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Two decades ago, the Commandant of the Marine Corps declared that women serving in the infantry “would destroy the Marine Corps.” General Robert Barrow explained that, “in three wars—World War II, Korea and Vietnam—I found no place for women to be down in the ground combat element.” He cited the 1950 fighting retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in temperatures of minus 20 degrees, with one Marine division pitted against eight Chinese divisions. Had women comprised 15 percent of his division, Barrow concluded, the Marines would have lost the battle.  “The very nature of women disqualifies them from doing it (killing...

Martin Dempsey, the Army general who's now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a division commander when he got to Baghdad in 2003 and climbed into a Humvee for his first trip off base. "I asked the driver ... who he was (and) where he was from," the general remembers, "and I slapped the turret gunner around the leg and I said, 'Who are you?' And she leaned down and said, 'I'm Amanda.' "And I said, 'Ah, OK.' So female turret gunner protecting division commander." One of the things that makes a good commander is the speed...

A senior Defense Department official said the ban on women in combat should be lifted because the military's goal is "to provide a level, gender-neutral playing field." I'd like to think the goal of the military should be to have the toughest, meanest fighting force possible. But let's look at "gender-neutral playing field." The Army's physical fitness test in basic training is a three-event physical performance test used to assess endurance. The minimum requirement for 17- to 21-year-old males is 35 pushups, 47 situps and a two-mile run in 16 minutes, 36 seconds or less. For females of the same...

Senseless advice and nothing nice; that’s what little-girls-in-combat policy is made of. The obvious has already been said about placing women in front-line combat positions. Their presence will reduce unit cohesiveness; male soldiers’ natural instinct to protect women will influence battlefield decisions; there will be the problem of sexual impropriety within the ranks and of rape when women are captured; women will have more trouble measuring up to the physical and psychological demands of battle; special accommodations will no doubt be made so that women may tend to feminine concerns; and, as the high pregnancy rate aboard naval vessels has...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Another one of the many military jobs on the front lines of combat may be opening to women: Flying the high-tech helicopters that move special forces under cover of darkness for missions like the one that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The Army's most elite aviation unit has proposed a test program to let women serve as pilots and crew chiefs, pending congressional approval. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., and known as the Night Stalkers, decided to give women a trial as pilots and crew chiefs as part of...

New London — Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said the military's ban on women in combat had become embarrassing, and the decision to lift it may one day affect the draft. "What we've really done is spun the paradigm on its head," Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in his first visit to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Thursday. The question isn't "should a woman serve" in a job specialty, Dempsey said, it's "why shouldn't a woman serve?" "Will this expand into the selective service? It might," he said. "But that's a decision of Congress. I can...

BARSTOW • Women will officially be allowed in combat for the first time in U.S. history, the Secretary of Defense announced last week, and Fort Irwin’s commanding general says he welcomes the change. “Since the onset of the conflict (in Afghanistan), I’ve seen men and women do exciting things on the battlefield and that is truly amazing,” Brig. Gen. Terry Ferrell said. “The enemy we face doesn’t distinguish between men and women.” Ferrell said the National Training Center has placed women in different Military Occupation Specialties (MOS) since May 2012. “From a normal progression, it’s not surprising,” he said. “Our...

And so it came, the coup de grace. The final "barrier" to "opportunities" for women in combat is no more. With a stroke of their pens, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin E. Dempsey decreed that no battlefield mission or military role is off-limits to the female sex. The defense secretary and the general thus liberated mothers, daughters, sisters and wives to kill and be killed in the infantry, commando raids, even in Obama administration "overseas contingency operations." In so doing, they also slashed away at that last institutional protection for the space that separates...

adies, for the first time ever, Uncle Sam soon may be pointing at you. Days after the Pentagon cleared women to take certain combat roles, advocacy groups for military women say another new hour has arrived for all young female adults to register with Selective Service, the giant pool of names collected by the government should America ever opt to revive the draft. The movement to require women ages 18 to 25 to sign up for Selective Service — mirroring the law for all U.S. men in that demographic — is rooted in both active-duty and veteran circles. The Service...

COLUMBIA -- When Jonathan Proffitt, a 28-year-old infantry drill sergeant, first joined the military in 2003, if a woman was present, “we’d just get real cautious.” Nearly a decade later, he said the division’s culture is still unique. “Infantry is its own little world inside the military.” But that world is changing. And even talking about it changing is making people cautious. On Thursday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced an end to the ban on women in direct combat. Fifteen percent, or nearly 202,400, of the U.S. military’s 1.4 million active personnel are women. And more than 280,000 women...

