New armed forces scandals revisit the question of why women are in them

No. Why do you ask?

It is MEN, not women, who are exempting women from selective service registration and MEN not women who are keeping women from serving in combat positions (which I agree with on the basis of qualification but not as a wholesale exclusion based on sex alone).

As I've said, I'm not a proponent of women in combat on any type of quota system whatsoever. But if there are women who are qualified (and I believe there are a very small minority who are) then they should be allowed to serve in that capacity. Also, in a all volunteer military like we have now, the military should not be excluding ANY qualified persons who can serve in any capacity, be it combat or any other. We cannot afford to turn away qualified persons who are patriotic enough to enlist.

Incidently, not all men are qualified for combat. The military finds useful positions for people of all kinds of aptitudes. Proportionally, more people are involved in logistics and support positions.

Are men who never serve in the military or who never see combat "not equal" with men who have?

That spells an agenda and that agenda is bigottry and hate.

You caught me and my agenda red handed. I joined FR and have been waiting around all these many months just so I could advance my woman hating agenda. Since I've been outed I guess I have to leave now.....not

You didn't mention the behaviour of the male soldiers

Do I really have to? It seems to me that the reputation of the male soldier is quite well known. It was the female soldier being spoke of in the article, not the male soldier. Besides that, the male soldier has proven himself many times over, both in and out of combat. This cannot be said of the female soldier.

Why don't you hold male soldiers to the same moral standards Mr. Highhorse?

Well I guess it's because I expected more from a woman than I did a man when it came to sex. Call me a monster if you want. I guess it might be that my upbringing never prepared me for one woman taking on multiple sex partners at one time....and then bragging about it. I guess my hypocritical upbringing never prepared me for women having fellatio contests to see who could hold the most cum in their mouths. I guess my hypocritical upbringing never prepared me for hearing a young lady brag that she can fit two dicks in her ass and proved it the night before. I could go on, but I do not want to be banned. Now you are right, the male soldiers were just as cupable as the females, but as I said, I just expected more from a woman. If that makes me an evil bigoted male chavenist pig, so be it.

I didn't say anything you said was untrue. I said it was hate speech, biggotted and by the way hypocritical.

So it's true, but I'm not allowed to say it because if I do I'm a bigot and a hypocrit. Hmm. You sound like typical liberal feminist. G*d forbid I call a spade a spade. That's politically incorrect.

In case you missed it, we have a VOLUNTEER army. Nobody is taking jobs away from anyone.

Ah, now see madam, here is where you let every veteren know that you are clueless and know not of what you speak.

Yes, it is a volunteer military. However, there are a finite amount of slots. Some slots are very competitive and very hard to get into because there are not a lot of them from the get go. When a female receives such a slot and doesn't pull her weight, it hurts everyone. Pulling her weight can mean a lot of things. For instance, she's in x slot, but cannot perform her job functions because she's gotten herself knocked up. This puts a strain on her peers because they have to take up her slack, yet the unit cannot get a person to replace her because she is still there. She may be working as a clerk or a driver or who knows what, but as far as PERSCOM is concerned, she's still filling the slot.

Or how about if she gets knocked up in a CZ. She gets to go back home to a cushy desk job, while her male comrades are living in the mud in a tent. What makes it worse is that after hostilities are over, the Joe's who stayed and pulled their weight cannot go to a well earned desk job because the knocked up females have them all. So off they go to another tactical unit.

And I won't even get into the fact that women are not held to the same standard as men when it comes to PT, yet want to be treated as full fledged soldiers.

Are men who never serve in the military or who never see combat "not equal" with men who have?

In the eyes of the law yes they are. In the eyes of this vet, no they are not.

Let me restate so it makes a little more sense, as I misread the question In the eyes of the law non-vets are equal, in the eyes of this vet, no they are not equal.

Sorry Lorianne your lack of military service shows. Please don't think I am bashing you because I don't mean to. I have seen unqualified females promoted over excellant soldiers because of quotas and sexual favors. This does take jobs away from the truely qualified.

After Desert Storm one Reserve unit I am familiar with had a 100% divorce rate among both males and females because of all the little trysts during deployment.

The military is not a social experiment. Our job is to kill people and bust up their stuff so they never screw with us again.

First, you can post all the anecdotal stories you want and that proves nothing. You can't prove that women are more or less "immoral" or behave better or worse in their personal lives while in the military. If we want to talk about morality, I've posted above about the tens of thousand of abandoned kids fathered by US military personell in overseas deployements. These are real hard facts, not anectodotes about people engaging in oral and anal sex.

In terms of disciplinary action and criminal involvement, I'd like to see some stats on what percentage of women and men are cited for deriliction of duty instead of hearsay anecdotes about personal behaviour.

