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By your own admission, you are reporting the women don't "man" the checkpoints. That very few if any go on patrol. Do they pull guard duty? The biggest problem that we had with females deploying during Desert Shield/Storm was getting pregnant and the double duty men would have to do to make up for that loss. I know that is still going on. The only question is whether it is still out of control. I guess that some of the hard question(s) are:

1) I'm sure that the women that get pregnant are redeployed and not offered abortions. At West Point, female cadets are given a 'pass' to get abortions .... somehow I doubt if that works in Iraq.

2) How many of the 38-40 women KIA were pregnant? (Best guess would be at least some of them were...)

3) How many other soldiers have died as an indirect response to having to do 'double duty'?

Gulf War I. . .spinning up to deploy. . .I was the Brigade ALO and waiting outside the S-3's office to talk about some issue. Inside the next office was a young, unmarried, very pregnant woman. She was crying. She was pleading with the first sgt to not be left behind. She cried, "Don't leave me, I will go to the hospital, I'll induce, I'll have a C-section. . ."

A "woman" wanting to have her baby delivered early, to have belly sliced open and her newborn left behind just so she could deploy for war. . .there is something fundamentally wrong about that. . .on many and all levels. . .ghastly.