Wall Street Journal: McCaskill’s Consistently Inconsistent Military Policy
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York have been among the Senate’s leading instigators of a moral panic over sexual assault in the military. On one question of policy, however, the two have been at odds for months.
Ms. Gillibrand has pushed—thus far unsuccessfully—for an amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Justice that would strip commanders of the authority to decide whether to prosecute sex-crime charges against officers and enlisted personnel under their command. Ms. McCaskill has opposed that measure and portrayed herself as a defender of command authority. But her respect for commanders has been dangerously one-sided.
In a Jan. 22 memo to the media, Ms. McCaskill supported her position against the Gillibrand measure by citing a high-profile case at the U.S. Naval Academy. A female midshipman accused three football players of sexually assaulting her at a drunken off-campus party. After a pretrial proceeding known as an Article 32 hearing, investigators found that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe two of the players, Eric Graham and Joshua Tate, had committed the crimes. But the investigators recommended against prosecution, citing problems with the accuser’s credibility.