Yes, Dear, I Mean Yes, Sir, I mean Yes Ma’am, I mean Yes, Ms., I mean… It’s absolutely stunning that we’re even talking about this. Have we taken total leave of our senses? --snip-- Opening combat positions to women, our clueless commander in chief says, is an “historic step toward harnessing the talents and skills of all our citizens.” If Obama imagines that one woman in a hundred has what it takes to be a kick-butt, infantry ground-pounder, he’s led a more sheltered life than I ever imagined. Obama ends his statement with this howler: “Today, every American can be...

The head of Special Operations Forces (SOF) says he supports the integration of women into the elite force. “It’s time to do this,” says the organization’s top officer, Adm. William McRaven. “We’ve had women supporting direct Special Operations for quite some time,” he added in remarks Tuesday morning at the Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict conference in Washington. The necessity, he said, is ensuring that all special operators are in peak physical condition. “The one thing we want to make sure [we do is] we maintain our standards,” McRaven said. .... McRaven said that he has been reading recent Pentagon guidance...

This week, the administration that rode to a second term decrying a fictitious war on women by the opposition, opened real fronts on the war on women, perpetuating feminism's worst inconsistencies through its contradictory programs and in the words and deeds of the avatar of these inconsistencies, Hillary Clinton, the "Athena" of low information women voters. Only CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson by her persistence and competence keeps me from burying my head in shame. As the Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper noticed, there was a serious disconnect this week in the administration's approach to women. On the one hand, the president's...

Last Thursday Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and other U.S. military leaders lifted the ban on women serving in combat positions. I, for one, think this is a great idea and have a few modest proposals, if the brass inside the beltway is open to suggestions, on how they should deploy the dames (and whom they should deploy). First off, if you truly want to eviscerate the enemy—namely Muslims—then I propose sending the most nerve grating and foul women Hollywood has to offer straight into hot zones as our forward armies. I’m a thinkin’ starting off with Roseanne Barr, Joy...

Since delusional liberals think that there is no difference in men and women, that women can do anything a man can do, and they want them in the army infantry, Navy Seals and other Special Forces, here is what REAL EQUALITY is........ The NFL will now be 50% females, at all positions. The WNBA will be abolished, women will have to play in the NBA. The NHL will be 50% female. They will play with men. Professional boxing will be for both men and women. The MMA (extreme fighting) will be for men and women, they fight each other. All...

(CNSNews.com) - Gen. Martin Dempsey, President Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that the U.S. military could figure out ways to preserve the privacy of young ladies serving in frontline combat units, including special forces combat units such as the Navy Seals and the U.S. Army’s Delta Force.

Now that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has decreed that women may not be excluded from front line combat positions, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey ordered a review of the standards applied to personnel in these positions. Dempsey's order specifically requires all commanders to justify any minimum standards that would tend to disproportionately impact women. “As it stands now, many of the physical requirements imposed on combat troops are beyond the capabilities of the vast majority of female soldiers,” Dempsey said. “This makes the standards inherently discriminatory and denies these female soldiers equal rights. The...

The makeover is already underway. The armed services are “now developing gender-neutral standards for all of their jobs,” reports the New York Times, replacing the less demanding physical standards for women that each branch has been using heretofore (oh, you mean you didn’t know about those lowered standards?) with a single standard for men and women. The Pentagon “has vowed” that the new gender-neutral standard will not be crafted in order to make it easier for women to join combat units. If you believe that, you probably also believe that colleges hire professors on a race- and gender-blind basis. Here’s...

No one should be surprised at the announcement that women are now going to be serving in combat roles in the U.S. military. This has been heading toward us for a long time, and the only thing surprising about it is that so many people are surprised. Now the only thing that stands between your daughter and involuntary combat service is a determination by some president (or other) that we need to return to conscription, followed by one court decision. There are three points to be made about this in response. First, opposition to this monstrosity is a function of...

When she heard that women would be allowed to serve on the frontlines of battle, former Camp San Luis Obispo garrison commander Lt. Col. Nicole Balliet’s first reaction was, “Well, it’s about time!” The Atascadero native then had to better understand the announcement and its implications. “It’s very overwhelming,” she said of the decision. “It’s a huge validation for all the hard work women have done serving in combat for the past several decades.” The official announcement came after initial reports Wednesday of the Pentagon’s reversal of the 1994 ban on women serving in small frontline combat units. In his...