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.

Senate Republicans appear to believe that the U.S. military has the ability to respond to any crisis, at any time, anywhere in the world, as evidenced by frequent questioning during a Senate hearing today why U.S. assets weren’t deployed to stop the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic missions in Benghazi Libya — despite repeated confirmation from top defense officials that there were none to be deployed in a timely manner.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to give their long-awaited testimony on Benghazi. Republicans have been attacking the Obama administration for the inability of U.S. troops to reach Benghazi in the seven-hour window of the two waves of attacks. Panetta insisted that “time and distance” were the factors most to blame, strongly quelling ideas of military omnipresence:

PANETTA: The United States military, as I’ve said, is not and frankly should not be a 911 service, arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world.

Despite this, Senate Republicans repeatedly asked why the U.S. military never swooped in to save the Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues seeming to understand neither the process in which troops are deployed or the vastness of Northern Africa. The Republican Senators berated Panetta and Dempsey for alternately for providing satisfactory answers or outright lying. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in particular hit Dempsey for providing “simply false” testimony on the time it took to move troops:

McCAIN: We didn’t take into account threats to that consulate. [...] We could have placed forces there. We could have had aircraft and other capabilities as short a distance away as Soudah Bay, Crete [in Greece].

Watch a small sample of the GOP’s off-base questions here:

If the Republicans had done their homework, or listened to the testimony given, they would have saved themselves a lot of time. For example, the air base McCain referenced is actually used primarily for NATO operations, and did not house forces that could have been used in response to attacks in Benghazi, requiring military personnel to be flown in from Central Europe and Spain to Sigonalla Air Base in Italy. Likewise the time and difficulty in moving those troops has been discussed by Panetta before.

The argument of Senate Republicans that the military ignored glaring warnings Benghazi has likewise been disproved. As Panetta said in his testimony, in the months leading up to Benghazi the National Counterterrorism Center logged 281 threats against embassies and their personnel. At no time was there an explicit threat flagged in the intelligence gathered that indicated that Benghazi was more threatened than other diplomatic locations in Yemen, Sudan, or Egypt.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey said on Thursday that they supported a plan put forth by Obama administration officials to arm the rebels in Syria fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime forces.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that last summer, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus “were joining forces on a plan to arm the Syrian resistance.” But, the Times added, “Wary of becoming entangled in the Syria crisis, the White House pushed back, and Mrs. Clinton backed off.”

Today during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) asked Panetta and Dempsey if they supported the Clinton/Petraeus plan. “We did,” Dempsey said:

MCCAIN: I would ask again both of you what I asked you last March when 7,500 citizens of Syria had been killed. It’s now up to 60,000. How many more have to die before you recommend military action and did you support the recommendation by then-Secretary of State Clinton and then head of CIA Gen. Petraeus that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria. Do you support that?

PANETTA: We do.

MCCAIN: You did support that?

DEMPSEY: We did.

Watch the clip:

The news is quite significant, seeing that much of President Obama’s national security team supports arming the Syrian rebels, a move that — despite providing non-lethal aid and training — the Obama administration has been reluctant to do.

In an interview with the New Republic last month, Obama explained his thinking on how to handle the civil war in Syria. “Would a military intervention have an impact?” he asked, “And how do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” Obama continued: “You make the decisions you think balance all these equities, and you hope that, at the end of your presidency, you can look back and say, I made more right calls than not and that I saved lives where I could, and that America, as best it could in a difficult, dangerous world, was, net, a force for good.”

If you watched Chuck Hagel’s Senate confirmation hearing to become Secretary of Defense, you’d assume that Iran is at most days away from obtaining a nuclear weapon, requiring an immediate decision on the use of force. “If your position is truly prevention and not containment, Chuck, what is the redline [on Iran], what is the point?” asked Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). “We know there’s some things happening over there right now that are very serious.”

But on Sunday morning, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, reiterated that Iran has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons, dispelling the narrative being put forward by Senate Republicans.

Speaking to guest host Chuck Todd, Panetta and Dempsey both made clear that they believe that Hagel will be confirmed and said that previous analysis about Iran still holds true:

PANETTA: What I’ve said, and I will say today, is that the intelligence we have is they have not made the decision to proceed with the development a nuclear weapon. They are developing and enriching uranium, they continue to do that —

TODD: Why do you believe they’re doing that?