Secondly, females haven't proven themselves in combat because they haven't been there. So that is a red herring argument. Anyway, the majority of men in the military do not do combat duty. The military puts people in combat for specific reasons. The military would be wise (and is) in hiring people for specific expertise, such as logistics, tactical and technical capabilities. They're not going to put their top technical and logistics people on the front lines, nor should they. Nor would they put everyone in combat and leave no one for supply and backup operations. It's simply ludicrous to equate combat with military service. Most military people, even in wartime, never see combat. My grandfather was an ace mechanic in WWII. He was kept well behind enemy lines fixing machinery and transport vehicles. It would have made no tactical sense to put him in combat. He saved more lives doing what he was good at doing.

Thirdly, I am not a liberal but I am a feminist. However, your collectivist thinking is more indicative of liberals who use collective "group think" to form agendas.

Fourthy, if the military has problems with personell assignement, that has nothing to do with women but how they manage personell. They should look at changing their policies. What do they do if a male has to be on medical leave or is withdrawn for disciplinary action? Again, I'd like to see some numbers on demographic percentages of people pulled from active duty for medical reasons.

Meanwhile, while you're demonizing females off the top of your head, I found some interesting information on attrition rates. The overall attrition rate in the military for people not fulfilling their contract for their first tour for various reasons including medical reasons, drug use, inability to perform duties ect. is 30%. The attrition breakdown rate is:

White male: 33%

White female: 43%

Black male: 33%

Black female: 33%

Hispanic male: 26%

Hispanic female: 31%

It appears to me that while white women do seem to have a higher than average attrition rate, other females are in line with the average and with men in general. Overall it seems a 30% attritio rate points to very poor screening practices. I would hope the military would work on that one.

One could imagine that the attrition rate would be much higher under a draft. Even so, Lew Brodsky, director of congressional and government affairs for the SSS (selective service) has said that if a draft is ever reinacted women will most certainly be needed to fill all the positions such a dire situation and reinstating a draft would imply, particularly in the medical service. This is because we have a much smaller pool of younger people to draw from than in previous wars.

"The 2000 Census estimates that 6.6 million of the 8.5 million health care practitioners, technical and support occupations, are women. Though the database was never collected, Brodsky said the "preponderance of women" in the health care field makes it inevitable to include them in any future database development." (draft registration)

But if there are women who are qualified (and I believe there are a very small minority who are) then they should be allowed to serve in that capacity.

Not only "no", but HELL NO! My husband was a submariner for 9 years. There was talk about putting women in submarines. All it would take is one skanky little ho claiming, "He touched my breast" as they passed in the "hallway" and the guys would have been toast.

Sorry Lorianne your lack of military service shows. Please don't think I am bashing you because I don't mean to. I have seen unqualified females promoted over excellant soldiers because of quotas and sexual favors. This does take jobs away from the truely qualified.

If this is true, it is a problem that can be fixed through changing procedures. Because a system is corrupt or inept is no reason to say that the female half of the population is unworthy to serve. I don't think any advocates promoting unqualified persons. And as I've said, the military is no place for quotas. It should be performance based. Increasingly, as the military becomes more technilogical, I expect to see them enlist lots of people formerly unable to serve, such as disabled people. Not on quotas, but if a wheelchair bound person was a crack code breaker, wouldn't the military want him on board? I see the military having to adapt to a compete with the private sector for the best and the brightest, and not necessarily just throwing bodies at a problem, which has been the model to date. Sheer numbers of people who are difficult to train and with the high attrition rate show that the enlistement policies need to change.

After Desert Storm one Reserve unit I am familiar with had a 100% divorce rate among both males and females because of all the little trysts during deployment.

Again, it takes two to tango. If people are acting irresponsibly or inappropriately on government time they should be disciplined. Otherwise, this is their private business. Also, are you saying married men were chaste before women were deployed with them?

The military is not a social experiment. Our job is to kill people and bust up their stuff so they never screw with us again.

I agree. Which is why with a VOLUNTEER army which pays low they have to take what they can get, or (my preference) they should compete with the best out there for personell by having stricter standards but compensating people better. Right now the military doesn't do that, and recruits lower income, lower educated, young people (raw recruits). This is fine, as long as you accept that along with that comes problems and that have to be dealt with. I cited above an overall attrition rate of 30% of people who do not finish their initial contract. 14% of those drop out after only 6 months. This tells me the overall entrance standards and screening practicies need review and overhaul.

Lorainne, don't fight it, we see these types of soldiers everyday here on post. It's easier to degrade the whole sex, than to admit anything else. Women take much needed slots or even rank. That may be true, but it is very true with some men as well. And for every woman, you can damn well bet there is a male soldier pulling the same crap as SOME of those women, riding sick call to get out of P.T., whining... pulling the rest of the team/squad down. Trust me you could turn this into a never ending sex war with this mind set... it's not worth it.

