Sen. McCaskill: We have no idea ‘how many men and women are being raped’ in military

By Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 4 hrs ago

Facing fierce criticism about an epidemic of sexual assault in the military, the military's service chiefs made a rare joint appearance on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Their mission: to press for commanders to retain control of prosecuting these cases—something select members of Congress are fighting against.

We can "fix this through the commander—not around him," Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“The risks inherent to military service must never include the risk of sexual assault," Dempsey said earlier in his opening statement. He noted that there are "reasonable recommendations" being made by Congress to reform the military justice system, but he called for commanders to "remain central to the legal process.”

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno expressed a similar sentiment in his opening remarks, saying, "We cannot simply legislate our way out of this problem."

He added, "We can and will do better," and he specified needed changes to the military's environment as well as to its accountability process.

A Pentagon report released May 7 estimated that 26,000 members of the military experienced unwanted sexual contact in unreported incidents in 2012, a 35 percent increase over 2010 incidents. After both the report and the recent arrest of the Air Force's head of sexual assault prevention, select members of Congress proposed legislation to reform aspects of the military justice system.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has proposed transferring authority from commanders to independent military prosecutors to prosecute serious crimes including sexual assault. This would require rewriting the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Supporters of Gillibrand's bill note that victims fear retaliation when they see their superiors will be handling these cases and do not believe all commanders can be objective in these situations or will push for serious consequences.

The proposal has drawn sharp condemnation from military leaders, including Tuesday's witnesses, which included the military chiefs, judge advocates and legal counsel.

The generals argued on Tuesday that the change would undermine the authority of commanders and the chain of command—a view shared by the committee's ranking Republican senator, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma.

And Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who has introduced a bipartisan bill designed to better hold perpetrators accountable, blasted the generals during Tuesday's hearing for not doing enough to fix the issue of sexual assault.

For a start, McCaskill called on the generals to stop reporting all sexual crimes including rape as "unwanted sexual contact," which can include a broad range of offenses.

"We need to know how many men and women are being raped … and we have no idea right now," McCaskill, a former prosecutor, said, referring to the latest Pentagon report.

She called on the generals to work toward "creating a culture where victims are coming forward." She asked generals to stop considering how well someone has served in their capacity as a member of the military when deciding whether to prosecute a felony case.

That same criticism was repeated by multiple members of the committee.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a decorated war veteran, told the panel that he could not currently give a mother "unqualified support" for her daughter's decision to join the military in light of the sexual assault estimates.

Many members expressed a desire to better screen new members of the military to potentially weed out those who may commit sexual assault.

Video: Obama:Sexual Assault Threatens Trust in Military

One lawmaker went so far as to suggest that the age of military volunteers makes sexual offenses more likely.

"The young folks who are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or '3," Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said. "Gee whiz, that's the hormone level created by nature. [It] sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur."

He continued by reprimanding the military as well as Congress for not doing their jobs effectively to curb the sexual assault epidemic. "We simply can't tolerate it," Chambliss said.

A panel of commanders who testified later Tuesday after the generals agreed with the assessment that commanders should retain control of the process. A third panel of victims' advocates and others was scheduled to address the committee Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday's hearing highlighted criticism of the military's ability to prosecute and report sexual assault cases and support victims that many say has existed for many years. Many members used the Pentagon report as a reason to revive efforts to reform the military's prosecutorial processes.

President Barack Obama, during a news conference with visiting South Korean President Park Geun-hye on the day of the report's release, had issued a fierce denouncement of sexual assault in the military. "I have no tolerance for this. ... If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they're going to be held accountable—prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period. It's not acceptable," he said.

Obama also said he had spoken with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel that morning regarding the need to "exponentially step up our game."

He added, "We have to do everything we can to root this out," and noted that those affected should understand the president has "got their backs."

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Deadly Okla. tornado widest on record, rare EF5

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The deadly tornado that struck near Oklahoma City late last week had a record-breaking width of 2.6 miles and was the second top-of-the-scale EF5 twister to hit the area in less than two weeks, the National Weather Service reported Tuesday.

The weather service initially rated the tornado that hit El Reno on Friday as an EF3. But the agency upgraded the ranking after surveying damage, and determined the storm packed winds reaching 295 mph. Eighteen people died in the storm, including three storm chasers, and its subsequent flooding.

Deep in the heart of Tornado Alley, the Oklahoma City area also saw an EF5 tornado on May 20. That one raked Moore, a suburb that's 25 miles away from El Reno, and killed 24 people. In 1999, Moore was hit by another EF5 with the strongest winds ever measured on earth: 302 mph.

Friday's massive tornado avoided highly populated metro areas, a fact forecasters said likely saved lives. Winds were at their most powerful in areas devoid of structures, said Rick Smith, chief warning coordination meteorologist for the weather service's office in Norman.

"Any house would have been completely swept clean on the foundation. That's just my speculation," Smith said. "We're looking at extremes ... in the rare EF5 category. This in the super rare category because we don't deal with things like this often."

