Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is bringing the ongoing crisis of sexual assault in the military into the spotlight, hoping to use a recent outrageous case as a springboard to change.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel, chaired by Gillibrand, met on Wednesday to begin the process of reforming the military justice’s handling of sexual assault cases, speaking to panels of both survivors of sexual assault in the military and top military law experts.

Gillibrand appeared on MSNBC on Thursday to present the hearing’s findings, leaving host Andrea Mitchell stunned. Over 19,000 allegations of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) were made in 2011 alone, but as Gillibrand informed Mitchell there were only 2,400 cases where action was taken. The disparity, according to Gillibrand, comes from fear of retaliation and “not being able to stay in the military and having no ability to be promoted.”

Both women shared their disbelief that the military justice system could take such a lax approach to a clear problem:

MITCHELL: I don’t understand the Military Code of Justice, in that it was a reason for dismissal for expulsion from the military until last year, if you violated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Yet, if you were found guilty in a military court of a criminal assault, of rape, you could go back to your unit. How is that possible?

GILLIBRAND: It’s outrageous and it’s something that should outrage every American. When we look at our best and bravest, our strongest, our most courageous. When you enter the military, you may expect to lose a limb. You may expect to lose your life. But no one should be expecting to be assaulted or raped by one of their colleagues.

Watch their exchange here:

The permissive culture towards sexual violence Gillibrand described was underscored by the testimony of former Sgt. Rebekkah Havrilla. Havrilla told the subcommittee of the U.S. Army’s failure to provide proper assistance following several instances of alleged sexual assault and rape. At one point, an Army chaplain told Havrilla “that the rape was God’s will and that God was trying to get my attention so that I would go back to church.”

“Rape and assault are violent, traumatic crimes, not mistakes, leadership failures or oversights in character,” Anu Bhagwati, Co-Founder of the Service Women’s Action Network told the panel. Bhagwati offered a series of possible reforms to the military criminal justice system to the senators, including opening civil courts to military sexual assault victims.

Currently, the Uniform Military Code of Justice features an article that allows a commanding officer through his or her “convening authority” to overturn the conviction of a jury in courts-martial. Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin used that ability last week to overturn Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s conviction of sexual assault, waive the one-year prison sentence, and reinstate Wilkerson in the Air Force. Under the law as written, Franklin’s decision can’t be overturned by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the Air Force.

Wilkerson’s reinstatement has sparked outrage from both houses of Congress and prompted a review of the statute in question by the Department of Defense’s top lawyers. A bill has already been introduced in the House of Representatives related to the Wilkerson case. Reps. Jackie Spiers (D-CA), Bruce Braley (D-IA), and Patrick Meehan (R-PA) put forward the bill on Tuesday to strip commanders of their ability to overrule juries and lessen sentences.

A new report by the “Costs of War” project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies finds that nearly 200,000 people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed in the war in Iraq President George W. Bush launched 10 years ago.

The report also found that American taxpayers will ultimately spend roughly $2.2 trillion on the war, but because the U.S. government borrowed to finance the conflict, interest payments through the year 2053 means that the total bill could reach nearly $4 trillion.

“Nearly every government that goes to war underestimates its duration, neglects to tally all the costs, and overestimates the political objectives that will be accomplished by war’s violence,” said Boston University professor of political science and project co-director Neta C. Crawford.

Indeed, the war devastated the Iraqi health care system and allowed militants to hone their skills and export them to neighboring conflicts:

Terrorism in Iraq increased dramatically as a result of the invasion and tactics and fighters were exported to Syria and other neighboring countries.

Iraq’s health care infrastructure remains devastated from sanctions and war. More than half of Iraq’s medical doctors left the country during the 2000s, and tens of thousands of Iraqi patients are forced to seek health care outside the country.

The Watson Institute project — which involves “30 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists from 15 universities, the United Nations, and other organizations” — comes on the heals of the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction’s final report released last week finding that the U.S. spent $60 billion on reconstruction efforts in Iraq and that $10 billion of it was wasted on fraud and abuse.

Reuters reported that Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, didn’t dispute the report’s findings but said the U.S.’s post-invasion battles with al-Qaeda in Iraq — a group that did not exist prior to March 19, 2003 — made the war worth it.

“It was really in Iraq that ‘al Qaeda central’ died,” Bucci said. “They got waxed.”

Meanwhile, the AP reported this afternoon that “a string of explosions tore through central Baghdad within minutes of each other on Thursday, followed by what appeared to be a coordinated assault by gunmen who battled security forces in the Iraqi capital.” The AP said the attack — which reportedly killed 12 people — “bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s Iraq arm.”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) on Thursday stressed the need for more openness surrounding the Obama administration’s targeted killing program and the drones used to carry it out.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Ellison highlighted the need to set up an open legal architecture surrounding the program currently in operation in Yemen and Pakistan. That position falls in-line with both the sentiments of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and CAP Chair John Podesta’s recent op-ed in the Washington Post.

Ellison said he agreed with Podesta that the administration needs to go further to help set norms for the use of drones around the world:

JANSING: We should say the President did allow some members of the intelligence committee to see those memos, are you satisfied with that? Is it enough?

ELLISON: No, it’s not enough. I think Podesta is absolutely right on this issue. I don’t think the president has anything to fear. He’s the one who said let’s have a legal architecture. This is a chance for the United States to really lead the world. [...] We should lead the way. The President should not allow himself to be coming up on the backside of this. He should be helping to lead this effort.

Watch Ellison’s full interview here:

At present, the program’s full legal justification — including the administration’s interpretation of when Americans can be targeted overseas — is being held closely by the White House, which has so far ignored calls to declassify the Justice Department’s memos. While it allowed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence view the memos as part of the deal to confirm CIA Director John Brennan, the White House sent staffers to sit with the committee members during their review, a move that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) strongly objected to. “There was a minder who was sent in. I was unaware that that person was going to have to be there. It was an insult to me,” he said.

Speaking behind closed doors with the Senate Democratic Caucus, Obama indicated that he were he still in the Senate he would have “probably objected” to the White House’s continued secrecy as well.

Earlier this week, Ellison in his role as co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus signed onto a letter from House Democrats to President Obama calling for the release of those documents to the full Congress. Ellison also expressed wariness surrounding the use of armed drones in combat in general, stating that there are legitimate and illegitimate ways in which they can be utilized. “We should only use this sort of technology in the circumstances to protect American lives to do so,” Ellison said. “But I think that the technology has outrun the rules.” Calling back to his previously published op-ed on the matter, Ellison said that he was glad that the conversation in Washington had finally shifted to oversight over the targeted killing program.