Maybe I’m just getting cynical…or old…or it’s a combination of the ridiculous versus the sublime. Being that I mostly see ridiculous anymore and very little of the sublime, here’s the article from Lifenews.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — With Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, has a message for moms: send us more money. Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, sent out a fund-raising request this week one pro-life advocate says is grotesque.

Which it is, of course. The organization that was created in order to kill black babies - by Margaret Sanger, a communist…should be embarrassed about fundraising around a day that they deny their clients…MOTHER’s DAY. The clients don’t get to become mothers because their babies are killed, and the babies are killed, and deprived of life altogether. Mother’s day honors women who’ve actually carried babies to term.

Richards honored Mother’s Day by sharing part of an editorial her daughter wrote saying she got her pro-abortion views from her mother and grandmother, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.

“It’s true that I have had lots of rewarding moments in my career. So did my mother,” Cecile wrote in the email LifeNews.com obtained. “But knowing that my daughter is carrying on the legacy of fighting that my mother passed to me trumps ‘em all.”

I’m not sure what that means…at least she LIVED. There is at least a quarter of a generation of people missing from our society now, as a result of their disastrous policy of murdering innocents.

Richard couldn’t wait until the third paragraph of her Mother’s Day letter to PPFA supporters to ask them to open their wallets.

“This Mother’s Day, I’m honoring that legacy with a Planned Parenthood Federation of America Mother’s Day gift. Join me,” she wrote.

“Honor that legacy” with a “gift”???? Tell me what kind of picture that brings up in your mind.

“You can help with a gift to Planned Parenthood Federation of America today in honor of your mother or daughter, and on behalf of all the women,” she added.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek called Richard’s exploitation of Mother’s Day for pro-abortion money-making purposes “grotesque” and said she couldn’t believe Richards would stoop to “using her dead mother and daughter as props.”

Read the whole thing.

Since it’s May day week, the international celebration of communism, Code Pink has declared every day a day for an open assault through to protest on our Marine Recruiting Center in Bezerkely.

From Catherine Moy:

The radical anti-military group, Code Pink, finally shows the world what its membership is made of: witches and crones. Seriously. This week, Code Pink is holding a series of events and street theater to get themselves some more notoriety. You’d think it would be enough that they have attacked the Marine recruiting center and traveled the world coddling dictators and handing out money to terrorists’ families. But nooooooo!!!!

The witches of Code Pink plan to gather at their usual place of harassment, the Marine Corps Recruiting Center in Berkeley, and cast some spells to chase the recruiters away. From Code Pink’s Website:

“Friday, May 9th: Witches, Crones, Sirens: perform rituals of leaving, cast a spell of peace and love over the station, rendering nil the recruiting of our youth to become fodder for this occupation of Iraq.” I told you I wasn’t kidding.

I wonder if we might be able to come up with our OWN street theater idea…like a “Dorothy” with a bucket of water, or a King Richard, the Lionheart.

Melanie Morgan:

So. It’s gotten down to this. Anti-war activists, frustrated they can’t call off the war in Iraq, are now calling on witches to cast ’spells.’

Interview With Carol Platt Liebau About Her Book, Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!) at Rightwing News.

In 2005, I talked about terrorists using a man with downs syndrome as a suicide bomber.

Lo and behold, we have the same technique - using WOMEN with downs syndrome.

BAGHDAD — Two mentally retarded women strapped with remote-control explosives — and possibly used as unwitting homicide bombers — brought carnage Friday to two pet bazaars, killing at 91 people in the deadliest day since Washington flooded the capital with extra troops last spring.

The terrorists appear to be getting desperate - and they need the mujahideen that they DO have to fight another day, since a good number of them have found paradise as martyrs within the past several months.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq’s chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the women had Down syndrome and may not have known they were on homicide missions. He said the bombs were detonated by remote control.

It’s sickening to think that women and children - particularly females - have such little value in that culture.

And again the western Feminists are mum.

700 leftists responded with an open letter. At Frontpage Magazine, David Horowitz qualifies who the signatories are and put up a great response to them:

The signers of this Letter claim that, “contrary to the accusations of pundits,” they support Muslim feminists in “their struggle against female genital mutilation, ‘honor’ murder, forced marriage, child marriage, compulsory Islamic dress codes, the criminalization of sex outside marriage, brutal punishments like lashing and stoning, family laws that favor men and that place adult women under the legal power of fathers, brothers, and husbands, and laws that discount legal testimony made by women.”

Well, we welcome these avowals of support for the rights of Muslim women. However, forgive us for doubting their sincerity. As one of us pointed out in a speech given at the University of Wisconsin during Islamo-Fascism Week:

“One of our concerns … is the failure of the Women’s Studies Movement to educate students about these atrocities. There are probably 600 Women’s Studies programs on American campuses, which focus on the unequal treatment of women in society. We have had a very hard time locating a single class which focuses on the oppression of women under Islamic law.”

What was true last October is still true today. As recently as December 10, a Muslim teenager was strangled by her father for refusing to wear a hijab without a protest from the American feminist movement. And that is only one of many crimes committed in the name of Islam against Muslim women over which the feminist movement continues to be silent.

On New Year’s Day, Amina Said, 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead in Irving, Texas. Police are searching for their father, Yaser Abdel Said, on a warrant for capital murder. The girls’ great aunt, Gail Gartrell, told reporters, “This was an honor killing.” Apparently Yaser Said murdered his daughters because they had non-Muslim boyfriends.

The signers of the Open Letter say that they are against honor killing. Here is an honor killing in the United States. Where are these feminists on this issue? Why are they not supporting the hunt for Amina’s and Sarah’s killers and organizing a campaign in the Muslim community to stop such practices?

On Sunday, January 20, the New York Times published an article, “A Cutting Tradition,” which falsely described female genital mutilation practiced under Islamic law as “circumcision” and portrayed it in a generally positive light, and even warned against “blindly judging those who practice it.” The article made no mention of the physical effects of this barbaric practice, which affects 140 million Muslim girls who have their genitals sliced off yearly, and in some 15 million cases their vaginal tract sewn up. These effects, as enumerated by the British Medical Journal in 1993, are “Immediate physical complications include severe pain, shock, infection, bleeding, acute urinary infection, tetanus, and death. Long-term problems include chronic pain, difficulties with micturition and menstruation, pelvic infection leading to infertility, and prolonged and obstructed labor during childbirth.”

Where is the feminist outrage over the New York Times article? Where are the feminist demonstrations against this practice? Where are the campus teach-ins? Where are the candlelight parades? What Muslim organizations have been confronted for their complicity in this assault on female Muslim children? This is a horrific crime against the female gender — global in extent — and yet one would be hard-pressed to identify a single public event, protest or march organized by feminists to oppose it.

The Open Letter mentions the feminist “V-Day” organized to protest violence against women. We challenge the signers of this letter to identify the speeches given during “V-Day” that protested female genital mutilation in the Islamic world. We challenge them to identify the Vagina Monologue of Islamic misogyny.

We are encouraged by the fact that these American feminists feel the need to respond to our challenge over their silence as a movement on violence against Muslim women and to assert their opposition to these barbaric practices. We challenge them now to put actions behind their words.

