Fortress: The shootings took place at the U.S. naval base in Bahrain
Posted on 10/23/2007 8:08:10 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
U.S. sailor shoots two female colleagues on Bahrain base in 'love triangle' killings
Last updated at 17:04pm on 22nd October 2007
A U.S. Navy sailor allegedly shot and killed two female sailors early Monday on a U.S. military base in Bahrain, a Navy official said.
Initial reports suggest the shooting was the result of a "love triangle," according to a State Department official.
The alleged shooter, a male, was critically wounded in the incident in the barracks on the U.S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain base.
Fortress: The shootings took place at the U.S. naval base in Bahrain
The shootings took place around 2am, the Navy has said. Officials closed the base temporarily and reopened it about an hour after the incident.
The two women were pronounced dead at the scene, and the man was taken to a local hospital in critical condition.
No other details were immediately available, and the Navy said it was not releasing the names of those involved until their families were notified.
"The incident is under investigation, and it would not be prudent to discuss details at this time," said Navy spokesman Lt. John Gay.
Bahrain, a tiny island nation on the Persian Gulf, is a U.S. ally and home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which is responsible for an area of about 2.5 million square miles (6.5 million sq. kilometres) of water including the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean.
About 3,600 personnel work on the U.S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain base, located just outside Bahrain's capital, Manama. The base supports U.S. naval ships in the region.
I think it adds fuel to the argument wackos should not be deployed
FWIW.
Why? The man was the shooter, not the women. If anything, it would add fuel to the argument that the Navy should be women-only since women rarely go on psychotic killing sprees when they're spurned, certain former astronauts to the contrary not withstanding.
Thats what I said. Why you axing?
“That said and all due respect for your service, any nation at war that cannot fill it’s ranks with able bodied men to do it’s fighting and sends women in their stead for whatever reason while said able bodied males sit at home pimping out their rides or smoking dope or whatever is not a culture that will ultimately prevail against a determined foe.”
I agree with you, and interestingly enough, I find the most virulent opposition to women in the military comes from men who have not served. To which I say, “join up so the women can come home.” But unless and until the men step up in much greater numbers, and I don’t see that happening any time soon, the realities of military planning demand that women serve in the military alongside men. There are not enough men to man the ships, so women fill the gap. There are not enough men to do all the overseas tours, so women fill the gap. That inevitably brings social problems, and I’m not trying to deny that. I speak as a former officer who did one shore tour where all the pregnant women off one squadron of ships were reassigned to my division because it was assumed that as a female, I would be better at handling pregnant women. No picnic, I assure you. None of the women even had the right security clearance. But I digress.
My point is that given the demographics of the military and the fact that there are not enough male volunteers to man the force, women and men have to serve together. It is unavoidable. My impatience is with those who will not accept that reality and offer simplistic, unworkable, feel-good solutions like, “just send ‘em home.”
Like he found out his girlfriend was bi or something?
Are you kidding? If he found out his girlfriend was bi, he could have wanted to see the two have sex but the one girl said no...could be the start of the story. Where we could go from here. lol
Sadly yes. Women are invaluable to the service but mixing men and women in the close confines of a ship is just asking for trouble (I've witnessed repeatedly). IMHO Commands (ships/squadrons) should be made up of entirely one gender while shore Commands could stay mixed. Just my 20+ years two cents fwiw.
I need evidence they did something wrong. The only facts we have right now are that two women in the barracks have been shot, presumably by a man who then turned the gun on himself. A quick google search reveals that the Navy is releasing no other information pending notification of next of kin, and that the “love triangle” angle is lurid media speculation. If facts come to light that reveal these women did something to cause themselves to be shot, I’ll be the first in line to cast aspersions. But at the present time, we just don’t know.
“The male sailor killed two female sailors and then turned the gun on himself. Last I saw, he’s in critical condition.”
Since you seem to know whats going on, what was the motive? Was his girlfriend cheating on him with another woman? Seems very unusual.
There is a little more to the story of women in the Armed forces.