PANETTA: I think it’s a clear indication — They say they’re doing that to be able to do their own energy source. I think it is suspect that they continue to enrich uranium because that is dangerous and that violates international rules.

TODD: You believe that they are probably developing nuclear weapons, but you don’t, the intelligence doesn’t —

PANETTA: No, I can’t — I can’t tell you they are in fact pursuing a weapon, because that’s what not intelligence say they’re doing right now.

Watch Panetta’s statements here:

Panetta also lamented the inability of Congress to ask a range questions about matters that the next head of the Pentagon will face, instead concentrating on Hagel’s past comments. The focus on Iran and Israel, according to Panetta, crowded out discussion on military budget, combating terrorism, and the still ongoing war in Afghanistan. “We just did not see enough time spent on discussing those issues. And in the end, that’s what counts,” Panetta said.

To illustrate the disparity in questioning, the Washington Post’s Max Fischer conducted a word count of Hagel’s hearing’s transcript. Throughout the three rounds of questions, “Iran” was brought up 169 times and “Israel” mentioned 178 times. Meanwhile, “Al Qaeda” was only mentioned twice.

Despite the opposition put forward by the Senate GOP, it seems unlikely that Hagel’s nomination will be filibustered. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) on Friday indicated that a majority vote alone should be able to move Hagel to the Pentagon, while Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) threat to hold Hagel’s confirmation fizzled with the announcement of a coming Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Benghazi.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is still searching for the silver bullet, that one piece of testimony that will prove once and for all that the Obama administration lied during the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

Appearing on Fox News last night, Graham made clear that he was unsatisfied with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony last week, saying, “I haven’t forgotten about Benghazi. Hillary Clinton got away with murder, in my view.” Graham’s quest for the truth has now led him to current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Panetta, who has not testified before Congress about the role he played during the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in the Libya city, is due to step down from his position at the Pentagon in the coming weeks. Graham now insists that Panetta would have to provide answers on what happened that night to the Armed Services Committee, on which Graham is a member. What’s more, as he told Fox News host Greta Van Sustren, Graham now intends to place a hold on Panetta’s proposed replacement, Chuck Hagel, until he gets the answers he wants:

VAN SUSTEREN: Is Secretary Panetta going to testify?

GRAHAM: Well, I’m not going to — I’m going to block Hagel from going forward until he does.

VAN SUSTEREN: So you’re going to block him.

GRAHAM: Absolutely. Why would we not want to understand what happened during the attack itself? How could our secretary — what happened for seven hours? Why were there no military assets available on September the 11th.

Watch Graham’s threat here:

This is the second threat of a hold — an informal threat to filibuster a nomination or bill — that Graham has placed upon a new member of the Obama national security team over Benghazi. Earlier this month, Graham pledged to hold up the confirmation of White House Counterterrorism Director John O. Brennan — or anyone — to be the new CIA Director until he finds out who edited the infamous unclassified “talking points” on Benghazi. Graham was also key to scuttling a potential Susan Rice nomination to be Secretary of State in relation to Libya.

Graham’s dogged pursuit of “the truth” is undercut by the fact that many of the questions he’s asking have already been answered. Panetta and other administrations officials have repeatedly stated that due to the attack coming in two waves, and the distance between Libya and Sigonella Air Base in Italy, the U.S. was unable to send military forces to respond. Likewise, the question of the editing of Susan Rice’s Sept. 16 Sunday show statements has been previously identified as the result of an interagency process, in which the CIA itself removed references to Al Qaeda.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey today expressed his hope that allowing women into combat roles would bring down sexual assault rates in the military.

As of today, the Department of Defense has fully rescinded the 1994 Direct Combat Definition and Assignment Rule that first closed off billets in combat units to women. Speaking at the official announcement of the change, which will open thousands of positions to women for the first time, Dempsey pressed back particularly strongly when challenged on the notion that adding women to these new roles would be a hindrance to the development of the military.

Recalling his days at West Point, Dempsey told reporters that the military academy had become a much higher quality institution after the admission of women. The same transformative property would hopefully be seen in changing the culture of the military regarding sexual assault, according to Dempsey:

DEMPSEY: We’ve had this ongoing issue with sexual harassment, sexual assault. I believe its because we’ve had separate classes of military personnel at some level. Now, its far more complicated than that. But when you have one part of the population that is designated as ‘warriors’ and one part that is designated as something else, that disparity begins to establish a psychology that — in some cases — led to that environment. I have to believe the more we treat people equally, the more likely they are to treat each other equally.

