St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial: Military commanders get a year to show progress on sexual assaults

The Editorial Board of the St Louis Post-Dispatch concludes:

The way the military handles sexual assault cases got needed reform this month. This was progress, but it needed a complete overhaul.

Missouri Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill thinks otherwise, at least on one aspect of the issue — whether to take prosecutions out of the chains of command in the military and put them into the hands of independent prosecutors.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is the leading proponent of a sweeping overhaul of the military’s justice system, essentially established during World War II. She wants to put independent prosecutors on the sexual assault and rape case.

Both Ms. McCaskill and Ms. Gillibrand deserve credit for championing an issue that many in Washington, D.C., wish would just go away. Their efforts brought the issue to the point where it was a significant part of the annual defense policy bill passed in the Senate Dec. 19.

Read more at the Post-Dispatch’s website.