After the Viet Nam War, enlistments decreased and the military was running short on personnel. Women’s groups recognized an opening and pressured congress to open up slots for women.
The different branches of the military saw the writing on the wall, so they began studying what skills were required for each job. (Example: a truck driver needed to have the upper body strength to be able to change a large truck tire.) These requirements were to elliminate gender selection and only permit those people with the minimum skills the ability to get the training and do the job.
Initial testing of job requirements in the Navy and Army showed that a large percentage of women could not perform the minimum requirements. When the Womens groups saw the results of the testings, they were outraged. They wanted guarenteed 50-50% splitting of males and females in jobs. Testing showed that most jobs were 75-25% in favor of men. Some jobs had 0% of women who met the minumum standards.
Womens groups applied pressure to different influential Congressmen and standards requirements were dropped. The military would lose critical funding at a time when they were seriously hurting, if they stuck to the standards testing, so they caved.
I served on a submarine, so we didn’t have women on board, but I also served part-time on board our Tender and saw a few indiscrepancies. On Damage control parties, women didn’t carry the portable pumps or haul heavy hoses. This then made a lot of women in charge of DC parties, because all the men had to do the heavy lifting. What do you think that did to morale to find that your junior female seamen gets leadership kudos on her evals for DC party leadership, but the senior males get nothing because “all they did was the heavy work?”
I also saw women in maintenance divisions (MM, BT, etc.) who didn’t do the heavy lifting. This made more physical labor for the men and less desk work. (Desk work on the sub was something you busted your @ss to get, but women on surface ships got it just by being female.)
One other anomoly with women in the Navy is pregnancy. When a women got pregnant she was not taken off of the departments billet. What this does is cuts into other peoples leave time. Billeting is designed to allow for illnesses and leaves, but pregnancy is ‘special condition’ which screws over everyone else in the division. When you saw that many divisions had about a 30-50% female composition, you can see how multiple pregnancies really mess with division morale.
Last but not least, guys are suckers for a real cutie. SN Pretty Face only needs to giggle and watch her ‘work load’ get carried by someone else. All that does is put sexual tension in a workforce that doesn’t need any more stress.
I’m not completely against women in the services, but the way in which it was implemented and the PC way in which problems with women in the military gets handled makes the military less effective. If the Military went by realistic standards, called a problem sailor/soldier/etc a problem regardless of sex, and seriously looked at the impact on unit integrity, then this integration can really be beneficial. Until then, we are ignoring a weakness in our military structure.
Sincerely
That sounded like it could have come from a Muslim. Just replace the Bible references with the appropriate Quran references and tell the women to get back barefoot in the kitchen.
Remember this, though: that the woman wrote of her own convictions, and was not pressured to write by anyone.
If you don’t like women in ships, take it up with the ghost of Ronald Reagan. It is he who greatly expanded the until then minuscule “women in ships” program, opening large numbers of new types of ships to females, because he was expanding the Navy at such a rate that there weren’t enough men to fill the billets. So, in a sense, one can say that the willingness of women to go aboard ships helped to win the Cold War. Even though we never got to Reagan’s vision of a 600-ship Navy, the manning problems still exist today. There simply aren’t enough men.
I have served on a ship, which I will not name. As for prostitution rings, the only one I ever heard of was run by the Asian wives of sailors out of the laundromat at the Yokosuka Naval Base back in the 80s. None of the women were active duty.
They were just integrating WACS into Headquarters Battery in my Battalion in Germany in 1975 era. “They” wanted the WACS quartered in HB barracks. The CO said, “No way”, he wasn’t running a whorehouse. The WACS stayed with a WAC unit about 10 miles away and were bussed in every day. I think he made the right call in terms of discipline and unit cohesiveness. He wouldn’t have any choice today.
You can ride the WAVES, but ya gotta watch out for the sand crabs ( especially the big ones ).... :)
We don’t know yet if this was a love triangle.
And I’m sorry for your loss.
I think the guy was upset because the triangle was the two gals. Women shouldn’t be in combat zones. Period.
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