Ms. Cojean, thank your for your testimony. Even though the facts are appalling, it is important that you tell us about them.
For those of us who study history or are engaged in history, we've seen the evolution of war. We've seen how war was considered almost a gentlemanly thing, where two groups of people stood a number of feet away from each other, shot at each other, and the side with the most number of people left standing was the winner. We've seen that devolve into the first bombings of civilian targets.
I think if there's anything we can take away from your testimony today, it's that we need to seriously rethink rape in the context of crisis. I was struck by your comparison in regard to the UN's and international community's worries about chemical warfare while this is going on. I don't think it would be a stretch of the imagination to say that this is a new form of psychological warfare. This is something that has been planned and thought out to terrorize, as you've mentioned, to undermine, to destroy the fabric of a community and society.
In that way, I think we need to step away from the social aspects of this crime, the religious or the social understanding or concept of this, and really begin to look at it as something akin to going into a community with a machete and hacking people to death, but doing this psychologically. Would that be a fair assessment of what you've been trying to share with us?