Join us in sponsoring a campus tour on the Oppression of Women in Islam with speakers such as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Form academic committees to provide curricula on these subjects in Women’s Studies courses. Devote a major segment of your V-Day demonstrations to the plight of Muslim women. Join us during Islamo-Fascism Week II this spring in appealing to campus Muslim organizations to condemn these practices.

Then we’ll know you’re serious.

Pat Schroeder, who ramrodded through some feminist crap after Tailhook, is busy making sure we have fresh new revisions of text books in schools these days. She’s hailing back to the days of the socialist nazis.

She is now a member of a trade organization (union, anyone?) - calling itself “The American Association of Publishers”, which lobbied before congress in 2004 to make sure that ‘updated’ - read ‘revised’ - read ‘revisionist’-freshly pumped with more propaganda text books are fed to our nation’s schools as the ‘most current’ available.

I’m not sure where the poll came from, what size the sampling was of people polled, or what their political persuasion was, but it was interesting to read at Newsmax that Pat Schroeder came out and announced that Liberals read more books than Conservatives do.

That practically made me laugh out loud, as I recall that Ann Coulter had said-”Liberals don’t read books – they don’t read anything,” she said. “That’s why they’re liberals. They watch TV, absorb the propaganda, and vote on the basis of urges.” I would call that EMOTIONS. They base a lot of their decisionmaking in Congress as a result of EMOTIONS, which is the precise reason why Pat Shroeder’s caterwauling after tailhook gained some traction. She used the inverted rhetoric that sexual harrassment at tailhook was unacceptable, so the only way to prove women are equal to men is to expose them to combat. So…as long as a woman is being raped by the enemy, it’s perfectly okay.

In fact, the only part about the conflict in the Middle East that liberals are in support of is women abandoning their traditional role- wife and mother-in order to take an active role in our nation’s defense, which has morphed into little more than social workers on the streets of Iraq. God forbid anyone should try to kill a terrorist…that’s ‘inhumane’, according to libs. Turning a nurturer into a killer is what Schroeder has been a part of - the social engineering that has brought us new ‘heroes’ of a sort - the ones who are against spousal abuse directed at women; the feminist kind which doesn’t want us to value the role of a mother raising her children; instead, let the state do it. Because after all, as Hillary has said, ‘it takes a village’. Right?

The liberal media spews headlines that liberals swallow up because they don’t read books. They’re not all that bright; which also punctuates the point that you have to be dumbed down to accept socialism, and Schroeder is actively working for it, as are other people who seem to be missing a few brain cells, like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and the tank humping Jane Fonda of yesteryear.

I have piles and piles of books here, which tell all kinds of interesting stories that will never hit the airwaves, and I oftentimes talk about them, refer to them and even quote them here. Being well-read means being well-versed on all sorts of topics, so when those wet-behind-the-ears- journalism students decide to pull the wool over my eyes, I’m not all that willing to a) fall for it, or b) think of it as journalism. Today, it’s partisanship that seems to matter in writing–particularly out of the media, which is why I probably do more reading than the average Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama loving citizen.

And by the way, Feminism has lost their war. Feminists like Schroeder, for all their shrill talk about society and it’s lack of progress, -that society is discriminatory against women, that attitudes and behaviors are societal constructs, science has proven otherwise.

The differences between men and women are not social constructs-they are the product of biological differences. No amount of government intervention is going to change that. No amount of government intervention is going to create the feminist utopia, and government is a poor replacement for a sugardaddy. If gender differences are natural, then the feminist idea of progress isn’t progress at all. The feminist agenda makes men and women worse off by driving them away from their biological preferences in pursuit of a fantasy that will never be reached.

And people like Schroeder are pushing for it to go further down the tubes than it has already.

Attorney General’s wife outspoken about contraceptives given to Middle School students October 28:

PORTLAND, Maine –News reports of contraceptives provided to girls as young as 11 at King Middle School led to an uproar. Republicans launched an effort to recall members of the school board. And District Attorney Stephanie Anderson warned health professionals that they were illegally failing to report underage sex.

That’s because they’ve decided to give the pill to girls in the 6th grade. Could it be that the trend nationally is to accept the Kinsey data that was really from a sick pedophile sex study…that was performed on infants and children by pedophiles and rapists?

PORTLAND, Maine –News reports of contraceptives provided to girls as young as 11 at King Middle School led to an uproar. Republicans launched an effort to recall members of the school board. And District Attorney Stephanie Anderson warned health professionals that they were illegally failing to report underage sex.

Amanda Rowe, an outspoken supporter for children’s health and sex education, said she isn’t paying attention to what the national news media or talk show hosts have to say about the Portland School Committee’s decision.

The decision to make available birth control prescriptions to children whose parents allow them to visit the school clinic was the right one, she said.

“I am committed to this, and I will see it through,” Rowe told the Portland Press Herald.

Bishop in Maine shocked by policy -Middle school to offer birth control

PORTLAND, Maine - The head of Maine’s Roman Catholic diocese is expressing shock at the Portland School Committee’s decision to make prescription contraceptives available to middle school students without parental permission.

Bishop Richard J. Malone said the decision will inevitably lead to more sexual experimentation among younger children. It also sends a message that the government should replace parents in certain parts of a child’s life, even without the parents’ knowledge, he said.

“I join the number of parents who have expressed their outrage and disbelief at the decision which affects young girls aged 11 to 14 years old,” Malone said. “When contradictory messages are given to children from important authority figures such as parents and school officials, it can create more confusion and difficulty for children themselves in making this important life decision.”

The Portland School Committee this week voted 7 to 2 to allow King Middle School to become the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available, including birth control pills and patches.

No figures are available on how many middle schools provide such services nationally, but the practice is very rare, according to the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care.

King Middle School students need parental permission to access the school’s health center, but treatment is confidential by law, which allows the students to decide whether to inform their parents about services they receive.

Evil Knievel died on Friday, November 30. He was 69 years old.

I can remember his daredevilish adventures from the coverage of them on television. I never understood someone who would risk his life for foolishness. But this article explains it in a way that I can understand.

he toughened up a generation of kids made soft by too much Brady Bunch. Awkward role model, leering boozehound, gravity-bound astronaut; the Patron Saint of Testosterone has finally caught Supreme Air. So please, show some respect.

Now that GI Joe is morphing into something other than a Special Forces Soldier - he’s now a UN type World Police or some such rot…I look back at a man like Evil Knievel and wonder if there is a modern day counterpart, or if that softness that the reader refers to has finally settled in as a mainstay of our culture.

X Posted at Cao2

Mon Nov 5, 2007 - AP

ODEBOLT, Iowa - Jake Wulf wants to keep the lid on it. The 9-year-old boy flushed out a plan for a foot-activated toilet seat lifter that is called the “Privy Prop,” designed to lower and raise the toilet seat.

“My mom was getting mad at me for forgetting to put the toilet seat down and she was falling in,” said Jake, a fourth-grader at Odebolt-Arthur Elementary School.

Boy’s “Privy Prop” keeps the lid on

Because he refused to work with a woman.

A pastor who refused to work with a female minister because of his biblical convictions has been charged with criminal discrimination by a Finnish court.

Ari Norro will be on trial Nov. 16 for allegedly violating Finland’s laws barring discrimination in the workplace or in public based on gender and other grounds, including sexual orientation, Christianity Today magazine reported.

Norro is a member of the Lutheran Evangelical Association in Finland, a group within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland that believes the Bible does not allow women to serve as pastors.

