Jack? He's most excellent and as photogenic as ever.
Posted on 03/25/2003 5:39:00 PM PST by Dajjal
Fleischer: Rape of POWs 'not worth mentioning'
Spokesman fails to address issue of U.S. women held by enemy
Editor's note: Each week, WorldNetDaily White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asks the tough questions no one else will ask. And each week, WorldNetDaily brings you the transcripts of those dialogues with the president and his spokesman. If you'd like to suggest a question for the White House, submit it to WorldNetDaily's exclusive interactive forum MR. PRESIDENT!
By Les Kinsolving
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
At today's White House news briefing, WND asked presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer about the Iraqis' holding of a female United States soldier as a prisoner of war and how it relates to the issue of women in combat.
WND: Ari, one of the U.S. POWs in Iraq is Shoshana Johnson of Texas, while The New York Times this morning reports that Pfc. Jessica Lynch of West Virginia is missing or captured. And during Desert Storm, Maj. Rhonda Cornum was captured and gang-raped, while the other U.S. female prisoner of war would neither confirm or deny that she, too, was gang-raped. And my question, does the president think that the Iraqi army has somehow changed to avoid the raping of female prisoners?
FLEISCHER: Lester –
WND: Or does he believe that it would be wise –
FLEISCHER: Lester –
WND: – to keep the women out of combat areas?
FLEISCHER: The history of our military is that men and women have served this nation honorably and with distinction. The treatment of prisoners by Saddam Hussein is the only point worth mentioning here. It's a given that men and women serve our country with dignity, that Saddam Hussein's regime had better not harm our prisoners. The president has made that clear. … Lester, no follow-up.
The Washington Times reported yesterday that Johnson was the first U.S. female held as a POW since the Clinton administration's military leaders repealed a rule barring servicewomen from positions with a high risk of encountering enemy fire or capture.
"It's bad when a man is captured. But if a woman is captured, she doesn't have the same chance [to defend herself] that a man does," Elaine Donnelly, president of the Military Readiness Center, told the paper.
Said retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, "You must consider that women in every society are preyed upon if they are overtaken. ... Now that women are closer to the front lines, they are more subject to becoming captives and being manipulated."
Submit a question to the MR. PRESIDENT! forum.
Les Kinsolving is WorldNetDaily’s White House correspondent and a talk-show host for WCBM in Baltimore.
Now back to points. Since women in hazardious zones started in WWII do you think Patton was a PC moron?
There is absolutely no comparison to the roles of women in WWII, Korea and Vietnam to their present roles in GWII -- and George Patton would slap you from his grave for pretending there is. Back then, women weren't called Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines; they were called WACs, WAVES, WAFs and WMs, and there were no illusions that their roles stretched beyond home front and rear area support to fighting men. They served admirably in medicine and administration, and ferried trucks and planes -- but they were never intentionally deployed near enemy forces. No longer cherished, today's females are just more meat for the slaughter.
The woman captured WASN'T in a front line unit, she was in a backup maintentance unit.
That is true. However, she was assigned to a mobile contact team which was assigned to a forward position in support of a frontline combat unit. This role is called Combat Support. Because of the likelihood of enemy contact, such units were all male until the late 1980s, when the United States government reinvented human nature.
...my view on women in combat zones comes straight from my mother, a Viet Nam era Marine whom I garauntee can STILL outshoot you, out pummel you, and out drink you. People that have the will and the skill should be on the frontline.
I'm sure your mother is a fine lady and was an outstanding Woman Marine. But never in your wildest Zena fantasies would she last a day in close combat with men. It has been tried before, my friend, and for myriad reasons always failed.
We can pretend about human nature all we want, but it is that same denial which has placed our young women in such an awful position to begin with. We've all seen the photos of the pretty young girl from West Virginia. If there is one among us who did not immediately think of what any enemy troops would do to her if they caught her, I'll call that person a liar. Let us not pretend about her, and let us not pretend about where we send our females in future wars...
I've got three Bichons.
I switched them over to Nutro Natural Choice two months ago, and the older one (9 years old) is doing a whole lot better. He's had some joint problems, but the glucosamine in the Nutro has added five years to his little body.
The other two are doing fine.
