Female Soldiers

THE SYSTEM WAS undeniably broken. Tuesday's thunderous verdict against Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson for the Army's version of rape of six female soldiers at Aberdeen Proving Ground was a first step to fix it.Simpson and others under investigation at Aberdeen, and at other Army installations worldwide, have revealed a sexual climate out of control. Debate swirls over the severity of the finding against Simpson, but there is no denying that reports out of Aberdeen the past half-year portrayed a Bacchanalia on the bay, with tales of drill instructors competing for the most "conquests;" of sex in buses, game rooms and storage closets; of a female in Simpson's office "showing off" her underwear.

An 18-year-old female Army recruit, a key accuser in the investigation of sexual misconduct by drill instructors at Aberdeen Proving Ground, has been granted a hardship discharge from the Army Ordnance Center and School, APG officials confirmed yesterday.A request for the discharge by Pvt. Jessica Bleckley -- who said on a national news program in November that she had been pressured into having sex with two drill sergeants at the military base -- is being processed by the Army and should be completed Monday, said APG spokeswoman Rachel McDonald.

The commanding general of Aberdeen Proving Ground's Ordnance Center and School, where prohibited relationships between drill sergeants and trainees sparked the worst sex scandal in Army history, is being shifted to a post in Georgia with his career untarnished.Army officials characterized Maj. Gen. Robert D. Shadley's move to Fort McPherson outside Atlanta as a routine, lateral transfer.But critics -- including some Congress members -- denounced the reassignment, expected to occur this summer.

WASHINGTON -- Sexual misconduct, including rape, at an Aberdeen Proving Ground school was an "aberration" that resulted from failed leadership, Army leaders said yesterday, but they conceded that women continue to face sexual harassment and an even more stubborn problem with discrimination."

WASHINGTON -- Surprised by the seriousness of sexual misconduct charges that have erupted at an Aberdeen Proving Ground school, the Army's top uniformed officer says the chain of command there failed -- but he is uncertain how high the problem goes."

Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson yesterday became the first Aberdeen Proving Ground drill instructor to publicly admit having sex with female students, pleading guilty to 16 counts of violating Army rules that prohibit relationships between soldiers of different ranks.Simpson, 32, denied raping any of the women, but his testimony portrayed Aberdeen's Ordnance Center and School as a hormone-rich college dormitory than an elite Army training post.In often-lurid detail, he recounted having sex with recruits on his office sofa, in his on-post quarters and at an Andrews Air Force Base hotel.

SCUDS PUT U.S. Women on Front Lines," was the headline. "The Iraqi Scud missile is a unisex weapon that has brought the front line to many of the 28,000 American women serving in Operation Desert Storm," noted the Washington Post story. "The federal laws and military regulations that bar women from serving in combat units do not stop the enemy from shooting at them."That would come as no news to the female Army nurses under Japanese fire at Bataan and Corregidor 50 years ago, or to the female Army nurses at Anzio beachhead in February 1944, where six of them were killed by German bombing.

WASHINGTON -- A high-level Army panel created in the wake of the Aberdeen Proving Ground sex scandal is expected to recommend this month a more stringent selection process for drill sergeants, Pentagon officials say.In making the recommendations, members of the panel hope to make it less likely that drill sergeants such as those prosecuted for sexual misconduct at Aberdeen and other training bases could rise to such positions.Staff Sgt. Delmar G. Simpson, who was convicted of multiple rapes and sodomy at Aberdeen, was selected as a drill sergeant even though he had been removed as platoon sergeant at Fort Hood in Texas for granting favorable treatment to female soldiers.

WASHINGTON -- Top Army officials appeared before Congress yesterday and immediately found themselves defending not only their response to a widening sex scandal but also their long-standing policy of expanding job opportunities for female soldiers.Both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns about the perils implicit in the Army, where men and women train together and camp side by side in remote operations."I have some fundamental concerns about throwing very young women in a position with a drill sergeant," said Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican.

Maj. Marie T. Rossi, a helicopter pilot who was featured in national news reports last week as she ferried cargo into battle against Iraq, was killed in a non-combat helicopter crash the day after the cease-fire, military officials say.Rossi, one of the first American officers to cross into enemy territory when the ground assault began on Feb. 24, died Friday when her CH-47 Chinook helicopter went down "somewhere in the Desert Storm theater," said Capt....