Let this old retired maintenance warrant officer spout off on the topic of women in the military one more time. Females in the military do more to undermine the morale then they do to boost it! Call me a male chauvinist pig or whatever. I had a mission and having X number of females replace X number of males meant that the remainder of the males had to pick up the load and carry the females. That is just a plain old ordinary fact of life!
As an NCO I had females selling oral sexual favors to males on breaks. When I put an end to that the males all complained and even some of the women as they were making a few extra bucks on breaks. I had a female soldier offer me sexual favors if I would show her favors in assigning duties. As a warrant officer I had basically the same problems and a PC chain of command that was afraid of offending them. I tried to support the NCO's who felt the same way that I did, but was told to chill and not interfere.
Now we read of a female on ship who had a baby! Talk about exposing her fellow sailors/Marines to risk. This gives the ship's Captain one more concern to plan for when sailing into harm's way.
In no way will I ever infer that a female in a unit is asking for or deserves to be raped. I believe that rape should remain a capitol offense. I just do not want the leaders of our military to have to spend the extra resources needed to prevent it when not exposing women to those conditions would go a long way in preventing it.
Added to this thread:
Does she not carry her beretta with her everywhere even if she leaves her rifle in her bunk? Where is her combat knife? I have a hard time believing someone goes out raping amongst that many armed people.
By MTOE her personnel firearm might be an M9 but more than likely was an M16. This ain't like WWII movies where everyone and their brother packed a M1911A1, an M1 Garand and maybe a BAR, or so Hollywood would have us believe.
There is more going on in this brigade than one rape.
Wonder what their blotter reports looked like at Fort Lewis?