It’s a trend all over the world, but it’s not something that we should accept here, otherwise the feminazi agenda will see Pastors in prison. Other denominations, such as the Greek Orthodox Church and the Catholic church, do not ordain women, but at least up until this point, they haven’t been accused of committing a crime.

But I’ll bet it’s coming.

from Zombietime, from November 2005 Cindy Sheehanbash See parts I, II and III.

Sheehan at Union Square Park, 2007, from the Urban Infidel’s slideshow, here.

I was talking to a gal at work who noticed Buzz Patterson’s “War Crimes” book that was sitting on my desk. I just picked up two copies, one for my dad. He was curious about whether or not Patterson identified the Anti-war movement for who they are. So far, dad, I haven’t seen it. He quotes Horowitz, he talks about leftists, Vietnam, John Kerry, but he doesn’t put the name to the anti-war anti-military movement. At least that I’ve been able to tell so far, but I’m only part way through it.

So after cruising around the blogosphere this morning, that’s the purpose of this post: identifying who the anti-war professional protester people are, because it’s been a while since I’ve actually come out and talked about it. And I’m not just talking about their names: I’m talking about what they’re trying to achieve, and what the organizations are behind the protests.

Here are two pictures. One is of Cindy Sheehan when she appeared at SFSU with Lynne Stewart. (source)

This is a picture Lynne Stewart speaking to the same group (source).

The International Socialist Organization at SFSU, an organization that advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, sponsored Stewart’s appearance along with Students Against War, and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Stewart’s appearance was set up as part of a program to aid three students and six radical campus organizations on the SFSU campus currently facing disciplinary proceedings from the administration for interfering with and driving off military recruiters from the Bay Area campus. The speech by Stewart was also billed as a group effort to aid Stewart and the groups that brought her to campus in their “struggle” against the United States (and tangentially, Israel). Stewart was repeatedly cited as a symbol of the “oppression” and “racism” of America, even though she is a privileged white woman.

Gives one a reality check when you see the circles Sheehan has travelled in, the people she speaks alongside, and what she’s been trying to accomplish. The visit to SFSU was in May of 2005. She’s been milking the death of her son for a very long time, isn’t it time she stopped playing the victim and went back to her life? Oh, that’s right, she’s no longer married - she was served divorce papers when she was sitting in that ditch in Crawford, demanding another meeting with president Bush.

See SFSU Hosts a Terrorist from Frontpage Magazine.

The media seems to be very careful what it is they show for public consumption, I guess assuming that the average person has no awareness, and from what I’ve been able to tell from talking to people, that’s a correct assumption.

The peace movement isn’t about peace.

The so-called “peace movement” today is led by the same hate-America radicals who supported America’s totalitarian enemies during the Cold War. They marched in support of the Vietcong, the Sandinista Marxists and the Communist guerrillas in El Salvador. Before that they marched in behalf of Stalin and Mao. They still support Castro and the nuclear lunatic in North Korea, Kim Jong-Il. They are the friends in deed of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

But I’ve been to enough protests to know exactly who they are, and what to look for in the pictures from these events. Even though dad had been talking about it for many years, what I’ve personally seen just punctuates and validates what he’s been saying. It’s repeated up-front, close and personal and in your face, they don’t try to hide it. And they have very middle-class looking plants in the audience to influence opinion and to root out anyone who might oppose their message.

Pictures of this Sheehan event, courtesy of the Urban Infidel. Jake and Michelle have actually noticed tires slashed by people like these. The sign this fellow is holding is the Anarchist sign. Anarchists do a lot of property damage, and from what I recall, Stephen Pearcy is a green anarchist.

All of these organizations show up at Cindy Sheehan anti-war protests because Fenton Communications makes sure the media is there to synthesize and sanitize the message for public consumption. Most people don’t know that wackos like these are behind the anti-war movement, even though there are people like Vietnam Veterans and others who are very well aware of this enemy working from within. We are not only fighting Islamofascists abroad, but we are fighting fascists like these who want to turn our government into something like communist Cuba. The media get pictures of people who appear to be mainstream, like Cindy Sheehan, who is a long time leftist professional protestor and activist like Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. These are not innocent soccer moms; they’re feminazis.

On the bottom of the ‘the world can’t wait’ signs I’ve actually seen the ‘revolutionary communist party’ website in small print on the bottom. Zombietime has some photos and narrative from the November 5th, 2005 event which explains that here. One of the interesting parts about this is that the World Can’t Wait organization is explained at Wikipedia as a front group for the Revolutionary Communist Party.

the San Francisco Chronicle even pointed it out in November of 2005.

The World Can’t Wait dot net was taken down, according to the discussion thread here. So now it’s at theworldcantwait.org.

This one is a variation on that theme, but it goes to show, as Charles Johnson pointed out at LGF, that there are some wonky nutty moonbats on that side - whose lives are led in an unconventional way. The Urban Infidel has more photos of the Sheehan moonbat fest here.

I pulled a few from the Urban Infidel’s Sheehan protest at Union Square Park that I could identify clearly, and will compare them with Zombietime’s from November of 2005, which was also a Cindy Sheehan propagandafest. They’re all the same…they promote the same literature, and the themes are the same. The only difference I can see between the November 2005 World Can’t Wait protest and Cindy Sheehan’s are the anarchists, the truthers

and Soylent Communications. The Soylent Communications one is rather interesting to me, as it’s been remarked on Wikipedia that it’s an organization that does no advertising and seems to be about opposing internet censorship. Soylent hosts Rotten.com in addition to numerous other sites.

You still have the ‘fuck capitalism’ theme (on this guy’s t-shirt),

and at the recent Union Square Park event, you’ve got the attacks on Christianity.

which seem to accompany the attacks on Israel and the Jews and the ‘free Palestine’ mantra that you commonly hear at these things.

People should get a grip on what they’re doing when they jump onto the anti-war movement with these crazy people.

Previous: The Peace Movement a Leftist Tool

And wow, have I come up with some resources. Particularly because a lot of people have bought into the feminist bs over the years, I thought it would be important to share.

From a study in 2000 examining the effect of affirmative action on police hiring, a comparison of male and female public safety officers found that female officers had 32 percent to 56 percent less upper-body strength and 18 percent to 45 percent less lower-body strength than male officers.(Lott, 2005)

The point can be applied to the women in combat argument. The proponents of women in combat can’t seem to-or what’s worse, are unwilling to- connect the dots, unfortunately.

This is a very sensible argument from Mike in comments from someone who has been there. That comment was posted on this post.

I’ve only scanned through the comments, but I didn’t see anyone with any actual experience here. Allow me to rectify that.

While the media was reporting that “Women are proving that they can perform equally” during Desert Storm, men were carrying women’s equipment, setting up their tents, changing their tires, and doing the jobs they were afraid to do, like driving trucks on dangerous Arabian roads. The women compensated them by providing a steady supply of sex.

Combat is still hard, physically and mentally, and no technology will ever change that. Combat support is pretty hard, too, and can turn into combat quite easily, as we saw with Jessica Lynch’s unit. Most women and some men don’t have what it takes. So, why not allow those very few women who might be able to handle it to do so? Many reasons, but here are some of the most important:

1. Combat unit cohesion is based on male group dynamics, and has been tried, tested, and refined over centuries. Put one woman in the unit and the whole dynamic disintegrates.

