Army Aims Reforms at Ethics Deficit
The Army on Thursday announced major reforms in the way it
trains male and female recruits, including extended ethics training,
after concluding that “sexual harassment exists throughout the Army.”. .
. . The Army said it will respond to the highly publicized scandal at
its Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and other training
bases, by changing the culture in which highly authoritarian drill
sergeants turn young civilians into soldiers. . . . “We had a
leadership failure by selected individuals,” said Army Secretary Togo
West as he presented the report by a specia task force. He appointed the
Senior Review Panel on Sexual
Harassment last November when the Army disclosed
instructor-on-trainee sex abuses at Aberdeen.
. . . . Recruits will get an extra week added to eight weeks of boot
camp to learn values and ethics, and they will go through a “more
rigorous soldierization” — a tacit admission that boot camp has gone
a bit soft. Soldiers will receive two new cards: one listing core
values, the other telling them how to report sexual harassment.
– Rowan Scarborough -The Washington Times