<p>“Why aren’t women allowed to be navy seals?”</p>
<p>Im not sure, perhaps because we have never allowed any of them to apply?
It’s one thing to let a candidate try and then fail, its another to ban them from the opportunity at all.</p>
<p>Irish, I’m not posting “stories”. Im posting real life situations. I also never implied that a man couldn’t have done as well in those situations, but that isn’t whats being argued is it? Whats being bandied about here on this board, is that there is a feeling out there still that women can join the military as long as they know and accept “their place”. And yes, if we hear about a woman performing well in combat it must be a media conspiracy, because we NEVER hear about the bravery of men—wow, what an enlightened world we live in.</p>
<p>“Their male comrades, however, have born the brunt of the fighting-- there are no women in the infantry, armor, or artillery. Why?”</p>
<p>good question–based on real experience it isn’t because they can’t do the job effectively, because they are proving that now. Perhaps its because they aren’t given the chance? Wow, sounds like the arguments given when someone first proposed that the Union Army use colored soldiers in battle. The fact is, the military would ok the women in direct combat roles tomorrow if Congress would let them:</p>
<p>"Dozens of soldiers interviewed across Iraq – male and female, from lower enlisted ranks to senior officers – voiced frustration over restrictions on women mandated in Washington that they say make no sense in the war they are fighting. All said the policy should be changed to allow, at a minimum, mixed-sex support units to be assigned to combat battalions. Many favored a far more radical step: letting qualified women join the infantry.</p>
<p>But Congress is moving in the opposite direction. A House subcommittee, seeking to keep women out of combat, passed a measure this week that would bar women from thousands of Army positions now open to them. In Iraq, female soldiers immediately denounced the vote.</p>
<p>“I refuse to have my right as a soldier taken from me because of my gender,” Guay wrote in an e-mail. “It is my right to defend my country. . . . I am well aware of the danger. . . . Let me (us) do our job.”</p>
<p>For many inside Army camps, the disconnect between Washington officialdom and the reality that female troops confront in Iraq was epitomized by President Bush’s Jan. 11 declaration of “No women in combat.”</p>
<p>“That’s an oxymoron!” said Sgt. Neva D. Trice, who leads a female Army search team that guards the gates of Baghdad’s Green Zone, where many U.S. and Iraqi government facilities are located. “If he said no women in combat, then why are there women here in Iraq?”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051202002.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051202002.html</a></p>
<p>Its about WHO’S QUALIFIED to do the job. Telling someone they aren’t qualified to defend their country because they are a woman and not because they can’t do the job, is absurd.</p>