Why am I not surprised?

Bush was eager to make Army supply clerk Jessica Lynch’s ‘rescue’ from an Iraqi hospital into an object lesson about American heroism. Lynch only joined the army to gain the education benefits she could not afford any other way so she could become a grade school teacher. It was claimed by the Army she had emptied her rifle fighting off Iraqis in the deadly ambush that led to her hospitalization and was being tortured at the hospital by Iraqi military personnel, leading to her rescue. Jessica later said her rifle jammed on the first round and she offered no resistance to her subsequent capture. Hospital personnel claimed they shielded her from Iraqi military personnel who left the hospital the day before US forces stormed in to ‘rescue’ her from completely compliant doctors and hospital staff.

It was related to my by a guy who went to boot camp a year later that Lynch was now being used as a different kind of object lesson. A drill instructor claimed she hid beneath her supply truck as a coward who did everything wrong while under fire.

When news of the torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib hit the press, the Bush administration was quick to prosecute and imprison the lowest level service personnel involved, who’d been caught posing on videos. Lynndie England was one of the best known troops convicted in that scandal. Her boyfriend received 10 years in prison, she received 3 and 9 others received lesser sentences. Of the 11 convicted, 3 were women. No officer nor civilian supervisor was criminally convicted of anything, though the woman general in charge of the prison has claimed throughout that the area of the prison where the torture occurred was wholly under the control and direction of military intelligence not answerable to her.

It’s a pattern throughout Bush’s war command: women are highlighted as heroes or villains. Those who are abused, attacked or sexually assaulted are routinely swept under the rug in all but a few cases.

There’s really no way to quantify if Bush is worse than any other president or foreign leader in regards to these wartime scandals. After all, rape and torture are part of every war, with troops on both sides involved. However, the legal limbo that allows private contractors exemptions from any legal penalties for their criminal activities is a loophole that badly needs addressing, something Bush has proven entirely indifferent to. The same can be said for his indifference to the plight of women in the military subjected to similar damage.

The message should be clear to every woman in the country: avoid US military war zones. Like the worst crime-ridden urban neighborhoods, they risk a high probability of sexual and physical assault if they go there. Unlike such neighborhoods, where girls are raised who cannot choose their habitats, adult woman can and should avoid military service until the climate of suppression, indifference and dishonesty is changed.

DDay at Hullaballo suggests it’s corporate dominance of war zones under Republican rule that’s at fault. I agree that’s why contractors have avoided legal repercussions in this war - after all, Vice President Cheney was CEO of one of the largest contractors, Halliburton, and has profited from this war. Halliburton is the parent corporation of KBR, named in the news story.

But I think the overall problem is broader than that. Indifference to the damages done to women is a certain type of misogyny and it’s present in the US military, too. The only difference is the military makes occasional efforts to subject perpetrators to legal repercussions. The contractors making huge profits off the war are buzzards who thrive where people die and remain a protected species despite the criminal behaviors of some of their personnel. They are protected because they spend part of their war booty funding the campaigns of politicians whose indifference protects them.