The Workday Liberal

Truthout.org has the testimony of Col. Janis Karpinski that details the hair raising plight of female soldiers deployed to Iraq.

...several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," Karpinski told retired US Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview. It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.

If this is true, it seems that once the situation became known to the upper echelon of the military that they would take steps to insure the safety of our women in uniform... right? Further reading of the article soon will disabuse the reader of the commanders seeing to this self evident necessity.

[Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez's, attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory," Karpinski quoted him as saying. Karpinski told me that Sanchez, who was her boss, was very sensitive to the political ramifications of everything he did. She thinks it likely that when the information about the cause of these women's deaths was passed to the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the details not be released. "That's how Rumsfeld works," she said.

The women asked to be here so let them take what comes with the territory? Unacceptable! Outrageous! Un-American! These women volunteered to serve our country, and their commander has that reaction. If this does not send your blood pressure through the roof, I really wish you would stop drinking the kool-aid...

We have American military service personnel dying because they will not drink water in the afternoons in the Iraqi desert for fear of being assaulted if they have to urinate after dark. And by gum... they asked for that! Only in Bush world is this even thinkable.