An American soldier’s sexual assault of a 14-year-old Okinawan girl has caused a diplomatic crisis that could result in Japan’s refusal to increase its participation in the Iraq war, creating a rare situation indeed: an instance in which rape matters to the U.S. military.

President Bush apologized. Condi Rice even told Japanese leaders that the United States would “try” to prevent such incidents from happening again. My opinion: “Try” is already an admission of helplessness.

The military has no idea what to do with its rape problem because it’s part of the core contradiction out of which today’s military tradition has grown. Military rape, and the denial and/or blame-the-victim vehemence with which it is generally greeted, exposes, perhaps like nothing else, the lunacy of so much of our foreign policy, which is built on assumptions of that tradition that have long been abandoned in most other spheres of life, beginning with the need for a dehumanized, soulless “other” who is the “enemy.”

For the past several months I have been receiving TIME magazine. The subscription originally started as a gift from someone unknown, with my last name spelled wrong, lasted for a year. When it came up for renewal, I stalled until the price came down to fifty cents a copy, a much more reasonable price for the quality of the magazine (I could have had another half year free if I had stalled about a month longer). I finally renewed, not because I admire the quality of the magazine but because, even though it is the “Canadian” edition (it has some Canadian advertising in it) it provides a good snapshot of Middle-American thinking.

The fastest growing group of people serving in America's military is women. More than 155,000 women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. Veterans Administration officials estimate that the number of female veterans who use VA services will double in the next five years. Our women veterans face unique physical and mental health care needs, especially in regards to Military Sexual Trauma.

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The Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act of 2008 (S.2799), a bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate last month, will dramatically increase the care available to our women veterans, including authorizing programs to improve care for Military Sexual Trauma. The bill will also increase research on the current barriers to care and expand staff positions for women at the VA.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The world's most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, was due to be freed from house arrest this weekend, but the international community and Burma's military junta have been focusing on aid for cyclone victims instead of her liberation.

During her more than 12 years of house arrest, Mrs. Suu Kyi has always been able to walk out of her lakeside, two-story villa in Rangoon, if she permanently leaves the Southeast Asian country which her assassinated father helped create.

If she left Burma, however, the junta would most likely never allow her to return, which is why she did not attend the funeral in England when her husband, British academic Michael Aris, died several years ago.

Now unwilling to travel to see her two adult sons in Britain, Mrs. Suu Kyi was recently barred from becoming Burma's leader after the junta pushed through, on May 10, a new constitution disqualifying candidates who have foreign relatives.

One year ago, the junta extended her house arrest for another 12 months, due to expire on Saturday (May 24).

This weekend's fast-moving, long-overdue HBO docu-drama on the theft of the 2000 election stopped four years short. It did a riveting job of portraying how Team Bush, headed by James Baker, strong-armed its way into the presidency. But it's now time for the major media to finally face up to Act 2 of the GOP's rape of the American electoral system, and produce a piece of equal heft and clout about Ohio 2004. And let's hope it won't be necessary to follow with a third piece on how the GOP could steal 2008.

The most telling moment in this generally credible HBO offering comes at the very end. Al Gore's Florida point man, Ron Klain (as played by Kevin Spacey), spots the victorious James Baker getting on his private plane. Ever the gentleman, Klain approaches Baker to congratulate him, and ask "if the best man won." Baker responds he thinks so.