Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Thursday criticized the military’s lackluster approach to sexual violence, saying that some officials “looked the other way” rather than pursuing convictions.

These words came during the funeral of Jeremy Goulet, a former serviceman who was killed last week in a gunfight with police after killing two Santa Cruz, CA officers. Goulet, who had a long history of incidences involving sexual assault and harassment, was released from the Army with a “less than honorable” discharge in 2006 as part of a plea bargain in a rape case.

Had Goulet been convicted of rape under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, he would likely be serving a sentence in a military prison. Panetta, who stepped down as Secretary of Defense two weeks ago, acknowledged the flaws in the military justice system’s handling of sexual violence while speaking at the officers’ funeral. “We do know that he had a history of sexual violence both in and out of the military. And for whatever reason, people somehow always looked the other way,” Panetta said. “And at some point, somebody pays a price.”

Sexual assault in the military has been granted a renewed spotlight this week, after Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin’s overturned Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s conviction of aggravated sexual assault, sparking outrage. Wilkerson — who was originally kicked out of the Air Force as part of his conviction — has been reinstated, though removed from the list of officers up for promotion by the Secretary of the Air Force. An estimated 19,000 instances of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) occurred in 2011 alone, though the actual number may be higher due to underreporting.

Panetta made promoting women’s rights a key part of his tenure at the Pentagon, including vowing to reduce the number of sexual assaults in the military. After Panetta signed off on changes that would allow women to serve in fighting roles inside combat zones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said that the integration of women into combat units could help reduce sexual assault.

During his confirmation hearing, current Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel pledged to continue Panetta’s work in this regard. Hagel is now being lobbied by several Senators, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), to do more — including looking into the Wilkerson case.

In deciding on how best to deal with our deficit crisis, the prospect of cutting the defense budget has been a point of heated debate. As the federal government grapples with the effects of sequestration, the House passed a bill this week that will cushion the effects of the cuts for the Pentagon while leaving other agencies to bear their full brunt. There are a few highly misleading ideas that have cropped up in the defense spending debates that detract from a productive conversation. Here are three popular ideas, or “myths,” that deserve a closer look as this bill makes its way to the Senate.

Myth #1: Measuring defense spending as a percentage of GDP is a good way to gauge our defense capabilities.

In no way does measuring defense spending as a percentage of GDP accurately represent the capabilities of our military to execute its missions. Consider how we calculate GDP and all of the factors that go into it – if private consumption or investment increases more rapidly than defense spending, naturally defense spending will subsequently comprise a smaller percentage of GDP. Does that mean we should increase defense spending if there is no change in the international environment?

Conversely, if the GDP goes down and the threat goes up, should we reduce defense spending? An appropriate level of defense spending should be calculated based on threats and strategy, not an arbitrary percentage of GDP. We should spend more when the country faces an existential threat, as it did in the Cold War and when we go to war, and we should spend less in peacetime – our Gross Domestic Product has nothing to do with it.

Myth #2: Defense cuts will lead to a jump in unemployment.

Defense cuts will result in some job losses in the defense industry, no question about it. However, defense spending is not meant to be a jobs program, nor should we want it to be. The purpose of our defense budget is to ensure that we are able to protect the American people and our nation, regardless of how many people it takes to accomplish that goal. In fact, defense spending is a particularly inefficient job creator: more jobs can be created by putting that money almost anywhere else, like in infrastructure, clean energy, or education. Even tax cuts create more jobs per dollar. If Congress wants to increase employment, they should pass a jobs bill, not pour funds into programs that do little to improve our national security and are inefficient at creating jobs.

With sequestration and the Budget Control Act, Congress has made it clear that cuts to federal spending are coming. But in all likelihood, cutting Pentagon spending will result in less job loss than cutting nonmilitary funding by the same amount.
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Lawrence Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Lauren Linde is an intern at CAP.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith — son-in-law of Osama bin Laden — has been brought to the United States to face trial for his role in Al Qaeda.

Abu Ghaith was taken into custody in Jordan, then transferred to the custody of the CIA and FBI under the extradition treaty between the two countries. Abu Gaith served as a spokesman for the core Al Qaeda group that planned the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Shortly after that attack, Abu Ghaith issued a video address to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in which he warned that “the storms shall not stop, especially the Airplanes Storm,” and advised Muslims, children, and opponents of the United States “not to board any aircraft and not to live in high rises.”

Rather than being transferred to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Ghaith has been indicted in U.S. District Court in Southern New York on charges of conspiracy to kill United States nationals. That step has already been criticized by several Republicans who are in favor of Guantanamo remaining open, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “We believe the administration’s decision here to bring this person to New York City, if that’s what’s happened, without letting Congress know is a very bad precedent to set,” Graham said in a press conference with Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH).

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also agreed that Abu Ghaith should be sent to Guantanamo rather than brought to the U.S. for trial. Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera, however, this morning defended the decision to bring Abu Ghaith to New York, citing the much higher conviction rate seen in federal courts:

RIVERA: We have convicted 67 of these terrorist in our federal courts. We have only convicted seven in the military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay. 67 in Federal Court. Just seven in the military tribunals. This is exactly the venue where he should be tried and convicted.

Watch Rivera’s defense here:

Civilian courts have also proved in the past to be better at gaining usable information from suspected terrorists than their military counterparts. This fact hasn’t stopped the outrage from pouring forward from conservatives whenever a civilian court is utilized to try suspected terrorists.

It’s that outrage that allows Abu Ghaith to be the highest-level Al Qaeda official tried in civilian courts. The last attempt to have a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda tried — Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind behind September 11th — was virulently opposed by Republicans, such as Sarah Palin and Rep. Steve King (R-IA). The outcry that sprung up around that trial forced the Department of Justice to drop their move, resulting in Sheik Mohammad’s trial to be moved to military tribunal.