Too many effing Women! Should be home mekking Bebbies, not War.
Hackworth alert, alot of this is bluster from Hack...if you notice lately he has been bitter, I'm suspecting that his sources have had to cut him off a tad.
Well, assuming that Mr. Hackworth's charges are true (and I have no idea whether they are), I would bet that the primary reason that soldiers are in much poorer physical shape than they used to be is because
Americans are in such poor shape. Traveling around the world reveals how heavy we are, and morbid obesity and being overweight now afflict people at ever-younger ages. Our restaurant portions are huge by foreign standards, and the only reason they're that big is because that's what we demand.
I don't really know why it has come to this (100 channels of television? Cars? Office work?), but the phenomenon is starkly real, and as long as soldiers are drawn from a U.S. population getting heavier by the day our military will inevitably become less and less fit over time.
Having women in the military, with the concomitant lowering of fitness standards to accommodate them, undoubtedly contributes, but I would be surprised if it were a big factor.