How are yours?
Jack? He's most excellent and as photogenic as ever.
Agree.
I have prayed several times today for this lady, and I keep asking the Lord to give her strength to deal with these vicious animals.
The same goes to the rest of our POWs.
You're all feminized and silly. A silly boy throwing a temper tantrum. Scroll up, I didn't insult your mom once. I guess it's hard to read when you can't even garner any common sense. Obviously you didn't follow your families grand tradidion and serve, or you probably wouldn't be spouting your bullflop.
Sorry bud, it's not about what you want, or what your mom wanted, or what the Frisco bull-dykes in NOW want. It's not about the individual. Engaging the enemy, accomplishing the mission and helping your buddies see their families again comes first. Sour puss women who think they have a right to screw up unit cohesion come last. Did your mom put all that silly glop in your head because she was bitter when she didn't get play with the boys, or do you come up with this vacuous nonsense on your own.
You can't even figure out that the battlefield psychology goes way beyond any physical test. You would have women with crew cuts taking a crap in front of a few hundred men just so you goo-brains can give the "right" to get mangled to a chick. You'd have an experiment in human desires gone horribly wrong just to satisfy some warped, asinine sense of fairness.
Your fairness is other people's deaths, other families ruined or a mission gone wrong. Get a friggin' grip for crissake.
Is there a point to your mindless blitherings? A female is in fact weaker and they are in fact a much greater liability in a combat situation. Got that? The issue arises because it is in fact happening.
It causes great pain.
OMG, where do people come up with this stuff? That's a good one.
No, I'm "demanding that" when we send people into a meat grinder that they enable them to get from point a to point b in the most efficient effective way possible. That's how you save human life.
Women do not belong on a battlefield. It's simply absurd in so many ways.
"War is Hell."
You know what? The torture of a woman causes far greater pain to the military unit regardless of whether it is equal or not. The use of a woman in combat will cause a shift in focus from the unit to the individual, the woman. The torture of the woman will cause an almost immediate breakdown.
The lack of a cohesive front is a further argument against the spread of women into wider ranges of occupation specialties, and is directly attributable to the capture of the two Army females. To answer your question about the aid station, combat and combat support units were assigned to protect those medical units. As a result, we didn't hear of many nurses being captured. Today, we pretend they are just like the guys.
You can think that. But according to the citations from the Marine Corp[sic] you'd be wrong. I have the added bonus of my father also being a Marine and being able to compare their scores... she was a better shot than him, not as fast a runner but still within Corp[sic] limits.
The integration of women into the services has seen the steady erosion of physical toughness required of the average servicemember. Ask your father about the old Physical Readiness Test, which severely tested the will of a Marine, not not just his strength and conditioning. It was abandoned in favor of the gentler and less demanding Physical Fitness Test, which itself is normed for females. Fortunately, Marine infantry battalions have reinstituted the PRT in addition to the semiannual PFT exercise session.
But at its core, ground combat is about far more than running, pull-ups (flexed-arm hangs for women), situps and target shooting. It is about more than carrying heavy loads over difficult terrain and distances, which women can't do. It is about more than carrying your wounded buddy and both your weapons to safety, by yourself, which women can't do. Ground combat is about brutality, the level of which shocks even the toughest men. What I have done, I would not wish on any man -- let alone any young American women. Women who believe it is for them are sadly and dangerously deluded.
I guess you're gonna have to call me a liar. I didn't think about what would happen to her in enemy hands, I have full confidence that all our captured soldiers will go through hell and it scares me to contemplate it. But I wouldn't insult any one who has earned a spot in our military by thinking of them with a double standard. I was taught better than that. It's the same rank insignia and the same accomplishment to get them.
If you didn't think of it, you must be a woman. Ignorance of the nature of men -- especially fighting men -- leads unsuspecting females into a false sense of what a fight to the death is all about. And while women wear the same rank insignia as men, they are simply not capable of the same physical accomplishments. If you can understand why women don't play in the NFL, it should be a no-brainer why they shouldn't be "placed" in the field of real combat where they plainly do not belong. The very strongest women are almost equal in strength to the weakest men -- and the weakest men are not equipped for the brutal rigors of ground combat.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.