US army wants females in combat zones

[seemslikeadream]

The US Army is negotiating with the Pentagon's civilian leaders a plan to eliminate a women-in-combat ban so it can place mixed-sex support companies within warfighting units, starting with a division going to Iraq in January, says The Washington Times.

Citing unnamed defence department sources, the newspaper said Army blueprints for a lighter force of 10 active divisions included plans for postings of mixed-sex units.

A spokesman said the Army is now in discussions with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's staff to see whether the 10-year-old ban in this one area should be lifted, The Times said.

The ban prohibits the Army from putting women in units that "collocate" with ground combatants.

more
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1226266.htm

[bluestateguy]

1. Oh the religious right is going to love that...

[Spinzonner]

2. But they can't have homosexuals because it would

cause sexual tension and affect unit cohesion ?

[Scooter24]

8. One of my best friends

wants to join the Air Force. He received his Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering this past May and also speaks fluent Arabic, German, and French.

However, because he is gay, they feel his talents are pretty worthless. And all this talk of sexual tension is petty. He has been in a monogamous relationship for almost 6 years and has no desire to "hook up" with other men.

Such a shame.

[aden_nak]

20. An engineer that can speak Arabic?

But what POSSIBLE use could the Air Force have for that kind of skill set? ;)

[0007]

18. .....about sheep?

[Khephra]

3. This one report (if true)

says more about how fucked up the war is than anything else I've read in the past 6 months.

There's no way the Army would try to repeal the ban unless things are really and truly going to hell.

[luaneryder]

4. Women have been dying in Iraq

already and I've heard not one peep of protest from Fundies. As long as it's not "their" daughter, sisters, wives dying there'll be no outcry. This goes a long way in showing how understrength and strecthed the forces are.

[SoCalDem]

5. What this is REALLY about..

The big shots in the Army don't want women (except in the old model..as typists & drivers in the WACS).. This is a way to push them into a position that they will not accept, or be accepted at.. It's an end run to get the women OUT of their "club"..

Look at the way the military has handled the "scandals".. Abu Ghraib was more or less dumped into the lap of the FEMALE commander..and the latest mutiny, had a FEMALE higher-up, reprimanded and re-assigned..

The rank and file army can be very mysogynistic...deep down, I think they want to be rid of women in their ranks

[soothsayer]

6. Deeper down, i think they want to be rid of women entirely!

[tlcandie]

7. I think if they are anything like my dad ...

he really doesn't like women and I think you've hit the nail on the head! Get them out of here unless they are fitting my sexual or domestic needs...

At any rate, this doesn't 'feel' to be a good thing, IMO.

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. AH, now I see where they're going to get their new recruits.

[Bread and Circus]

10. Interesting, young men can easily be cannon fodder in the minds...

of many. I wonder how they would feel about this.

[tlcandie]

16. I don't think ANY should be...

I don't believe in bottom feeders or cannon fodder nor wars or killing. I believe they are talking about what has been the acceptable, if you will, norm up until now.

Dying is senseless, IMO.

[oldcoot]

25. I do not think that many people are paying attention

The fact that this election is close indicates that not too many people are paying any attention to what is going on in Iraq. If they were paying any attention, they would realize that Bush is totally incompetent. Pat Robertson even provided recent evidence of this fact with his statement that Bush believed there would be no causalities. How dumb is that? You always expect that there will be causalities in a war.

[slappypan]

11. women as cannon fodder

There are examples in history of deliberately sending female soldiers into hopeless combat situations so that they are slaughtered. The idea is to both shame men into joining up, and to decry how evil the enemy must be to kill women. (See the Soviet Union's "Women's Battalions of Death")

[tlcandie]

15. Great points here .. thanks! eom

[NVMojo]

21. please, please send the Bush girls over there!!!

So that they can be the soldiers their father never was!!!

[rocktivity]

12. WANTS more women in combat? Or NEEDS them DESPARATELY

since that would be the only alternative to avoiding a draft until after the election???

:headbang:
rocknation

[Palacsinta]

14. That was my take, too.

nt

[ckramer]

13. Big breasts can distract enemies!

Terrorists are most afraid of frontal nudity.

[tlcandie]

17. Maybe it is a psycops thing because they've used or have tried

and are continuing to try to use all their cultural beliefs against them. See Abu Garib.

Maybe they are thinking that if they put women into the mix it will baffle the people of ME heritage and cause them to think twice before killing?

