“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation [of power] first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.”
                                                  - Thomas Jefferson

A quiet, almost unnoticed, attempted rape of American justice by 30 Republicans occurred last week in Washington.  The existence of this story is tragic; that 30 men in the U.S. Senate are, apparently, okay with this tragedy is a blight on our political landscape.

In 2004, at the age of 19, Jamie Leigh Jones began working as an administrative assistant for mega-government contractor KBR, an American engineering and construction company, and a former subsidiary of Halliburton.  (You may recall that former Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton prior to running for the Vice Presidency.)  In 2005, Jones was sent to work at Camp Hope, Baghdad, Iraq where, on 28 July, she was given a drink containing a date rape drug by male employees of KBR/Halliburton.  After she passed out, Jones was allegedly raped and sodomized by seven KBR employees.

A lawsuit filed by attorneys representing Jones states:

“When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured, and her pectoral muscles torn – which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again.”

Jones was taken for medical treatment where U.S. Army physician Jodi Schultz collected evidence in a rape kit.  Schultz gave the rape kit to KBR/Halliburton security forces, after which the rape kit disappeared. 

Upon orders of KBR/Halliburton, Jones was confined by armed guards to a shipping container containing only a bed. She says she was denied food, water, and further medical treatment.  Eventually, a sympathetic guard gave her a cell phone and she called her father, who then contacted Representative Ted Poe (R-TX).  Poe contacted the State Department, agents were dispatched from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and Jones was removed from KBR/Halliburton custody.  In May 2007, a State Department diplomat recovered the rape kit from KBR/Halliburton, but notes and photographs taken by Schultz of Jones the morning following her rape were missing.

Jones has been prevented her from taking legal action against either the men who raped her or KBR/Halliburton because of a clause in her employment contract.  Now, how an employment contract can trump criminal prosecution is beyond me.  I feel certain that if most of us had an employment contract that said we were free to rape, steal or murder, that contract would be found invalid and the relevant state and federal laws would apply to our prosecution.

But, not only is Jones left without apparent recourse, the story turned even more bizarre last week when Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota offered an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR/Halliburton “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

This approach seems reasonable and simple enough, but to GOP Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama allowing victims of sexual assault a day in court is tantamount to a “political attack” on KBR/Halliburton. Moreover, 29 other Senators, all men, chose to join Sessions in opposing the Franken amendment.  It is in understatement to say I find this simply mind-boggling.

Here are the 30 Senators who voted to protect a corporation over a victim of rape:

But this is just the latest attempt by Republicans to allow corporations to steal, maim and kill with impunity. The GOP has been campaigning for decades against civil justice in an effort to place corporations above the law and corporatist elected officials out of the reach of voters. Now, it seems, many Republicans, especially male Republicans, have decided it is okay to argue with a straight face that rape should be overlooked in favor of corporate protectionism.

This latest attempted rape of American justice is a new low in our political arena, even for the GOP.