2. Sex.

3. Virtually no women, unless they’re on steroids or testosterone, have the physical strength and stamina required. Many men don’t, either. The exceptions among women are so few as to make them statistically insignificant.

4. Psychology has now shown what most of us knew all along: men and women are different mentally and emotionally. Women are simply not suited for combat, which, by the way, involves killing people. Our ancestors figured this out a long, long time ago. Remember the true story of Jessica Lynch? Her weapon jammed and she fainted. Want her in a foxhole with you?

4. Men might be raped or sexually abused if they are P.O.W.s, but it is rare. Women WILL BE. It’s not publicized because it would be damaging to the feminist cause, but it happened in Desert Storm and in the current war. And even with the few men who are, they aren’t coming back carrying an enemy soldier’s baby.

5. Feminists like to tell us that our natural male instinct to protect women is patronizing and wrong. Bull. It’s right and good, and most women wouldn’t want it any other way. Even if they did, it’s hard-wired and not going away, so we just have to accept that that’s the way it is.

The women-in-combat agenda is being pushed to further the feminist agenda of neutering society, and for the sake of career advancement for a few female officers who want to be able to attain the highest positions in the military, which are reserved for combat officers. But the armed forces do not exist to provide career opportunities for a few climbers, nor a captive-audience experimentation lab for social engineers. They exist to defend our country and our way of life, and anything that is detrimental to that mission needs to go away.

Since I’m still tweaking my paper, I’d thought I’d do a little exercise, based on Rosa Brooks’ article “In Defense of Women in Combat”. This is from her Los Angeles Times article from July of 2005, also available at her blog here.

The deaths of five female soldiers in Iraq this month have fueled a new surge of opposition to allowing women to serve in the military in combat roles. But it’s based on some pretty dubious claims.

So let’s examine them.

“Women aren’t big and strong enough for combat.” I’ll buy this when someone explains why the Marine Corps will cheerfully accept a 4-foot-10 male recruit who weighs 96 pounds.

That’s kind of interesting hyperbole. I’m not sure where Rosa gets her information, but according to what I have, the physical height requirement of a man in the Marine Corps is 5′5″, with corresponding weight. There is no man as far as I know who has ever joined the Marine Corps who was 4′10″ who weighed 96 pounds. My dad is former Marine Corps, he’s 6′1″ and a very large guy; his hands look like baseball mitts.

Sure, the Marines will make a man out of him, but even if they water the guy with Miracle-Gro, they won’t be able to turn him into a 6-footer. The average man may be bigger and stronger than the average woman, but plenty of women are bigger and stronger than many men. Why discriminate based on gender when you could have straightforward, task-specific strength requirements?

Very funny, but not accurate. First, the 4 foot tall Marine guy doesn’t exist. Next, a woman’s size is on average about 60% of a man’s.

“Plenty of women are bigger and stronger than many men.” That’s a sweeping generalization that is not based on fact.

Photo Credit: By Rick Kozak — Associated Press

C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment soldiers carry injured colleagues to a medical center at the base in eastern Baghdad after an bomb destroyed a Bradley fighting vehicle, killing five U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter.

Here is a very good example of why women do not belong in a combat situation/scenario. A woman would be required to help carry the bodies of wounded, injured, and killed soldiers; and she doesn’t have the same upper body strength as a man does.

Through email I received even more compelling information regarding this picture and why the collocation rule should stand:

[This picture].. portrays a “luxury” situation. When soldiers are under fire and attacking, as was the case in Fallujah in November 2004, a fallen soldier frequently has to be rescued by another single soldier strong enough to carry him off the battlefield on his back. Other soldiers are busy engaging the enemy and providing cover. This is why the collocation rule is important, and why it should be retained.

I witnessed such a “fireman’s carry” rescue during a live fire exercise at Fort Bragg in 1992. The soldiers were very matter of fact when I asked why they didn’t use stretchers. On ships as well as on land, you cannot count on several people to perform a life-saving rescue.

This is a picture of the ‘fireman’s carry’.

Think about it. How many funerals have you attended where the pallbearers were women?

Carrying a body, whether dead or injured, requires physical strength; which women do not have a great amount of in comparison to men. That’s not a fantasy; that’s reality.

A study found that “[m]ore than half US soldiers have been medically evacuated from Iraq and treated at two of the military’s large pain treatment centers suffer not from battle wounds but from bad backs”. “Inherent in being a soldier is carrying large weights. Historically, the ideal ‘carry weight’ is a third of your body weight,” said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Frank Christopher, chief of deployment health at Fort Bragg, North Caolina. (Weise, 2005)

Many troops in the field carry much more than that - up to 180 pounds in some cases. (Weise, 2005)

Side plates in the new body armor system have nearly doubled the weight of protective vests from sixteen to thiry-one pounds since March of 2003. (Cox & Maze, 2006)

During one training cycle, some of the women participated in an urban warfare course. One of them promptly broke her leg doing a spider drop out a window. Her smaller frame could not take the shock of landing after dropping approximately 6 feet while weighted down with all the equipment a Marine is expected to wear in battle. (Neumayr, 2005)

Bearing just some of this in mind, what kind of kooks would intentionally wish combat on women in uniform, let alone actively campaign for it?

In any case, in a war that mixes high-tech weaponry with low-tech hazards, being big and strong isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You don’t need to be big and strong to fly a modern combat jet, and size won’t help when you’re up against suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices. Why do we believe that bigger people make better soldiers? In Vietnam, an army of big, strong American men fought an army of small, slender Vietnamese men — and lost.

Using Pat Schroeder’s “push button wars” characterization of modern day warfare, heh? With memories of pictures from the Battle of Fallujah fresh in my mind, that one battle pretty much wipes that argument off the face of the map. Wars are not videogames. War is still tough, rough and hard. Hand-to-hand combat and firefights are real, and will still be fought. To ignore that, and intentionally place a woman in that situation in my opinion is a demonstration of willful ignorance.

In Vietnam, by the way, were winning on the ground. If we’d just let them to their job, we wouldn’t be faced with still wondering what happened to our POW/MIAs. When you’re talking from a position of defeat, you really have no bargaining chips.

It was the politicians and the propaganda about the war at home, coupled with Nixon’s resignation and the democrats cutting the funding that led to our throwing in the towel on that conflict, just like Harry Reid is trying to do today.

To say our military lost it is another defining example of ignorance of historical fact.

“Allowing women in combat will hurt military morale, cohesion and readiness.” On the contrary, studies suggest that the presence of women has a neutral or positive effect on military morale and cohesion. Maybe that’s why support for women serving in combat positions is stronger in the military than in the general population: Two-thirds of military personnel support allowing women to serve in combat, compared with roughly 50% of the general population. The more familiar people are with the military, the more they support full participation for women — which ought to tell us something.

What studies? Military personnel aren’t allowed to speak against affirmative action or equal opportunity, lest they might be ‘discriminating’ against women. And it is more than 50% of the general population who don’t agree with sending our daughters to combat. 90% enlisted women surveyed said they don’t want to be sent to combat, but they stopped asking women what they thought about it in 2001. That makes sense, doesn’t it? If you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question.

“We can’t let women into combat because they might be taken prisoner and raped.” Male prisoners can be raped too. And how exactly is rape worse than the numerous other horrors (such as beatings and torture) to which prisoners of either sex might be subjected? Anyone who volunteers for combat needs to be prepared for possible mistreatment if captured. If women understand and accept the risk of rape, that should be the end of the debate.

