I believed once that the U.S. military was a noble and distinguished place. Not that any of my direct lineage (or collateral relatives, for that matter) had ever served. My father was rated a 4F by the draft in WWII for his flat feet.

My grandmother of blessed memory told me to “take care of America” for her. In the Ukraine, she had not considered herself pious enough to make it in Isreal. She preferred the USA, having heard the streets were paved with gold and streets also somehow held an opportunity for upward mobility.

She never told me exactly what that meant, but as a resident doctor whose residency school had folded (with no neurosurgical residencies elsewhere in America) I made the military recruiting office into a system to get the US Army to pay my residency salary and get training in Canada.

A military stint as a general medical officer assigned to active duty — well, I didn’t have too much trouble convincing myself grandmother would be proud.

I ended up, through a variety of machinations, going to active duty in general psychiatry at a large Army base.

So indirectly, from my proud induction and joyous oath of allegiance to the US, I landed in a world where:

Many young men, before judges in America, were given a choice between military and prison, and continued to act as if criminal behaviors learned on the streets continued to be appropriate.

The medical command though this woman MD with a background in neurosciences should take care of ob-gyn and such because she was “a female.” (I got the necessary books out of the library and kept them in my office and did as ordered.)

The incidences of sexism were too numerous to recount.

And criminals? Although I have worked many prisons, I was ordered to evaluate my one-and-only axe murderer, he was seen while he was confined to an Army prison.

Not that he was cooperative. He answered no questions at all, laughing at the female officer who had been sent to interview him.

The techniques I derived to get any of my assignments done at all served me well later in my career.

The criminal patients, from the naive and young, to the masters, have stood with me.

The Huffington Post seems to have reported on a serious crime that happened in the military, and bore further investigation.

There are military press officers, and they release things to the public, but they don’t seem to release things like this.

America may want to know who is in the military, and why, and about horrible things that go on and are crimes against humanity and such.

Be afraid be very afraid.