s a mantra, a reflex response. So when contrary information pops up on street-corner newspaper boxes, on TV screens and on computer screens everywhere, we can excuse Fox News for not noticing. Give it a pass on this one.

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/megyn-kelly-benghazi-media-collective-yawn_n_3251813.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=051013&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Hearing: Jets Might Have Prevented Mortar Attack on Benghazi Compound &Report on Military's Growing Number of Sexual Assaults Draws Presidential Rebuke & After Emotional Benghazi Hearing, GOP Promises 'Investigation Is Not Over' 7&8MAI13

THE PBS NewsHour covered another House hearing yesterday, 8 MAI 13 on the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi last September. They are flogging a dead horse, and it is all for political gain. Watch the video of the "testimony" and you'll notice the the number of Representatives attending and wanting their face time for the cameras. Then watch the video of the Senate hearings on the problem of sexual assault in the U.S. military held the day before, 7 MAI 13, just days after the Pentagon officer in charge of addressing this problem was arrested in Virginia for sexually assaulting a woman in public, in a parking lot. There are maybe two or three politicians at the hearing, all women. THIS is damning evidence that most in Congress could care less about the growing problem of sexual assault of men and women in all branches of the U.S. military, and if they don't care it is doubtful this issue will be addressed with the aggressiveness needed to change the culture that tolerates sexual abuse. 

Hearing: Jets Might Have Prevented Mortar Attack on Benghazi Compound

BY: NEWS DESK

The burnt U.S. consulate in Benghazi a day after the attack. Photo by Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images.

Updated Wednesday 3:40 p.m. ET:

Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Tripoli, Libya, during the time of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, testified at a House hearing Wednesday that a second mortar attack on the compound might have been prevented if his calls for jet fighters had been heeded.

There were two waves of attacks on the U.S. facility in Benghazi the night of Sept. 11, 2012, that ended up killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Hicks said he was told the fighters could reach Libya in several hours to try to fend off attackers, but U.S. military officials later said it would have taken more like 20 hours since the aircraft weren't on alert status. (Read his full testimony.)

Video streaming by Ustream

Wednesday's House hearing on Benghazi compound assault. 
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/

THE MORNING LINE -- May 9, 2013 at 8:57 AM EDT

After Emotional Benghazi Hearing, GOP Promises 'Investigation Is Not Over'

BY: CHRISTINA BELLANTONI AND TERENCE BURLIJ

Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, testifies Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Photo by Jeffrey Malet.

Last year's attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, have been the subject of presidential debates, a report from an independent review board and on Wednesday, compelling testimony at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The hearing was fraught with emotion and political theater as Republicans leading the investigation sought to pin blame on President Barack Obama's administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Lawmakers grilled witnesses over what happened in the hours after the attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Former Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks choked back tears as he detailed his surprise at initial suggestions the events of Sept. 11, 2012, had any link to backlash against an anti-Islamic film.

House Republicans who have had five different committees examining the attacks charged in their own report that the Obama's administration "willfully perpetrated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative."

The panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijiah Cummings of Maryland, complained about the nature of the queries. He called the hearing part of "a full-scale media campaign that is not designed to investigate what happened in a responsible and bipartisan way" but is instead intended "to smear public officials." Others suggested the new focus on Clinton was more about her possible 2016 presidential ambitions than on seeking answers.

Wednesday's hearing was just the latest in a lengthy battle on the issue between Republicans in Congress and Mr. Obama. The administration's response to the attacks cost Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice a potential promotion to replace Clinton after some Senate GOP lawmakersexpressed concerns about her statements following the events.

Hicks has been dubbed a "whistle-blower." The New York Timessummarizes his emotional testimony:

During a chaotic night at the American Embassy in Tripoli, hundreds of miles away, the diplomat, Gregory Hicks, got what he called "the saddest phone call I've ever had in my life" informing him that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was dead and that he was now the highest-ranking American in Libya. For his leadership that night when four Americans were killed, Mr. Hicks said in nearly six hours of testimony, he subsequently received calls from both Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama.