Isn’t it much worse to contemplate a fresh-faced girl right out of high school and pigtails, only 19-year old, whose MOS was a supply clerk, faced with being anally raped by Saddam’ horrible fayadeen like Jessica Lynch was? When their FSC (forward support company) got lost and they found themselves under fire, Lynch and Piestewa looked at each other, saying they weren’t supposed to be there. Indeed, the military is breaking the rules ALREADY on putting women in dangerous situations, and the American people, I’m sure, wouldn’t agree with it if the awareness was raised.

Isn’t it odd how military women complain about a crotch grabbing incident and demand the careers of naval officers like in the Tailhook incident, but it’s perfectly alright for women to be tortured, maimed, sexually molested and killed as long as it’s by the enemy. This is a bizarre double standard that requires at least some kind of explanation to understand.

“We can’t let women into combat because they might get killed.” They surely will, but so what? Women die in car accidents and from heart attacks, but though these deaths too are cause for sorrow, we still let women ride in cars and super-size their fries. And contrary to near-universal belief, even if we allowed women to participate in the full range of combat positions, women in the military would probably be no more likely to die than women in civilian life.

That’s also kind of a strange argument. Let’s just tie women to the railroad tracks like Snidely Whiplash and then have SERE training like they do in the Air Force so that men will not respond to the screams of a damsel in distress. This again is disingenuous and meaningless argument.

In 2002, the death rate for full-time military personnel was 64.4 per 100,000, a rate substantially lower than for civilians with the same age breakdown. (Why? Military personnel get good healthcare and keep fit). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have increased the military death rate, but not by as much as most people assume. Crunching available numbers from the last three years suggests that the current death rate of military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan is roughly 150 per 100,000.

Precisely why the anti-war people are wrong about their complaints, thanks for pointing that out.

Source: Investors.com hat Tip: RTLM & Gateway Pundit

Whether you consider that high or low depends on what you compare it with, but here are a few data points: the 2002 civilian death rate for 15- to 24-year-olds was 171 out of each 100,000 in Washington, D.C., 131 per 100,000 in West Virginia, and 119 per 100,000 in Louisiana. For 25- to 34-year-olds in those same states, the death rates were, respectively, 158, 173, and 134 per 100,000.

Again, thanks, but I don’t know why that is a substantial argument in favor of women in combat. I think it’s more illustrating the point that even though we’re at war, the nation doesn’t feel particularly like we are; we aren’t experiencing heavy casualties like we did during WWI or WII. But during those conflicts, we didn’t have an integrated force, and there was conscription, so everyone had a relative who served, and it was considered your civic duty to serve. Nowadays, people are so removed from the military experience because of base closures and the fact that it’s ‘voluntary’ and universities outlawing military recruiters on campus, the public perception of serving in the military is very different.

In contrast to the bogus arguments against women in combat, there are strong arguments in favor. Locking women out of combat positions makes it harder for women to advance within the military, limiting their opportunities to attain more prestigious jobs and higher salaries. This in turn hurts their families and increases gender inequalities in society as a whole.

I would consider the bogus arguments on the pro women in combat side. Rosa just hit on the real reason why this is an issue. The small percentage of women who are officers want to be promoted, and they are campaigning for women in combat in direct opposition to what the majority of enlisted women want.

Denying women the opportunity to take on combat roles also reduces their future ability to shape national policy. In the post-9/11 world, credibility on military and security issues is increasingly necessary for those who hope to succeed in important public positions — and if only men can occupy combat roles, that gives them a substantial edge.

This is laughable; denying the 90% of enlisted women who disagree with women in combat to have a voice is denying THEIR right to shape national policy, and is an outrage. Why should we allow a handful of aggressive women with their eyes on promotions to shape national policy, and send our young women into dangerous situations they never dreamed they’d ever be in? What’s the problem with the military remaining male-dominated? The military only leverages traits that are inherently male, including strength.

With the rise of terrorism and asymmetrical warfare, the distinction between “front” and “rear” has eroded. In Iraq, women in noncombat military jobs, such as escorting cargo convoys or serving as military police, are in harm’s way. And here at home, hundreds of women lost their lives in the wreckage of the twin towers.

Why not let them serve in a separate corps? Why not let them serve in support positions that are more suited to them, like nurses, clerks, etc.? Why are we so determined to do what no other country has done? We are leading the disastrous way where this policy of integrating women into our fighting force is concerned, and we’ve already reaped some of the benefits of that disastrous policy.

General Karpinski and Abu Ghraib, anyone?

Locking women out of combat positions may help a few American men maintain the illusion of gallantry, but it’s time to acknowledge reality. Women will die alongside men in any terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and women, like men, are affected by our national defense policies. It’s time to give them the right to fight for their country.

There is no reason to put a defenseless young woman like Jessica Lynch or young mothers like Lori Piestewa or Shoshona Johnson intentionally into the hands of the enemy for the sake of a few women who want to be promoted. That’s like intentionally sending men and women to the slaughter so that you can say you’ve provided an ‘equal opportunity’, which doesn’t exist on the battlefield, considering women’s smaller physical stature and lesser strength.

Women have a greater opportunity to get killed in a combat situation. Placing them intentionally alongside men increases the risk to men’s lives in a combat zone, as well. This isn’t a very smart thing to be advocating, in my opinion.

Photo Credit: By Rick Kozak — Associated Press

C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment soldiers carry injured colleagues to a medical center at the base in eastern Baghdad after an bomb destroyed a Bradley fighting vehicle, killing five U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter.

Wow, I don’t see a single female face in this group of guys. Here is another example of why women do not belong in a combat situation/scenario. A woman would be required to help carry the bodies of wounded, injured, and killed soldiers; and she doesn’t have the same upper body strength as a man does.

Through email I received even more compelling information regarding this picture and why the collocation rule should stand:

[This picture].. portrays a “luxury” situation. When soldiers are under fire and attacking, as was the case in Fallujah in November 2004, a fallen soldier frequently has to be rescued by another single soldier strong enough to carry him off the battlefield on his back. Other soldiers are busy engaging the enemy and providing cover. This is why the collocation rule is important, and why it should be retained.

I witnessed such a “fireman’s carry” rescue during a live fire exercise at Fort Bragg in 1992. The soldiers were very matter of fact when I asked why they didn’t use stretchers. On ships as well as on land, you cannot count on several people to perform a life-saving rescue.

This is a picture of the ‘fireman’s carry’.

Women are excluded from serving with infantry units (for very good reasons) under the current guidelines.

GAO Report to the Ranking Minority Member Sucommittee on Readiness, Committee on Armed Services, US Senate, entitled “Gender Issues: Information on DoD’s Assignment Policy and Direct Ground Combat Definition”, October, 1998, Chart created from the information available in DoD Exclusions And Number of Restricted and Closed Positions, P. 18

Women have on average about 40-50% the upper body strength of men.

A study that was published in 2000 examined the effects of affirmative action on police hiring. While comparing male and female public safety officers, it was discovered that female officers had 32 percent to 56 percent less upper-body strength and 18 percent to 45 percent less lower-body strength than male officers. (Lott, 2005)

So it would seem that although the numbers seem to be different depending on where you look, the outcome/bottom line/conclusion is the same: women are simply not as strong as men and for that reason they shouldn’t be put in physically demanding all-male positions/jobs that call for typical male strength.

