and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

There are certain parts of me that you might consider "old school" and some of my views aren't as "progressive" as they could be. Nevertheless, sexual assault of any kind is a pretty heinous and reprehensible crime and that is one thing that, old school or new school, I am 100% on.

Not surprisingly, things don't quite swing that way in our new school military. The private war of women soldiers:

I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection..

.. A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the first Gulf War found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans from Vietnam and all the wars since, who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder, found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military. And in a third study, conducted in 1992-93 with female veterans of the Gulf War and earlier wars, 90 percent said they had been sexually harassed in the military.

The problem with gender equality or gender neutrality issues is that it attempts to completely disregard the fact that we are, in very physical and real ways, different. We are also recently upright bipedals who are still very much influenced by the nature of hormones and our instincts.

Should women be in the military? This shouldn't even be a discussion. Should women expect to be able to feel safe in their job at least from their own co-workers? Certainly.

But the reality is that the kind of recruits that generally enter the military are already at a social-disadvantage when it comes to progressive thinking and ethical logic. These are low-income and inner city kids. They are minorities who have not been afforded financial security. Life has already been a battlefield for them and on that battlefield less room is given to proper conduct and equitable treatment than there should be.

Deplorable is .. the fact that the military is waiving criminal and violent records for more than one in 10 new Army recruits.. and what is even worse is the lack of accountability in the military itself. The old boy's network is tried and true, American blue, but that doesn't mean it is right or morally upstanding. If we, as a country, are going to hold so much of the world to high standards we best be holding ourselves to even higher standards.

"There are only three kinds of female the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke," said Montoya, the soldier who carried a knife for protection. "This guy out there, he told me he thinks the military sends women over to give the guys eye candy to keep them sane. He said in Vietnam they had prostitutes to keep them from going crazy, but they don't have those in Iraq. So they have women soldiers instead."

Even if every single woman in the army that has ever suggested that she was sexually assaulted was lying, it would still represent a problem. If enough people are treated unfairly or not as equals, some of them will speak up. If there is subtle or unmeasurable inequality, then there will still be some people who will stand up, perhaps lying or exaggerating the truth. Whether the issue is real or perceived is a secondary, almost moot point.

Certainly, we can't condemn every soldier of the male variety:

I am not claiming that sexual persecution is universal in the military, or that it is inevitable. Several soldiers I interviewed told me that if a commander won't tolerate the mistreatment of women, it will not happen, and studies back this up.

There are seemingly decent, upstanding people in our country's uniforms out there and for those people I am grateful. Not only does it suggest that problems can be ironed out and that we are able to address issues, it also suggests what some often don't want to admit - we are intelligent problem solving creatures. We do not have to be depraved sexually-charged creatures, even when forced into high stresswar zones, even when shot at. The thinking that suggests a co-gendered battle unit is incapable of maintaining a certain level of respect and safety among comrades is a defeatist attitude and suggestive of a backwards way of thinking and an unwillingness to accept change.

Unfortunately, the few decent people out there are probably farther and fewer between than we really need. Unfortunately,

The real attitude is this: If you tell, you are going to get punished. The assailant, meanwhile, will go free.