On the other hand:

You pulled up three MSNBC news stories and one from the Daily Beast. The stories contained one significant statistical statement:

The Pentagon will release its annual report on sexual assaults in the military on Tuesday afternoon, which shows an increase in reported assaults in fiscal year 2012 — up from 3,192 a year before. Furthermore, the number of people who made an anonymous claim that they were sexually assaulted but never reported the attack skyrocketed from 19,000 in FY11 to 26,000 in FY12.

You have now been told everything you're supposed to know by MSNBC, and that's fine with you. It's been obvious for a while you can't deal with much else.

For the rest of you, or at least a few of you, here's the chart from Page 26 of the introduction to the report (printed page numbers):

The introduction is what most media members read. Note the data points included, and note the data point the media left out. The entire graph implies a somewhat more complicated issue that needs more looking into.

And from Page 16:

• The risk of contact sexual violence for military and civilian women is the same, after controlling for age and marital status differences between these groups.

• With few exceptions, the past year and lifetime prevalence (occurrence) of IPV, sexual violence, and stalking in the civilian and military populations are quite similar, with no statistically significant differences.

• Active Duty women were significantly less likely than civilian women to indicate that they experienced IPV in the 3 years prior to the survey.

• Active Duty women were less likely to experience stalking than civilian women.

• A deployment history appears to impact Active Duty women’s experience of IPV and sexual violence. Active duty women with a deployment history had higher rates of IPV and sexual violence than women without a deployment history. These differences appeared in the past 3-year and lifetime prevalence rates, but were not present in the past-year prevalence rates. This suggests that IPV and sexual violence are problems that may develop over time for Active Duty women who have deployed.

(IPV = Intimate Partner Violence)

This does not mean there is no problem. This means we are being told there's a much, much worse problem than there is.

There's a political agenda that wants us to think our military is a horde of raping maniacs. This is not new, and MSNBC stories to this effect are not unexpected.

Always do your own research. And thinking.