It’s too bad that these don’t look as spectacular on the blog as they do in the spreadsheet.

This one shows a combination of numbers that I obtained from NPR in March of 2005, and from watching TV one night. That 12,000 number is picture on the extreme left, for the single mothers in Iraq. For some reason that number stuck in my mind. I can’t find any current military figures on this, and it’s a shame that we don’t have those. I get the feeling the military is completely bending over for the small number of feminists who are ordering people around on this issue.

You can see how small in number and percentage they are on the table. If you’re eyesight-challenged like me, maybe you can’t see the legend that well, so let me explain. On the right in red, is the total number of active duty personnel in all branches. To the left of that, in purple, is the total of men. To the left of that, in turqoise, is the total of women. To the left of that, in yellow, is the total number of enlisted women, not including officers. To the left of that, in green, is women officers. And to the far left, in deep blue, is the 12,000 of single mothers in Iraq.

These numbers were obtained through infoplease from the US Census. The numbers are slightly different, I’m not sure what the explanation is; perhaps the time frame that they were taken from is different.

35,000 officers
168,000 enlisted
203,000 total number of active duty women

I just keep wondering why these numbers are so hard to come by, and why the stuff I’m digging up has to be so discombobulated or disconnected.

These are older numbers, provided by Brian Mitchell in his book, Women in the Military: Flirting With Disaster. According to numbers posted by the US Census, the 15% number for the U.S. was the same as late as 2004. But no other nation on the face of the planet has this many women serving in their armed forces–and what’s surprising is the comparatively low numbers of Russian women who served. They were only .7% of a 4 million man force, and they filled clerical and medical jobs. According to Wikipedia, a more recent figure is still behind that of Canada and Israel in that 1998 chart; In 2002, 10% of the Russian armed forces (100,000 of a total active strength of 988,100) were women. A total active strength of 988,100? Looks like we’re not the only ones who are downsizing.

What is it that other countries know about women in the armed forces that we’re too constrained by political correctness to admit?

Note: I had to pare this down to 2500 words before I turned it in, so this the longer draft, and slightly longer than what I wound up settling on. There are many ways of looking at this, and issues which I didn’t bring up here; for example, the issue of what would happen to a unit in the line of fire- should a girl in that unit drop her gear, start to cry, pull a muscle, etc.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no policy today that allows women into combat. The 1994 Department of Defense Policy removing the ‘risk rule’ (which excluded women from directly exposing them to hostile fire or capture) did not do away with the 1992 Army policy of prohibiting women from combat units.

The rules about putting women in combat are clear: if the military is going to change the existing rules regarding women, they need to notify Congress within 30 days and notify the Secretary of Defense.

The Army has publicly admitted that they’re already assigning women to collocated FSC units, using the rationale that it is justified, and not really in violation of DoD regulations. FSCs are not really “collocated”, we are told, until the combat unit is already engaged or is about to be engaged in a direct combat mission. This is based on the fantasy that women could be pulled out and replaced before the battle starts.

The risk rule was removed recognizing that today’s battlefield and lines of fire, using Operation Desert Storm as the modern day model; are not as clearly dilineated as they were during previous wars.

This is a visual of previous battlefronts. Rear Operations would be the forward support companies (FSCs), which carry supplies to the combat companies, bring gasoline to the tanks, etc.. Source: General Accounting Office.

In this view of the modern day battlefield, the likelihood of all companies, whether supporting companies or combat units, could be surrounded by hostile forces, hence the reason women are excluded under the current rules.

Combat jobs are still not open to women, as indicated by this next chart.

Shown here are the positions that are still closed to women, according to a General Accounting Office report from 1998. Table: DOD Exclusions and Number of Closed or Restricted Positions to Women.

15% of all positions are closed to women because they (1) are in MOSs that engage in direct ground combat, 2) collocate and operate with direct ground combat units, 3) are located on ships where the cost of living arrangements is prohibitive 4) are in units that engage in spec ops missions and long-range reconnaissance. The positions shown in the table are those closed to women in each branch of service and shows the justification for those exclusions.

The statistics cited in this paper from the military on this issue are older because there are no current military studies, charts or statistics on this issue available from the military.

“It is a career-killer if you open your mouth about it,” said a man with a distinguished military career who refused to discuss the subject unless his name was withheld. “The party line is this is the way it’s going to be, and anyone who says otherwise has no place in the military.” (Nordheimer, 1991)

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) has not heard any testimony on women in combat since 1991. They did not hear testimony from the 1992 Presidential Commission the Assignment of Women in the Armed Services, which recommended retaining women’s combat exclusions.

The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) heard from former commissioner and DACOWITS member Elaine Donnelly for five minutes about the panel’s report in 1993. Hardly enough time to even broadbrush a discussion let alone delve into it. The subject appeared to be closed until May 19, 2005, when the HASC debated legislation regarding women in and near land combat. The last real committee hearing on the subject occurred in HASC in 1979, 28 years ago. (Donnelly)

Only a small percentage female privates and corporals surveyed by the Army Survey Office agreed that “women should be treated exactly like men and serve in the combat arms just like men.” After discovering that over 90% opposed women in combat, the Army Research Institute stopped asking women what they thought about women in combat in 2001.

A new Rand report was requested after a Congressional debate on the subject in 2005. That report was due in March of 2006. No such report has been produced, and as of this writing, it is long overdue.

But one of the questions I have about Rand generating a report on this issue is; certainly the army and other branches have their own statistics to share. What possibly could be gained through Rand’s production of a report? The answer lies in the 1997 report, and how it was scrubbed of politically incorrect views that were in the original.

The Center For Military Readiness: The report’s bibliography, which includes books and articles with loaded titles such as “Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood,” “Sexism and the War System, ” and “Woman, Race, and Class ” explains why the RAND report reads like a tax-funded feminist polemic. Far-left authors and liberal sociologists, such as Angela Davis, Susan Faludi, Catharine MacKinnon, Madeline Morris, Judith Steim, Mady Segal, and Patricia Schroeder are heavily represented. Authors and experts with differing views or actual military experience are conspicuously scarce. (Donnelly)

The military is hiding the truth on the women in combat issue and violating its own regulations. For example, there is a checkbox on some forms for support of equal opportunity policies. People who have expressed dissent have experienced demotion, dismissal, and promotion denial. (Garrison, 1995)

Current regulations require formal notification of a policy change regarding female soldiers with an analysis of the proposed revisions be submitted to Congress within 30 days along with notification to the Secretary of Defense. The Army has added wording to the collocation rule, which don’t exist, but succeeds in circumventing the rules. The claim that women are only excluded from a combat unit if the unit is ‘conducting’ or ‘undergoing’ combat operations is without justification. (Owens, 2005)

Yet, The Center for Military Readiness documents in this report the incidents where female soldiers have been assigned to Brigade support Battalions and then opconned to land maneuver battalions in First Cav at Ft. Hood, Texasl; trained women for FSCs collocating with Reconnaisance, Surveillance, Target Acquisition Squads at Ft. Riley, Kansas; trained women for forward support companies for collocating with the 2nd Brigade Team in the 101st Airborne at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky; and even a few were assigned to at least one Multiple Rocket Launch Systems unit in Baumholder, Germany in 2001. This was done completely through semantics and sleight of hand, circumventing current law which requires Congressional notification and notification to the Secretary of Defense. (CMR, 2006)

Source: APFT Update Briefing, November 1998. Ages 17 and 36 correspond with minimum and maximum ages allowed for initial enlistment.

