AWOL

Love the lede to this story:

Army Spc. Suzanne Swift spent five months in a seacoast town hiding out, smoking cigarettes and reading. Meanwhile, her military police unit was half a world away in Iraq.

Just lounging about, eating bon-bons while being derelict in her duty. She certainly isn’t made to sound like a woman who’s been repeatedly sexually harassed by her superiors…which she is.

Swift, who served in Iraq from February 2004 to February 2005, claimed she had been harassed or abused by three noncommissioned officers — two in Iraq and one at Fort Lewis.

The Army said it was able to substantiate one allegation, involving an noncommissioned officer at Fort Lewis, and took disciplinary action.

Hmm…could that be some of that administrative discipline I’ve heard so much about?

But it said it was unable to substantiate allegations that an NCO in Iraq sexually harassed her and another forced her into a sexual relationship.

So Swift has been arrested and charged “with being absent without leave and missing movement” and “could face a reprimand or a court-martial,” though, curiously, the Army says it will delay disciplinary action against Swift in order to conduct a "thorough, impartial investigation" into her allegations. If they haven’t already conducted a thorough, impartial investigation, how is it, pray tell, that they are able to say they were unable to substantiate her allegations? Why do I get the impression that, so far, the Army has asked her accusers if what she asserts is true, and their “investigation” ended when they said no? Why do I further get the impression that if Swift’s mother hadn’t been “traveling to talk to groups that have taken up Swift's cause,” no action on the Army’s part to find out if her allegations were true ever would have been taken, but disciplinary action against Swift certainly would have?

Apparently the Congressional women’s caucus which held hearings into widespread sexual harassment problems in the combat theater haven’t made the Army any more prepared to accept that Swift, or any other female soldier, might be telling the truth about her experiences when she makes such allegations, or any more inclined to protect them.