Category: Military issues

I had to think a couple of times before I posted this link that James sent us because I didn’t want it to sound like I’m being the big bad infantryman bashing some Air Force chick, but, ya know what, she’s asking for it. She’s Senior Airman Stacy Fogarty and she says she served in Iraq, which is honorable enough, but I’m guessing that as an expert on women in combat, her experience is somewhat lacking. But that’s not what she tells the reporter dude;

“The enemy is not looking at us and say oh, they’re women. Let’s not do what we were going to do. They just see us as Americans and we should see each other as Americans not broken down by male and female,” she said.

“Do you feel that you had combat experiences when you were in the Air Force?” I asked.

“Absolutely. Yeah,” she said. “Civilians are throwing bombs over to the base. So at any time we could be hit. You’re not segregated out there as to who is combat and who is not. The minute you hit the AOR (area of responsibility) that’s a combat.”

Fogarty acknowledged there is a difference between being “in combat” and being in an infantry unit where you have to pull a trigger.

“Do you think you could have been on the front lines pulling a trigger?” I asked.

“I do. In the military you’re trained to do what needs to be done for the greater good,” Fogarty said.

“As soon as I asked that question I thought I’m not sure I’d even ask that question to a man,” I said.

“It’s interesting isn’t it?” she said.

Now, my wife’s friend, a nurse, was killed in Iraq when she was out running around the Green Zone one day when a mortar landed near her, I’m pretty sure that if she had lived through that experience she wouldn’t admit that because she’d been blown up, she’d make a good infantryman. But Fogarty, somehow thinks that because she *could* have been blown up at some point in her tour, that makes her equal to any infantryman. Actually all that makes her is a potential target. I’m sure she did a fine job, whatever that was, because she doesn’t tell us what she did in Iraq, but I think if we knew what her job was, we’d think her bravado would seem even more ridiculous.

While I’m sure her Air Force training was the best they could give her, I’m also sure that none of it had much to do with pulling triggers, not that it’s a bad thing, the Air Force seems more focused on their specialties and less on the ancillary war-fighting stuff, mainly because they have people in the Air Force to protect their technicians from the war-fighting stuff, and they depend on the Army and Marines for extra layers of protection.

I’m also sure that Stacy joined the Air Force so she’d be back from the battle, otherwise, she might have enlisted in the Marines or the Army. but, that’s just speculation because I don’t know what her job was in the Air Force, but she’s not exactly forthcoming on that point.

On edit: MCPO NYC USN (Ret.) dropped a video off in the comments, and it turns out that she worked in a medical supply room, so yeah, she’s a hardened combat vet more than qualified to comment on women in combat.

The Associated Press reports that they have documents from the Pentagon which will be released tomorrow or thereabouts in regards to the services receiving orders from Secretary of Defense to move ahead with plans to allow women into most of the specialties from which they are currently excluded;

They call for requiring women and men to meet the same physical and mental standards to quality for certain infantry, armor, commando and other front-line positions across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reviewed the plans and has ordered the services to move ahead.

The move, expected to be announced Tuesday, follows revelations of a startling number of sexual assaults in the armed forces. Earlier this year, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said the sexual assaults might be linked to the longstanding ban on women serving in combat because the disparity between the roles of men and women creates separate classes of personnel – male “warriors” versus the rest of the force.

That’s what is Marty, your colonels and generals are sexually assaulting women because they can’t be Rangers. You’ve got your finger on the pulse of human nature, by golly gosh.

Under the schedules military leaders delivered to Hagel, the Army will develop standards by July 2015 to allow women to train and potentially serve as Rangers, and qualified women could begin training as Navy SEALS by March 2016 if senior leaders agree.

Yeah, like I’ve been predicting since this discussion began in earnest recently, they’re going to “develop standards” instead of maintaining the tried and true established standards which has proved successful in combat.

The proposals leave the door open for continued exclusion of women from some jobs, if research and testing find that women could not be successful in sufficient numbers, but the services would have to defend such decisions to top Pentagon leaders.

That will happen, I’m sure. What makes our special forces special is their adherence to a strict and steady training regimen. They aren’t born that way, they just train harder than most units. But, since the traditional forces can’t grasp that simple fact, they figure they can lower the standard of training and still produce the same product. But the political masters will be pleased, I suppose, well, until the body bags start coming home and it hits them in their political wallet.

Tom sends us a link to Reuters which reports that Norway has become the first NATO nation to draft women.

“Rights and duties should be the same for all,” said Labor lawmaker Laila Gustavsen, a supporter of the bill. “The armed forces need access to the best resources, regardless of gender, and right now mostly men are recruited.”

Norway has been at the forefront in the fight for gender equality, introducing measures such as requiring all public limited companies to fill at least 40 percent of their board seats with women. On Wednesday the country celebrated a century since Norwegian women won the right to vote.

[…]

“This is historic. For me it is fantastic to make history, for the armed forces and for women,” Gustavsen said.

But I don’t see the US making the move to be “historic”. The only reason that the Supreme Court gave us when they said drafting men only was constitutional was because women couldn’t serve in combat, but that restriction has been lifted, so you’d think that the women’s movements would be pressuring Congress to draft women, too.

The Stars & Stripes reports that Maj. Seivirak Inson was sentenced to ten years in the pound for transmitting intelligence and stuff to the Cambodian government;

Capt. Leslie Waddle, a spokes­­woman for the Army’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command in Hawaii, said Inson was found guilty of those charges as well as a charge that he had unauthorized possession of a Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence report, and that he failed to report to his chain of command that he had contact with Cambodian military and government officials.

Inson was found guilty of a charge that he cheated on his wife — a criminal offense in the military — but was found not guilty of beating her, Waddle said. He also was found not guilty of the accusation that he compiled information about U.S. service members of Cambodian descent with the intent to transmit that information to the Cambodian military, she said.

Manning, Snowden and now this guy. And apparently there were always some crap in their personnel lives to indicate that they shouldn’t have access to classified information, yet there they are.