God forbid! Don't ask what sex seems to get more DUI's, on post bar brawls, or seem to visit ADAPCP more than the other.... And once a soldier gets to SSG or MAJ and above it's all DA select, so anyone going "career military" these days has to have a D.A. photo and a good set of either NCOER's or OER's to back up getting that rank (and in most all cases that male OR FEMALE DESERVES the higher rank).

I believe if women want to serve in combat arms M.O.S.'s there should be VERY RIGOROUS standards set in letting them do so, even to possibly designating an all sex battalion. And as far as these soldiers that think their women hating attitude is not because of their bias observations, Just tell them to go and DX their attitudes. And just because your not "active duty" does not make your points any less valid or possibly untrue.

Women who received the Distinguished Service Cross - WWI

Jane Jeffery: English Red Cross nurse serving with the American Red Cross; severely wounded during an air raid, refused to leave her post and continued to help others.

Beatrice M. MacDonald: wounded in Belgium during an air raid at a casualty clearing station and lost sight in her right eye.

Helen Grace McClelland: also on duty with the surgical team at the British casualty clearing station and cared for Beatrice MacDonald during the air raid.

Eva Jean Parmelee: although wounded in air raid she continued to serve throughout the emergency.

Isabelle Stambaugh: seriously wounded in an air raid at a British casualty clearing station in Amiens, while working in the operating room with a surgical team.

Reconstruction Aide Emma S. Sloan

Mary Roberts Wilson was the first woman to be awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in combat for her action during the battle of Anzio during World War II. With her Army evacuation hospital under German shellfire, Wilson continued supervising her nursing staff of 50, allowing the hospital to continue functioning. Tom Brokaw devoted an entire chapter to Wilson's exploits in his best-selling paean to World War II-era Americans, The Greatest Generation.

When the Germans bombed the field hospital at Anzio beach, Italy during WWII medical personnel evacuated forty-two patients by flashlight without incident, and for their bravery four nurses:1st Lt. Mary Roberts, 2d Lt. Elaine Roe, 2d Lt. Virginia Rourke, and 2d Lt. Ellen Ainsworth, received the first Silver Star medals awarded to women in the U.S. Army. Ainsworth, who was killed during the attack, was awarded the medal posthumously.

On Sept. 1, 1999 Sgt. 1st Class Jeanne M. Balcombe, of the 1st Platoon, 55th Military Police Company, was posthumously awarded the Soldiers Medal for heroism in the face of danger. While on duty on Aug. 21st 1999, Balcombe's quick thinking and selfless response safeguarded and protected others at the Troop Medical Clinic at Camp Red Cloud, Korea. She placed herself in harm's way between three soldiers and an armed gunman.

Colonel Ruby Bradley is America's most decorated military woman. She served in WWII - and was a POW for 37 months in a Japanese prison camp. Later she was a frontline U.S. Army nurse in Korea on the day 100,000 Chinese soldiers overran American troops and started closing in on her hospital tent. Col. Bradley has earned 34 medals and citations for bravery, including two Bronze stars. She retired from the Army in 1963, but remained a nurse all her working life.

The first woman to receive The Purple Heart as a result of combat was 1Lt Annie G. Fox, while serving at Hickam Field during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7 1941. Lt Fox was later awarded the Bronze Star.

And the list goes on and on and on and on and on.......

So you have decide that all women are unqualified and apt to do such a thing on the basis of...? Dianna's Law?

You are engaging in collectivist demonizing and pure speculation. It is irrational. Even if it was true, under your logic, men should not be allowed to serve in the military since some of them have been convicted of rape. Since a few have, all men should be held accountable for the actions of a few. After all, we know some men are going to rape. So why not indict all men pre-emptively before they get around to doing it?

You are engaging in collectivist demonizing and pure speculation. It is irrational. Even if it was true, under your logic, men should not be allowed to serve in the military since some of them have been convicted of rape. Since a few have, all men should be held accountable for the actions of a few. After all, we know some men are going to rape. So why not indict all men pre-emptively before they get around to doing it?

No, what I am saying is that "some" women will engage in this behavior. Some women in every profession do, and being in close quarters on a submarine gives added "opportunities". The men, because of PC bullcrap have NO way to defend themselves. In this sense the women are getting special treatment not afforded by men because the brass will roll over every time.

I think our servicemen have enough to deal with, they shouldn't have to perform their job attached to the hip of another guy so that they can be sure to have a witness. The JOB is paramount, not "equality".

First, you can post all the anecdotal stories you want and that proves nothing.