The stretch between El Reno and Union City that the twister spun through is mostly rural farm and grazing land. Most of the destruction came toward the end of the tornado's 16.2-mile path along Interstate 40, where several motorists were killed when their vehicles were tossed around.

Like many Midwestern cities, the Oklahoma City metropolitan area continues to expand thanks to the suburbs, but the rapid growth hasn't quite reached as far west as where Friday's tornado tracked.

William Hooke, a senior policy fellow of the American Meteorological Society, said the continued expansion of cities in the most tornado-prone areas makes it only a matter of time before one hits a heavily populated area.

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"You dodged a bullet," Hooke said. "You lay that path over Oklahoma City, and you have devastation of biblical proportions.

"It's only a matter of time."

El Reno Mayor Matt White said that while his city of 18,000 residents suffered significant damage — including its vocational-technical center and a cattle stockyard that was reduced to a pile of twisted metal — he said it could have been much worse had the violent twister tracked to the north.

"If it was two more miles this way, it would have wiped out all of downtown, almost every one of our subdivisions and almost all of our businesses," White said. "It would have taken out everything."

The EF5 storm that hit Moore decimated neighborhoods.

"It's very scary ... I don't think a normal person can fathom just how scary," White said." I don't think they realize how lucky El Reno was."

Smith said the storm's 2.6-mile-wide path — besting a record set in 2004 in Hallam, Neb. — would have made the storm hard to recognize up close.

"A two-and-a-half mile wide tornado would not look like a tornado to a lot of people," Smith said.

Greg Carbin, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, said May in Oklahoma is a time of transition, offering the perfect fuel for violent thunderstorms that can produce tornadoes — a combination of warm, moist air combined with cooler jet stream energy that causes massive instability in the atmosphere.

"In these past two events, we've had a lot of unstable air sitting around, a lot of moisture and warm air," Carbin said. "That provides the fuel for thunderstorm development."

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Associated Press writer Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.

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Sean Murphy can be reached at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy

Putin: Russia hasn't sent S-300 missiles to Syria, won't to preserve 'stability'

Putin's statement to EU leaders seems to put an end to often contradictory Russian and Syrian stories about whether the Assad regime would get the weapons.

Russia has changed its story, yet again, about its intention to fulfill a 3-year old contract to sell "game-changing" S-300 advanced air defense systems to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Now the answer is "no."

In direct contradiction to what top Russian officials were saying just last week, President Vladimir Putin told European Union leaders at a summit in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg Tuesday thatRussia has suspended the $900 million contract to supply six batteries and 144 long range, deadly-accurate surface-to-air missiles, in the interests of preserving stability in the turbulentMiddle East.

"The S-300 systems are, really, one of the best air defense systems in the world, probably the best," Mr. Putin told the leaders, who included EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

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"We do not want to disturb the balance in the region. The contract was signed several years ago. It has not yet been realized," Russian news media quoted Putin as saying.

Just last month Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Putin at his summer residence in Sochi and begged him not to supply the missiles to Syria. Mr. Netanyahu said the S-300s would threaten planes flying in Israeli airspace, though most experts say the real concern is that the missiles would deeply complicate the ability of Israel, and the US, to intervene in Syria's civil war using air power.

Coming out of that meeting, Putin offered no commitment either way, leaving the door open to weeks of speculation and clashing media reports about what was decided.

In the wake of the EU's decision last week to drop its arms embargo against Syria, opening the door to arms shipments to the rebels by Britain and France, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Rybakovinsisted the S-300 sale would go ahead – for exactly the same reason Putin now says it has been halted – to preserve "stability" in the region.

"We believe [S-300 sales] are to a great extent restraining some ‘hot heads’ from considering scenarios in which the conflict may assume an international scale with the participation of outside forces," Mr. Rybakov said.

"We understand all the concerns and signals sent to us from various states. We see that this issue worries many of our partners. We have no reasons to reconsider our position in this sphere," he added.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu went further, telling journalists last week that Russia is now prepared to sell Syria not only "defensive" weapons like the S-300, but "offensive" ones like tactical missiles, tanks, and fighter planes as well.

Mr. Assad put in his own misleading two cent's worth, telling a Lebanese TV station that the Russianshad firmly promised to supply him with the S-300s and suggesting that the first shipment of them might have already arrived in Damascus.

Experts say it now appears likely that Putin did, in fact, agree at that May meeting with Netanyahu to suspend S-300 deliveries to Syria. That's not unprecedented: His predecessor Dmitry Medvedev negotiated a secret deal with Netanyahu that led to Russia cutting off S-300 and other major weapons' exports to Iran in 2010.

"When will everybody learn that the main thing is to listen to what Putin says? He is the truth of the last instance in this country," says Alexander Sharavin, director of the independent Institute of Military and Political Analysis in Moscow.

"People can say all sorts of things, and maybe they have their sources, but there is only one person in Russia who can actually decide whether to deliver S-300s to Syria or not. We know this person's name. And he seems to have made his decision quite some time ago," even if he's only informing us of it now, he adds.