But within days, Mr. Hicks said, after raising questions about the account of what had happened in Benghazi offered in television interviews by Susan E. Rice, the United Nations ambassador, he felt a distinct chill from State Department superiors. "The sense I got was that I needed to stop the line of questioning," said Mr. Hicks, who has been a Foreign Service officer for 22 years.

He was soon given a scathing review of his management style, he said, and was later "effectively demoted" to desk officer at headquarters, in what he believes was retaliation for speaking up.

White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed the hearing as "part of an effort to chase after what isn't the substance here."

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler looked at the details emerging from the hearing and ticks off the facts coming from each side.

On Wednesday's NewsHour, Kwame Holman reported on the hearings. 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/republicans-use-benghazi-hearing-to-pressure-administration.html#more

Military's Growing Number of Sexual Assaults Draws Rebuke

Published on May 7, 2013

A new Pentagon report finds the official number of sexual assaults in the U.S. military rose to nearly 3,400 in 2012, while up to 26,000 cases went unreported. Ray Suarez talks to Time magazine's Mark Thompson about whether adjudication of sexual assault up the military chain of command affects the number of crimes reported.

http://youtu.be/hc4VfBIR0OI

Transcript

RAY SUAREZ: The problem of sexual assaults in the nation's armed forces is getting worse, and maybe much worse. The issue drew the national spotlight today and a presidential rebuke.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We're not going to tolerate this stuff, and there will be accountability.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let's start with the principle that sexual assault is an outrage. It is a crime. That's true for society at large, and if it's happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they're wearing.

RAY SUAREZ: The news of growing sexual assaults in the military raised the president's hackles at a news conference with the president of South Korea.  

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. Obama spoke as an annual Pentagon study reported sexual assaults in the military rose from just under 3,300 in 2012 to nearly 3,400 last year. But it also found that up to 26,000 cases went unreported.

At a Senate hearing this morning, the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, struck sparks with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, suggesting it's not always a commander's fault if victims don't come forward.

WATCH: Survivors Share Experiences of Sexual Assault in the Military

GEN. MARK WELSH, U.S. Air Force: The things that cause people to not report are -- primarily are really not chain of command. It's: I don't want my family to know. I don't want my spouse to know or my boyfriend or girlfriend to know. I'm embarrassed that I'm in this situation.

It's the self-blame that comes with the crime. That is overridingly on surveys over the years the reasons that most victims don't report. And I don't think it's any different in the military. Prosecution rates in the Air Force for this crime ...

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y.: I think it's very different in the military. I think you're precisely wrong about that. Everything is about the chain of command.

RAY SUAREZ: The president said today the military has to exponentially increase its efforts to address the problem. And Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced he's issuing new orders to change the culture in the ranks.

DEFENSE SECRETARY CHUCK HAGEL, United States: Together, everyone in this department at every level of command will continue to work together everyday to establish an environment of dignity and respect, where sexual assault is not tolerated, condoned or ignored.

RAY SUAREZ: The Pentagon report came just days Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, who runs the Air Force unit on sexual assault, was himself arrested for allegedly groping a woman. And, in February, Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms overturned a captain's conviction on aggravated sexual assault.

Now Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill is holding up Helms' nomination for vice chair of the U.S. Space Command. She spoke at today's hearing.

SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL, D-Mo.: The general said, no, no, we believe the member of the military. That is the crux of the problem here, because if a victim does not believe that the system is capable of believing her, there's no point in risking your entire career.

RAY SUAREZ: In response, lawmakers are pursuing multiple kinds of legislation on the problem. One could strip commanding officers of their ability to reverse convictions.

I'm joined now by Mark Thompson, the Washington deputy bureau chief and national security correspondent for TIME and writer of the Battleland blog.