I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone. I gave an opinion based on my experiences. You disagree with my opinion and that's fine.

It's simply ludicrous to equate combat with military service.

After rereading my post, I can see where I made it look like this is what I meant. I should have been more clear. You asked someone whether "men who never serve in the military or who never see combat "not equal" with men who have?"

I said yes, but did not clarify. I have nothing but gratitude and respect for non-combat arms folks. When I said "In the eyes of the law yes they are. In the eyes of this vet, no they are not," I was speaking of men who served in the military vs. men who did not. I have never met a combat arms soldier who did not appreciate a non-combat arms soldier, although we gave them a rash of good natured sh*t. They kept us supplied, fed and in good health, as well as allowed us to communicate with each other and fly/ride at times. My apologies to your father and any vet who reads my first post. It was not my intention to disparage.

The military puts people in combat for specific reasons. The military would be wise (and is) in hiring people for specific expertise, such as logistics, tactical and technical capabilities. They're not going to put their top technical and logistics people on the front lines, nor should they. Nor would they put everyone in combat and leave no one for supply and backup operations.

Thank you for explaining the military to me, but there is no need. Instead of talking about it, why don't you go join and live it. You know, serve your country, give something back?

However, your collectivist thinking

Please provide an example of collectivist thinking in my posts.

Fourthy, if the military has problems with personell assignement, that has nothing to do with women but how they manage personell.

Can't argue with that. If I was king for a day, if a single woman got herself knocked up, she would get administrative punishment (article 15), the same as she could get if she wound up with an STD. I would then kick her out of the military to free the slot for a qualified soldier. Darn. There I go being a male chauvanist pig again.

I am not a liberal but I am a feminist.

I've never heard of a non-liberal feminist. What does a non-liberal feminist believe or not believe that a liberal feminist believes (or doesn't believe)?

Army Major Rhonda Coraum (sic Cornum) was neither raped nor sodomized.

I must respectfully disagree. She testified that she was "violated orally, vaginally and digitally." I believe it was Congressional testimony. There was scant news coverage of the event, however. I am not sure if this was because they wanted to protect her dignity, or because the media viewed it as an inconvenient series of events during the upcoming politically charged debate regarding women in combat roles.

She testified that one of her guards fondled a breast while they were riding in the back of truck. That guard was repremaned by a fellow guard.

Again, I am not trying to be contrarian--but I believe she said that after being pulled from the wreckage of the helicopter with 2 broken arms, one of the guards unzipper her flight suit and did as you said. She stated he was afraid of it being discovered by another Iraqi guard, and that this guard later sexually abused her in prison.

Whatever happened to Army Specialist Melissa Coleman has never been made public.

The DoD did confirm that "both women POWs were raped." Starts and Stripes also reported it, although they later downplayed this release. I cannot find it on the net--my apologies. Specialist Coleman was very young when captured, and I saw her when she was released along with the other POWs. She looked awful, almost robotic. I thought she gave an interview to some womans magazine about 4 years ago, but I cannot recall if she went into details.

This is a fixable problem. Form some all-female companies, led by female officers and NCOs. Issue paintball guns, take 'em to Ft. Hood, and "let the games begin." NB In the spring or fall - not high summer. Ft. Hood in the summer, you need that ol' Y chromosome.

So because something "might" happen we should head it off at the pass by excluding a qualified person because of what they "might" do.

You know some of our male intelligence people have given out information to women they got involved with. Since they "might" do this we should not hire male CIA agents.

Our sources of information disagree. Since I have not talked to Cornum in person, I will have to admit one of us has bad information.

I agree there is conflicting information surround the testimoney of (then) Maj Cornum---now Col Cornum.

There are over 200 "hits" on her name in yahoo alone, many of them fawning, or with an agenda. But, then, this forum can be said to have an "agenda" also.

There is this letter, however, which does confirm that Cornum has been inconsistent on her portrayal of what exactly occurred. As I said, I am positive she told others she was raped, and then downplayed the incident into on "molestation."

Another Gulf War POW testified that he attempted to stop several Iraqi guards from raping her again, and was beaten "to a pulp."

Regardless, I mention this only because I believe it relevant to this debate. I wish to say to all our wonderful vets, both male and female--that you have done a tremendous service to your nation. To belittle all women in the ranks as "whores" as I read in previous posts is wrong and impugns the integrity of women who have served honorably.

To paraphrase Bismarck "if the Canadian Army invaded I'd send the(nearest big city) police force to arrest them".

To paraphrase Bismarck "if the Canadian Army invaded I'd send the(nearest big city) police force to arrest them".

Maybe they would have done better than the Germans at Vimy, Ortona, Juno Beach, Falaise, Caen, Holland, etc, etc, etc...