Syrian TV: Army in control of key town of Qusair

FILE - This Tuesday, May 21, 2013 file citizen journalism image provided by Qusair Lens, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Syrian citizens gathering over houses that were destroyes from a Syrian forces air strike in the town of Qusair, near the Lebanon border, Homs province, Syria. Cut off for three weeks by a regime siege, doctors in the Syrian town of Qusair keep hundreds of wounded in storerooms and underground shop cellars, short on antibiotics and anesthesia, using unsterilized cloth for bandages and blowing air with pumps because there’s no oxygen canisters, amid relentless shelling and sniper fire. More than a dozen have died from untreated wounds and at least 300 others need immediate evacuation, one doctor says. (AP Photo/Qusair Lens, File

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad's troops, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, regained control on Wednesday of the embattled strategic town of Qusair where fighting has raged with rebels for nearly three weeks, state TV and a local government official said.

The capture of the town, which lies close to the Lebanese border, solidifies some of the regime's recent gains on the ground that have shifted the balance of power in Assad's favor in the Syrian civil war.

In the past two months, the Syrian army has moved steadily against rebels in key battleground areas, making advances near the border with Lebanon and considerably lowering the threat to Damascus, the seat of Assad's government. A wide offensive on Qusair was launched on May 19.

The state TV said the army has "restored security and peace" after successfully dismantling "terrorist networks" operating in the town and seized weapons. An official in the governor's office of Homs province confirmed the report.

"At 6.30 a.m., Qusair became secure," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to the media about an ongoing military operation.

State media said government forces flushed rebels out on Tuesday of a key district on the northeastern edge of Damascus from where opposition fighters had been trying to push into the capital. In recent weeks, Assad's forces also regained control of a key highway linking Aleppo, Syria's largest city, with its international airport after clearing rebels from villages along the way.

The regime's capture of Qusair comes as France and Britain made back-to-back announcements Tuesday that the nerve gas sarin was used in Syria's conflict. A U.N. probe, also released Tuesday, said it had "reasonable grounds" to suspect small-scale use of toxic chemicals in at least four attacks in March and April in Syria.

The statements — which included a confirmed case of the Syrian regime using sarin — leave many questions unanswered, however, because the probes were mostly carried out from outside Syria from samples collected by doctors and journalists.

Syria is suspected of having one of the world's largest chemical weapons arsenals, including mustard and nerve gas, including sarin. In recent weeks, the regime and those trying to topple Assad have traded accusations of chemical weapons' use but offered no solid proof.

In the West, the lack of certainty about such allegations is linked to a high stakes political debate over whether the U.S. should get more involved in the Syrian conflict, including by arming rebel fighters. More than 70,000 people have been killed and several million displaced by the Syrian conflict since it erupted more than two years ago.

Images broadcast Wednesday in Syria by media embedded with the Syrian army in Qusair showed a deserted town, with heavily damaged buildings. Military bulldozers were removing rubble and clearing roads as armored vehicles whizzed by.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Qusair came under intense overnight shelling, forcing the rebel fighters, short of ammunition, to withdraw. The Observatory said it fears for the fate of over 1,000 wounded.

Earlier, doctors in Qusair had said wounded civilians and fighters in need of critical medical attention have been trapped in the town, and pleaded for safe passage to transport them.

Both sides in the conflict value Qusair, which lies along a land corridor linking two Assad strongholds, the capital of Damascus and an area along the Mediterranean coast that is the heartland of his minority Alawite sect.

For the rebels, who had been in control of the town shortly ever since after the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, holding Qusair meant protecting their supply line to Lebanon, just 10 kilometers (six miles) away.

As the battle for Qusair intensified in the past week, rebels in the town called on fighters from all over Syria to come to their aid, and foreign fighters were suspected to be playing a large role in the city's defense.

The Qusair battle has also laid bare Hezbollah's growing role in the Syrian conflict. The Shiite militant group, which has been fighting alongside Assad's troops, initially tried to play down its involvement, but could no longer do so after dozens of its fighters were killed in Qusair and buried in large funerals in Lebanon.

Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, firmly linked the group's fate to the survival of the Syrian regime, raising the stakes not just in Syria, but also in Hezbollah's relations with rival groups in Lebanon.

Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen TV, which has reporters embedded with Syrian troops and was reporting live from Qusair, said there was no sign of fighting Wednesday. Hezbollah's TV channel, Al-Manar, showed pictures of seized weapons, and missiles in the town.

A Syrian army officer, speaking to Al-Mayadeen said: "Inside the town, there are no more armed terrorists, only some honorable citizens."

"The (fighters) have either escaped or were killed here," said the unnamed lieutenant colonel.

In the footage, the municipal building in the center of Qusair and the town church appeared to be pockmarked from the fighting. A Syrian flag was raised above it in a show of government control.

A witness from the town, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared for his security, said the military was removing mines from around Qusair and clearing roads.

"The town is empty," the witness said over the telephone.

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El Deeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.