This table shows the Army Physical fitness test from 1998. There are corresponding charts for the other service branches; navy, marine corps, etc. For all branches, a high degree of physical rigor and fitness is expected.

Major O’Donnell claims in a thesis paper that “Leaders who recognize the physical challenges in combat and take steps to specifically prepare their soldiers usually meet with success.” During the Normandy Invasion in 1943, he recalls, Lt. Col. Rudder integrated speed marches, hand-to-hand combat, obstacle courses, and climbing exercises to build up upper body strength in order to insure success on the mission. (O’Donnell, 1990) The rigors of combat are challenging, even when it is only a male force.

Several studies, according to Lt. Col. Gregor, have indicated that the Army Physical Fitness Test is the best predictor of physical performance. The results in the following tables are from ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) tests. He points out that the physical fitness level of these recruits is generally much better than that of regular enlisted; they’re older, have had prior military service, and 1-3 years of physical training before going to Advanced Camp. To graduate from basic training, a score of 50 is required on each event. For the gender-adjusted push up event, a man needs 32, and a woman 13. But there is no lightening of loads in a combat situation. The weight of ammo, rucksack, Kevlar, weapons, supplies, crates, communications gear, remains the same, regardless as to the strength of the soldier. Physical strength means your survival rate and that of the soldiers who depend on you will be good.

Physical differences between the genders are recognized by physical trainers, weight loss experts, in competitive weightlifting, sports like football, and should be taken into account when considering a serious issue such as putting women in a ground combat situation.

In 1997, Colonel Patrick Toffler, the Director of Institutional Research at West Point, testified about the Virginia Military Institute’s men-only admissions policy. He said under oath that there are special rules for women at West Point. Some physical activities for both sexes have been made easier or eliminated so that women would not suffer what Toffler gently termed “adverse impact.” (Knight, 1991)

Between men and women, they identified 120 physical differences and psychological differences. So, West Point (said Toffler) made physical training easier to accommodate women:

• Cadets don’t train in combat boots; they wear jogging shoes, because of women’s higher rate of injury.
• Women cadets take ‘comparable or ‘equivalent’ training when they can’t meet the standards of men.
• Women do ‘flex arm hangs’ instead of pull-ups.
• “Recondo” endurance week, when cadets marched with full backpacks and went through other physically strenuous activities, was eliminated.
• Upper body strength events on the obstacle course were eliminated.
• Running with heavy weapons was eliminated because it is ‘unrealistic and therefore inappropriate”, according to Toffler, to expect women to do it.
• Boxing was replaced with Judo.
• Women’s scores are adjusted to give them more weight when men and women are required to do the same exercises.
• West point male cadets are not increasing their cardiovascular efficiency because they are not as challenged now by the lowered standards that were altered to accommodate women.
• 50% of women score below the bottom 5% of the men in carrying and lifting.
• Women scored too low on peer ratings, so they were eliminated.

It isn’t only double standards and the overall effect of lowering physical requirements that is at issue.

In 1992 a presidential commission documented the problems related to women in service: high rates of attrition, greater medical care needs, higher rates of nonavailability, lower rates of deployability, lesser physical ability and the growing number of single parents and dual service marriages. Tailhook, The Aberdeen sex scandal, Abu Ghraib and other cases have highlighted the persistent and ineradicable problems of fraternization, sexual harassment and the breakdown of orderly discipline among the troops.

In this example, from the Congressional Commission on Military Training and Gender Issues, are statistics from the Army on attrition rates from 1999. Behav, is a failure to meet minimum behavioral standards, Med, is medical disqualifications like injury, and Other is for other separation discharges. The attrition rate numbers from the same report in the following chart also tell an interesting story.

Source: Congressional Commission Report, 1999

The DoD stubbornly repeats the position that integration of women has not affected combat readiness. The modern volunteer force, it says, is superior to any force of volunteers and women, are an ‘integral part’. “We can’t go to war without them,” say the admirals and generals, women are “here to stay”. They perform as well or better than men. Women are promoted more rapidly, and possess invaluable abilities that the services cannot do without.

But the services are struggling to maintain this position in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

The problem of depending on soldier-mothers with young children was highlighted during the Persian/Gulf War, and hasn’t gone away. The trials of the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute, the fatal crash and death of naval aviator Kara Hultgreen due to pilot error (and low test scores), the discharge of Kelly Flinn for adultery, are just a few examples of the problems that we’re facing with a sexually integrated force. (Mitchell, 1989) From Iraqi Freedom there is the capture of Lori Piestawa and her death in captivity and Jessica Lynch’s torture at the hands of Saddam’s fayadeen, when Lori was a cook and Jessica a supply clerk. These have brought a clear focus the dangerous effects of sex-based integration and affirmative action on standards, safety, training and discipline.

Nowhere in the military can women meet the same physical standards of men, and there are prohibitive costs associated with them.

None of these problems are temporary, because it’s been a full 21 years since women gained access to the service academies where they have shattered tradition, fractured morale, and confused the academies’ purpose; which is to train COMBAT officers. It’s been 19 years since the separate women’s corps were abolished and the services still have not proven that they know how to mix men and women together without suffering outbreaks of embarrassing behavior like what we saw at Abu Ghraib with pictures as proof that traveled the world.

Feminists view the military as a social construct of male chauvinism that needs to be destroyed:

Barbara Pope is the former Assistant Navy Secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs who said: “We are in the process of weeding out the white male as norm,” she said. “We’re about changing the culture.”

Madeleine Morris said “[T]here is much to be gained and little to be lost by changing this aspect of military culture from a masculinist vision of unalloyed aggressivity to an ungendered vision combining aggressivity with compassion.” (Dartmouth Review, 1997)

It has been suggested that a reason to place women in dangerous positions is for policymakers to avoid going to war. Maria Lepowsky, a professor of Women’s Studies, provided testimony before the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces to support women in combat, saying “I think there might be increased concern about committing troops to combat…” (Horowitz, 1992)

But feminists’ view on war is widely acknowledged delivering the ‘pro women’ ‘anti-violence’ message, with complaints about rape, sexual abuse, and the white patriarchy. (Pandagon, 2007)

Vice President Cheney talked about the purpose of our military in the Presidential Commission Report reviewing women in the military:

“[I]t’s important for us to remember that what we are asked to do here in the Department of Defense is to defend the nation. The only reason we exist is to be prepared to fight and win wars. We’re not a social welfare agency. . . . This is a military organization. Decisions we make have to be taken based upon those kinds of considerations and only those kinds of considerations.” (Presidential Commission Report, 1999)

The choice is clear: equal opportunity or military performance. Obtaining information on the success of women’s integration into the armed services is difficult.

Unoficially, career advancement will suffer for men if they dispute that integration of women in the military causes no problems or affects military readiness.

