Opinion: All because of one prostitute

 

 

Bruce Walton

Bruce Walton is a freshman news major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].

If you haven’t heard, a sex scandal, possibly the biggest in the history of the Secret Service, has been revealed to the public.

It happened just a week before President Obama went to Colombia for a Western Hemisphere summit with Latin American leaders. Secret Service agents got caught taking at least 20 Colombian prostitutes to their hotel.

Apparently, 11 Secret Service agents as well as 10 military officials traveled to Columbia before the president arrived. They decided to have a good time and went to a brothel, or bar in Colombia.

According to a Washington Post article, “People briefed on the incident said the agents brought women back to Cartagena’s Hotel Caribe, where other members of the U.S. delegation and the White House corps also were staying. Anyone visiting the hotel overnight was required to leave identification at the front desk and leave the hotel by 7 a.m. When a woman failed to do so, by this account, it raised questions among hotel staff and police, who investigated. They found the woman with the agent in a hotel room and a dispute arose over whether the agent should have paid her.”

Now to be fair, prostitution is legal in Colombia, but there are still security and moral issues of this case. And according to different stories, some say they weren’t prostitutes but instead strippers, or simply just girls at a bar. However, I don’t think you can pay strippers or girls at a bar to go home with you.

When I first heard about the story I nearly died laughing at the thought of men in suits and sunglasses with those ear pieces going wild and throwing money at Colombian strippers. After sobering up to the real facts of this scandal, it’s actually very frightening.

These men are the last line of defense for the president of the United States, especially in a foreign country. The Secret Service agents had schedules regarding where the president would be, weapons and, of course, general information about the president in their rooms.

The president is in danger 24/7, and it does not let up just because they’re around a bunch of prostitutes. Any one of those women could have stolen government property or could have been connected to an underground crime ring in Colombia.

This is of course all hypothetical, but you never know how close you are to an assassination until it happens.

But what frightens me the most was how nonchalant the men were in this entire situation. From the facts and stories given, it seems that this was not a one-time thing; more than 20 men were involved in this and were suspended accordingly. Some were even fired.

You don’t have that many guys act on a whim like that, and plan that much for taxi fair and all the money put into it.

This of course leads me and others to believe that this is something Secret Service may be doing in other parts of the country.

Much more thorough investigations of all Secret Service agents and military officials connected with the president’s security should be underway immediately to make sure that this does not happen again.

Not only that, but these men represent America and the president and to do this behind people’s backs is appalling to say the least. But what I do find a bit amusing at least was that we would have never heard of this if it weren’t for one Colombian prostitute who wouldn’t pay her fair.