Free Republic

The only two women to participate in the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course (IOC) failed ongoing tests to determine which infantry positions should be available to women, according to the Marine Corps Times: The women failed the introductory Combat Endurance Test, a punishing test of physical strength and endurance, officials at Marine Corps headquarters said Tuesday. The latest class began March 28 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., with 110 lieutenants participating. Ninety-six men passed the initial endurance test. Twelve men and two women — the only female Marines taking part — failed. The two women both volunteered to participate...

Did anyone else hear Gen Dempsey's interview on NPR yesterday afternoon? He said that they had to bring women into combat, as only one in four young males in our nation were eligible for enlistment due to the national dropout rate and the increased number of legal problems experienced in the young male demographic. Therefore, they had to allow women to enter previously restricted combat fields in order to meet the military requirements. He stated that the physical standards for these fields needed to be "dusted off" and re-examined, as it might be possible that intellectual and other personal attributes...

Seven Myths About “Women in Combat" Written by G.S. Newbold, Lieutenant General, USMC (Ret.) 17 March 2013 Published here with permission from the author. Written By: G.S. Newbold, Lieutenant General, USMC (Ret.) Marine photo / Cpl. Jennifer Pirante Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Michelle Berglin trains for an upcoming deployment at Camp Pendleton in January. Myth #1 – “It’s about women in combat.” No, it’s not. Women are already in combat, and are serving well and professionally. The issue should be more clearly entitled, “Women in the infantry.” And this is a decidedly different proposition. Myth #2 – “Combat has changed”...

President Obama and Sandra Fluke both callthemselves lawyers and “reproductive rights activists” without giving you any indication that they understand the Constitution or basic biology. I’m not a lawyer, but I understand the Constitution. I’m not a reproductive rights activist, but Iaced Biology 101. So I can tell you that Sandra and Barack are wrong when they classify women in combat and contraception as “women’s issues.” Military combat and contraception coverage are not women’s issues. They are freedom issues and freedom is just as important to men as it is to women. Liberals love dismissing “freedom issues” as “women’s issues”...

Truth To VAWA: Libs wink at violence against women by Daniel Clark Congressional Republicans’ halfhearted resistance to the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act has been portrayed as evidence of the GOP’s “War on Women” – a campaign that we know exists because Jay Leno’s wife tells him so, and that’s corroboration enough to satisfy most news editors. The bill would have sailed through, if not for the addition of several Democrat amendments. The most controversial of these allows non-Indian men who are accused of assaulting American Indian women on reservations to be tried by the tribal courts, thereby...

The real war against women is the announced plan of the Obama administration, using outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta as the fall guy, to assign women for the first time in American history to fight our nation’s enemies in military ground combat. That’s real war, with real guns, real bullets and real deaths. This war doesn’t involve only women who have volunteered to serve in our military. It’s a real war against all 18-year-old American girls, because for the first time in our nation’s history they will be required to sign up for the draft and be ready for...

The military leadership is proving to be a solid ally of President Obama in political Washington, adopting his social revolution and willing to serve as backdrops to the White House's campaign-style drive to win the budget battle with Republicans. The armed forces have launched an unrelenting lobbying effort on Capitol Hill with a flood of briefing charts to defense staffers. They show the damage that automatic budget cuts called "sequestration" would do to the troops -- and to jobs in congressional districts. The charts coincide with the White House push to blame congressional Republicans for the spending cuts, which begin...

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that he is hopeful that making the combat roles of women official will create a greater environment of respect for women, which in turn may have an impact on instances of sexual harassment and assault. “I believe it's because we've had separate classes of military personnel, at some level,” he said at a press conference Thursday. General Dempsey was quick to add that sexual assault is “far more complicated than that – but when you have one part of the population that is designated as warriors and another part...

This one’s long but stick with it. The good stuff doesn’t start happening until after we’re treated to the thousandth iteration of Charlie Rangel’s master plan to end war as we know it by reinstituting a military draft which virtually no one supports and which Congress will never again feel safe voting for. A draft which, incidentally, he thinks should now include women: “Now that women can serve in combat they should register for the Selective Service alongside their male counterparts,” Rangel said in a statement. “Reinstating the draft and requiring women to register for the Selective Service would compel...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Hillary Clinton inspired his decision to allow women in combat. “And in many ways, I have to tell you, it was her inspiration that encouraged me to move forward to be able to bring down the last barriers for women in the Department of Defense and to give them the ability to have a chance to engage in combat. I thank you for that inspiration,” Panetta told Clinton at a Pentagon ceremony on Thursday. …

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he would “feel not only comfortable but proud” if he had a daughter serving in a front-line combat position in the U.S. military. … Sen. McCain has seven children, including four sons and three daughters. His son Jimmy served in the Marine Corps and two others—Jack and Doug—are or were Navy pilots. …

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...