Political Quotes

“Exactly right. Every military lawyer who has looked at this is very worried about what we are about to do in terms of practical military justice. Imagine being 18 years of age. You have too much to drink and you write a bad check. Part of being a commander and a first sergeant is the paternalistic aspect of the job. How many of us have made mistakes at 18? Instead of going to college, you are going into a military unit. You bounce four or five checks. Has that ever happened? Under this proposed system, the military commander no longer has the ability to deal with it in the unit. He sends that case off to Washington. The ability to give an article 15--a lesser punishment--is taken off the table. So we are taking an 18-year-old's mistake and potentially turning it into a felony. Does that help sexual assaults? Our commanders can send you to your death, but we don't trust them to deal with manslaughter cases? All I can tell you is that for 30 years I have been a practicing military lawyer. From my point of view, our commanders take the responsibility to impose discipline incredibly seriously. They are skilled men and women. We have let the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines down when it comes to sexual assault. All of us are to blame in the military. We are going to fix that. But the problem, my colleagues, is not the military justice system. We don't have a military justice system where commanders say to the lawyers: Go to hell; we are not going to deal with that.…”