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argue specific circumstances all you want but the fact is, denying someone the right to fight for thier freedom because of thier sex is wrong any way you cut it.

It's also wrong to shoot a burst of of automatic fire into another person. Our infantrymen do that in cases where it is the least evil of all posssible options. That's what the military is about - not making thing fair, or making things nice. It's about making things dead.

If one woman of outstanding abilities was to be assigned to a fast attack submarine, that submarine's combat readiness would be diminished, because the indescribably complex synthesis of small unit cohesion would be irreparably damaged, and no amount of Civil-Rights whining or psycho-babble can alter that ugly fact.

But is your position, "Women shouldn't be in the military at all" or "A single woman on a submarine is trouble"? Mine is somewhere in between.

Israel had to fight for its existence from the day the UN voted to recognize it. Arabs swept down upon the fragile cities, colonies, and kibbutzim with armor and infantry as modern as anything we had at the time. Israel didn't have the luxury of keeping its women and children off the front lines. Women and children were ON the front lines from the getgo. Yep, they were raped and slaughtered by the enemy. (I might add that men aren't exempt from rape and warcrimes.) But they fought. Adolescent girls were out there side by side with men, trying desperately to build roads to get supplies to Jerusalem before the end of a cease-fire. Women carried rifles on their backs and toddlers on their hips. They fought for each other and for their new nation. Nobody who knows any history of the Middle East could think that women can't fight if they have to. I'd just as soon not see American women and children in combat, but make no mistake: firearms are a potent equalizer. A bullet from my gun will kill an enemy just as dead as a bullet from yours, and if I'm fighting for my babies I am pretty sure I'll be considerably more dangerous than you will.