Who knows what they are thinking...it never seems to be in the interest of living things.

[cally]

19. So we didn't get the ERA because *gasp* women would

go into combat. Now the administration that does more to harm women than any in recent times is willing to send women to combat. This maladministration is sooo hypocritical and corrupt.

[wuushew]

24. The ERA is still alive and kicking

Three more states are required and it looks like Illinois might be the next state to see reason.


National Ratification Status

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http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/

[oldcoot]

27. We got the right to vote after WWI

Hopefully, we will get the ERA after the war in Iraq (which will hopefully end soon-during President Kerry's first term).

[Az_lefty]

22. I thought they were already doing this

when I was in Iraq a support unit with the 82nd airborne rolled in and there were a couple of female soldiers assigned to them. Not Reservists, active Army wearing the 82nd patch.

[Eloriel]

33. That raises an interesting point

Or more accurately helps me focus on something that flitted through my own mind as I read the OP.

Women are already getting killed in Iraq. And, obviously serving in dangerous positions.

Perhaps this is their doublespeak way of putting women in combat for real.

[Nag Champa]

23. Please Please Please.....

let Ann Coulter be the first in line.

[IndianaGreen]

26. It's about time!

The reality is that we have had women in combat roles before, and several have paid the ultimate price in serving their country. It is about time that women in uniform are no longer barred by sexist rules. Women should be allowed to serve in any capacity for which they are qualified, and there should be no positions in which gender is a disqualifier, including the submarine service!

Now, for fairness sakes, let's end the horrible ban on gays in the military!

[oldcoot]

29. Exactly

I agree that the current ban on women in combat is archaic and should be eliminated.

[VegasWolf]

28. Wait until the draft starts and the Valley Girls are sent to foxholes.

New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional

[Merlin]

30. Neocon idealogues want to adopt the Greek device for stimulating courage.

The Greeks encouraged male homosexuality in the military and deliberately stationed male pairs together believing that, with a lover nearby, a man was driven to far greater degrees of courage in battle.

[Robeson]

31. The reason for this is that 9 out of 10 of our combat divisions...

...are deployed or are about to be deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we're running out of fresh bodies to throw into the breech. On the ground, the mighty American military machine, ain't looking so mighty.

[w4rma]

32. The Republicans need more fodder and they can't talk about the draft yet.

I find it interesting that this is what it took for the right-wing wackos to allow them to fight where men fight.

[Jacobin]

34. Ah yes, a little pathos for the nightly news

Brave young girl gives her life for 'our freedoms', video of her prior to death in her cheerleader outfit, then at boot camp....slow, patriotic flag waving music in the background...not a dry eye in the house.

Rove is salivating over this, the creep. Rumsfeld is croaking to try to suppress his giggle.

[jmowreader]

35. What they're really trying to do

There are many "echelons" in the army--fire team, squad, platoon, company, battalion, brigade, division, corps, major command. A fire team consists of four men led by a corporal. A squad is two fire teams (if you're not in the infantry, squad is as low as you go), a platoon is a group of squads with a command element, a company is a group of platoons with a command element, a battalion is a group of companies with a command element...and on up to brigade level. We won't go into divisions and corps right now, because they're too complex for one paragraph.

Women can, right now, work at division level. Their units can be attached to the brigade trains, the support element that accompanies a maneuver brigade. But they can't go down to the maneuver battalions. The Army attaches to each job a Direct Combat Probability Code--the likelihood that someone in that particular position is going to get shot at. DCPC runs from one to four--one is "very likely" to engage in combat; four is "extremely unlikely." The people at the Pentagon are all DCPC 4. Combat arms jobs like infantry don't have a DCPC, because going out and picking fights with the enemy is the raison d'etre of the infantry.

The Army wants to allow women to support maneuver battalions. This has good points and bad points. To the positive: it makes personnel management very easy in the service and support battalions. The way things are now, if an air defense artillery battalion needs a support platoon, the first sergeant has to pick and choose who to go, meaning any platoon cohesion he had in peacetime no longer applies. (Admittedly, S&S units are small enough that everyone in the unit knows everyone else already.) Under this new scheme, Top just sends third platoon down to the 1/3 Air Defense Artillery. (1/3 ADA is the only unit I ever saw that put its battalion aid station inside the mess hall, and after eating there a few times I knew why.)

The other good point is for female officers: being in a firefight looks good on your Officer Record Brief.

The bad part is that support soldiers attached to maneuver battalions get killed.