And, Mark, you have seen the reports. You have seen the Pentagon's self-reporting on this. Does that 26,000 unreported assaults a year look like a solid number? Where does it come from?

MARK THOMPSON, TIME: Well, it's an extrapolated number, Ray, from anonymous phone surveys done by the Pentagon of military people. And so it's sort of squishy to begin with.

What's particularly striking about the number, of course, is from 2010 to 2012, that number grew by 35 percent, whereas the hard number, the number of cases that actually were brought forward by people complaining about sexual assaults in the military only went up by roughly six percent from 3,200 to 3,400.

So even though they are getting more reports, those that are unreported are going up even faster.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, a number of unreported cases nine times larger than the number of reported cases ...

MARK THOMPSON: Right.

RAY SUAREZ: ... is that bigger than the service chiefs even realized at first?

MARK THOMPSON: Well, I think, number one, it is bigger than what you see in the civilian world, where the proportion of reported is an order or two bigger than what you see in the military.

But this is not a new problem. This is a longstanding problem. I was on this show 16 years ago talking about it. It remains a problem, what's happening. You have got about 14 percent of the military in uniform that are women, and all of a sudden, with these female senators, several of which we just saw, this is not being able to be ignored by the chiefs, the secretary of defense or anybody else.

It seems like we may have reached a turning point this weekend with the arrest of this Air Force officer.

RAY SUAREZ: Today, at the news conference at the Pentagon, the general in charge of overseeing the management of this problem flipped this on its head in a way and said that part of it is that there's more reporting.

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I think ...

RAY SUAREZ: So, this is good news, that they're changing the culture.

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, to go back to what I just said, the math shows that it's going up faster in the unreported realm than in the reported realm.

We see this throughout the military whenever there's a bad problem, be it mental health issues, PTSD, anything that has to be self-reported. Whenever the numbers go up, the Pentagon is always very quick to say, it's because we have removed stigma, we have put signs all over the bases and posts encouraging people to come forward.

And I think there is some truth to that, but essentially it remains a huge problem and they're just getting at a bit of it by reducing the stigma.

RAY SUAREZ: And, at the same time, the arrest of the Air Force's senior officer in charge of getting those numbers down, arrested himself during an accused sexual assault.

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I mean, that is the problem. That's what stunned everybody I spoke to at the Pentagon over the last couple of days.

I mean, a couple of things about Lt. Col. Krusinski's case. He was picked for that job specifically. And people I talk to suggest, well, he couldn't have been -- you know if someone is right for such a sensitive post. The Air Force put him in that post. A lot of people are asking questions about that now.

And we're just going to have to -- the Air Force has asked to take this case away from Arlington County, which is where the Pentagon is located, and prosecute it on their own. We will learn what happens on that score come Thursday.

RAY SUAREZ: You mentioned the female senators. There are also more members of Congress willing to push back on this issue, including a legislative attempt to take the adjudication of these issues out of the chain of the command. What does the Pentagon say in response?

MARK THOMPSON: Well, Sec. Hagel was asked about that today. He doesn't like it. He wants it to stay within the chain of command.

The advocates of change are saying, now, listen, we're not going to take it out of the Pentagon. We're going to keep it in the Pentagon, but it is going to be staffed, for lack of a better word, by a professional force of military sexual trauma advocates, who will be fair, won't be affected, because they won't be in the chain of command of the victim or the accused.

And victims there, advocates believe, will be able to get a fairer shot at their day in court.

RAY SUAREZ: How is this handled in other country's militaries, where they have an even higher percentage of women in the ranks?

MARK THOMPSON: Yes. It doesn't -- it seems to be a particularly -- particularly nagging problem in the U.S. military, just as gays in the military were a big problem here, and it wasn't a problem anywhere else.

I don't know if it's something in the American psyche or something in the American military, but it's a particular combination that has generated this for a long time.

RAY SUAREZ: Mark Thompson, thanks a lot for being with us.

MARK THOMPSON: You bet.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june13/military_05-07.html