“In recent years, the Defense Department has moved to squelch dissent on the issue and labored to ensure that only the approved view of women in the military is presented to the American people. In so doing, it has fostered cynicism and resentment among military men…. ” (Mitchell, 1989)

Captain Barbara Wilson has another approach: “There are political, patriarchal, religious, and misogynistically stupid reasons to preclude women but they all belong in The Museum of Natural Idiocy next to chastity belts, urban legends, homophobia, promise creepers, senile senators, proselytizing preachers, and military machismo.”

Men and women are not completely interchangeable, particularly when it comes to the physical and emotional requirements of war. Women experience post traumatic stress syndrome in a 2:1 ratio to men.

(Note: I’m trying to find the article from the Washington Post that commended the two women who were removed from duty for crying when they drove men to the battlefield during the Panama invasion and were assured by the military they had not committed a derelection of duty.)

No other country depends on women as heavily as we do, at 15%. Israel and Canada have 11%, the UK has 6%. After that, no other country has a military comprised of more than 3.5% female. Germany, Spain and Italy, among others, have virtually no women in military service, and Russia’s 4 million-man military has .7%. (Mitchell, 1998)

Training in direct ground combat units has already been made less demanding for men, since female trainees suffer stress fractures and other injuries at far greater rates. Ultimately, lives will be needlessly lost when soldiers, unable to cope with the physical and emotional demands of direct ground combat, are ordered into those units and to serve in those capacities, anyway.

We as a nation need to have a calm, rational look at the reasoning behind ‘women in combat’ without the subterfuge, and require accountability from those in office, removing the fear of reprisals for military representatives who talk honestly.

The military should be adhering to the rules on collocating forward support companies, leaving the designation (P1) all male for those who support combat units. A shell game with paperwork is simply not enough to answer to the American people why young single mothers, married women and the men who stand and work beside them appear to be completely set up for slaughter for the sake of political correctness and ‘equal opportunity’. This appears to be purely for the career advancement of a handful of women who do not have family obligations or care about the family obligations of others, or military effectiveness and strength. Until women’s biology changes, women do not belong in combat.

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Soldier Boys, Soldier Girls,” The New Republic, February 19, 1990, cited in Congressional Quarterly Supplement, February 7, 1990, p. A14.
Testimony, United States of America vs. Virginia Military Institute et al., U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, Roanoke Division, April 8, 1991
Washington Times, “Women In No Rush To Enter Combat,” Sept. 29, 1998.
Wilson, Captain B. A., Women in Combat, Why not? Retrieved online on June 5, 2007 from http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/combat.html
Women in the Military: The Tailhook Affair and the Problem of Sexual Harassment: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Mil. Personnel & Compensation of the H. Comm. on Armed Servs. & Def. Pol’y Panel, 102d Cong. 25 (Sept. 14, 1992) (statement of Rep. Schroeder).
Women not fit for combat role, says senior Indian military official BBC Monitoring South Asia. London: May 2, 2007. pg. 1 retrieved from Proquest database on May 13, 2007 from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1263596121&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=2606&RQT=309&VName=PQD

I saw this when I was sitting in the doctor’s office the other day. Weight Watchers, in fact, has a book out called Weight Watchers She Loses, He Loses: The Truth about Men, Women, and Weight Loss.

They featured a man and his daughter, who between them lost a tremendous amount of weight because they did it together.

The representative from weight watchers said that men and women view weightloss in different ways, and that a woman carries less lean muscle mass than a man, so a man could be making progress while eating the same thing that a woman does who isn’t making any progress with weight loss.

This goes back to my previous posts on women in combat and why it’s a bad idea.

Women are not completely interchangeable with men because they carry less lean muscle mass. There is no way that this inherent fact can be altered. And that is why on physical training tests, women can’t keep up with the men. In a situation such as the battlefield, or flying an airplane, adjusting scores to help women pass couldn’t possibly help them succeed; in some cases it’s completely setting them up for failure.

Let’s go back to those great charts. The following charts are from the Statement of Dr. William J. Gregor, Lieutenant Colonel, US Army (Ret) to the Congressional Commission on Military Training and Gender-Related Issues, December 2, 1998 based on the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test Results) for ROTC cadets at summer advanced camp over a period of 7 years (1992-1998).

Several studies, according to Lt. Col. Gregor, have indicated that the Army Physical Fitness Test is the best predictor of physical performance.

These results are from ROTC tests, and these recruits are generally older, have had some type of prior military service, and have had 1-3 years of physical training before going to Advanced Camp. He points out that the physical fitness level of these recruits is generally much better than that of regular enlisted. In order to graduate from basic training, you have to score a 50 on each event. For the push up event, for example, it’s been gender adjusted so that a man needs 32, and a woman 13. This puts her at a disadvantage, because there is no lightening of the loads you are required to carry in a combat situation. The weight of ammo, rucksack, Kevlar, weapons, supplies, crates, communications gear, remains the same, regardless as to the strength of the soldier. But strength means you’d be able to pull someone at least your size out of a humvee wreck or a plane crash, and carry out other duties that would be normal in a combat situation, and would be helpful to your chances of survival.

This chart shows that a small number of women achieved the absolute minimum level of aerobic fitness set for men. It also demonstrates what is widely known in competitive sports; women have a fraction of the aerobic ability that men do. It’s simple biology.

The American Physiological Society pointed out in Gender Issues Related to Spaceflight: A NASA Perspective that

22 percent of the active astronaut corps are women (35 of 158). The average female astronaut is 42 years old (43 years for men) and weighs 60.7 kg (81.2 kg for men). In general, the average woman is 10 cm shorter and 13 kg lighter and has 11 percent more body fat, 8 percent less muscle mass, 10-14 percent less hemoglobin mass, and a lower level of aerobic fitness than her male counterpart. These gender differences can be expected to influence exercise capacity and thus the ability to perform specific tasks during spaceflight.

Further,

The average aerobic fitness, expressed as the maximal oxygen uptake of adult women is 2.0 l/min, compared with 3.5 l/min for men. When adjusted for differences in body weight, the average maximal uptake for women is 40 vs. 50 ml/ kg for men. (These differences can be reduced still further.) Thus, for any task requiring a given absolute oxygen uptake, the average woman is working at a higher percentage of her exercise capacity than the average man.

This would result in a higher heart rate, higher body temperature, greater stress, and a quicker onset of fatigue during the exercise. These more severe exercise responses may result in a greater number of injuries and less tolerance for a stressful environment. For example, in a study of 124 men and 186 women during basic combat training, the women had a 51 percent injury rate compared with 27 percent for the men.

But let’s get back to those charts.

In the 2-mile run, there was a significant difference. Only 2.5% of women were able to achieve the men’s average. Men are simply better suited for this type of endurance test than women are.

This chart shows the results of the pushups test. This confirms what we know from physical fitness tests, studies and personal trainers, that women’s upper body strength is a fraction of that of men (40-50%), and so just 4.5% of women achieved the male average, and women still lagged far behind the men.

So these are not hyperbolic reasons to exclude women from combat, this is a very real, very sincere look at the biology behind what it is we’re talking about here. Adjusting test scores in the civilian world doesn’t have much of an impact except perhaps to make it more difficult for the people you’re trying to make ‘equal’ by making the playing field ‘unequal’ to include them.

If you’re talking about test scores for fighter pilots, and adjusting those to include women because they don’t fair as well, what do you suppose the ramifications of that would be? Add it up. It makes absolutely no sense to do this in order to pull women into a live-or-die situation and then stack the deck against them because their biology do