Something doesn't smell right here
I've heard about the Janis Karpinsky story going around now about how female soldiers in Iraq, in Camp Victory, were dying of dehydration because they were afraid of being raped if they went to the latrine at night. Supposedly, the latrines are too far away.

Well, for starters, for some reason I thought this took place at Abu Ghraib. If you think these guys stopped at mistreating just the prisoners, you're far optomistic than I am. Adide from that, Abu G. gets mortared--or did when I was in Iraq---pretty ferociously. But Camp Victory is an entirely different story.

Simply put, there are latrines everywhere on Victory. I was at Victory at both ends of my deployment and there were latrines outside---just outside---every building, every tent. Second, what bothers me is that these women are armed. It's a war zone. Why don't they lock and load? Did someone order them not to? Or does someone not trust their judgement? Or is attempted rape just not good enough reason for a woman to defend herself?

That, by the way, should give those guys out there who whine that the true solution to rape is to arm women pause. These women are armed, but it doesn't matter because I suspect that if they don't feel they can use deadly force, they have very good reasons for thinking that. The upshot is that they're dying of dehydration. Bullets are no goddamned good if nobody will let you use them, and these are female soldiers who are evidently being preyed upon by male soldiers. Remind me again how women don't belong in the military because male soldiers will want to protect them? Where are these ubiquitous protectors now? I guess the protection racket has finally been exposed. They don't want us to protect ourselves against them.

Finally, I have to say that there are some people in the military who never fire a shot. There's guys who display a lot of bravado, but they joined up for the college money. There's girls who join up for the college money and who still do their makeup and worry about their nails. They're young, they're worried about being liked by the guys, and they're very concerned about being good sports. You have to think of yourself as a soldier, and neither these young women nor their command thinks of them as such. It's the command's fault, frankly; with rank comes power but also responsibility. A good commander can destroy a hostile workplace with ludicrous ease. A bad one merely ignored it. If these women don't feel they can defend themselves against their fellow soldiers, someone has more or less told them so.

This is why some people don't want women to be soldiers or athletes, and like the concept of WACS and Lady -ettes sports teams. When you're the former, you stand on your own two feet; when you're the latter, you're a cheerleader who gets to use the field when the real teams are done for the night.

Somebody high-ranking could have fixed this situation. Evidently they haven't? What's going on?

eta

You guys are kind of missing something. If this is going on to this degree, women aren't just dying. That's the worst case scenario. They're risking heat stroke and rape, or they're taking their chances and getting raped. Remember, behavior is a continuum with many increasing and decreasing options at either end. So what's going on here?

I'll reiterate: when I was at Victory, some knowledge of hte danger existed. My big question remains: if there was a danger, why were they telling women to protect themselves? Why not go after the guys doing it? (which is what happened.) As far as I know, not one single man was ever punished for the rapes I heard about on VM. No one was ever apprehended. So what's going on here?