Instead of taking the stance of some commentators that adding women to combat units would diminish their effectiveness or “humiliate” the men serving alongside them, Dempsey rightly focused on the risk of assault that women in the armed services face. Approximately one in three military women have been sexually assaulted, about double the rate of those in civilian life.

In the rest of their conference, Dempsey and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta clarified many of the details of the shift. New positions are not opening immediately for women, as the military departments now have until May 15 to submit plans on how they’ll implement the changes, with the process of integration to be completed by Jan. 1, 2016.

The new policy also doesn’t mark a change in the Selective Service process, where young males must register for the draft upon reaching the age of eighteen, according to Panetta. Regarding infantry and other ground combat positions, Panetta made clear that the onus is now on the service branches to justify to the Pentagon reasons why women should be barred from certain billets. The move to integrate women will also allow women more options in terms of advancing their career, as combat roles offer officers and enlisted soldiers alike greater ease in obtaining promotions.

“If they can do the job, if they can meet the standards, if they can meet the qualifications that are involved here, there is no reason why they shouldn’t have a chance,” Panetta said. “That’s just a fundamental belief of mine and I think it’s a fundamental belief of the American people.”

In a surprise move, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta removed the military ban on women in combat on Wednesday. Lifting the ban will open service on the front lines to thousands of women.

According to the Associated Press, the move was recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and overturns a 1994 rule banning women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Smaller exemptions to the rule were passed in 2012, but the new decision opens up 238,000 positions where women were formerly banned.

Women have been traditionally barred from serving in ground combat units, such as infantry, artillery, armor or as special operations commandos. However, women have been serving in combat roles for years as well, as recent conflicts have blurred the lines of combat and non-combat duties. While the ACLU last year sued the Pentagon for the right for women to take up positions on the front line, and the Marines recently began allowing women to serve as officers, the timing of Panetta’s announcement comes as a surprise.

Some Republicans have opposed putting women in combat because of alleged physical inferiority to men. However, a survey of several NATO allies with women in front line roles in Afghanistan indicated that, far from causing problems, female officers actually performed better in intelligence-gathering roles than their male counterparts.

Military chiefs must report their initial implementation plans by May 15, and can request special exceptions until January 2016 for any positions they feel cannot be open to women.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta can see a world in which the use of drones is no longer a staple in the United States’ counterterrorism toolkit, according to an interview with ABC News.

In a wide-ranging interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Panetta spoke on topics including Afghanistan, Syria, and the current crisis in Mali. When asked about whether he believes American civilians should know more about the use of drones by the Central Intelligence Agency, Panetta demurred. “I wish frankly that Americans you know, could really see what I’ve seen as director of the C.I.A. and now as Secretary of Defense in terms of our use of operations to go after those that have attacked our country,” Panetta said.

Panetta went on to defend the use of drones in going after Al Qaeda, while also leaving an opening for their eventual retirement as a cornerstone of that strategy:

PANETTA: And a key part of that has obviously been the use of the operations involving the drones that target those that are in the leadership in Al Qaeda. And that’s a reality. We’ve decimated their leadership as a result of those operations. So you know, my view of it is, you know, it’s not something that we’re going to have to continue to use forever. But it’s a very effective tool, it’s a very effective weapon at going after those who are enemies of the United States of America.

Watch the interview here:

Panetta’s statements echo those made by outgoing Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson, who has previously said that the so-called war on terror “shouldn’t be regarded as a perpetual war without any sort of end.” While Johnson’s comments earlier this month were based on a speech delivered in November at Oxford, they were expanded upon only after he left office. Panetta’s interview may come while he is heading for the exit, but he remains in charge of the Pentagon for the time being.

For now, though, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles — as drones are formally known — continues unabated, with a surge of strikes within Pakistan so far in 2013. Those numbers have not been acknlowedged by the U.S. government, however, as the CIA’s program remains classified. The secrecy surrounding the program was shown in Panetta’s notable lack of a response during the interview to Raddatz’s question, the continuation of a policy that lead to several major newspapers calling for more transparency. Even unarmed drones aren’t without their own controversy, exemplified in reaction to the announcement last week a fleet of surveillance drones are being sold to Afghanistan for use after the US ends its combat mission in 2014.