by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
January 25, 2013
There is something about military women that keeps getting missed in all the reports coming out about how they are now going to be allowed to have combat jobs technically when they were already doing most of them. The fact that they have to not only face the same threats to their lives as males, they are also willing to face the fact they could be raped by them. Think about that. They are that determined to serve their country they are even prepared to face that horrible possibility. It hasn't been bad enough for them they have had to hear some male chauvinists shoot off his mouth when he won't even pay attention to what is going on.
Tucker Carlson does not know this is not an office job.
One of them was a young woman the same age as my daughter. (not the woman in the picture) She was a beautiful blonde with stunning eyes. She was an MP and an RPG took off a leg above the knee. When I walked into the room, her Mom was there. I thought about how I would feel with my own daughter lying in that bed and then I decided to not show any sadness.
I talk to her for a bit, then told her about a triple amputee I know and how he handled life afterwards. She started to laugh. Her Mom wiped happy tears of relief from her face. The MP looked up at her Mom with a big smile and said, "Well, thank God it wasn't higher!"
She understood her life was far from over. I understood that when people say things against military women, they are stunningly stupid. They have no clue what these women are like.
By the numbers: Women in the U.S. militaryTucker Carlson has the right to remain safe at home along with the right to prove just how uninformed he is. The thing he missed is that while he thinks this,
January 24, 2013
More than 200,000 women are in the active-duty military, including 69 generals and admirals. A quick look at women in the military, according to Pentagon figures.
Tucker Carlson ✔ @TuckerCarlson
Feminism's latest victory: the right to get your limbs blown off in war. Congratulations.
Women in combat: One soldier's story
CNN
By Jake Tapper and Jessica Metzger
January 24th, 2013
EDITOR'S NOTE: Jake Tapper is an anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent for CNN. He’s also the author of the best-selling book about Afghanistan “The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor”
In her senior year at West Point, Candace Fisher decided she wanted to join the Military Police since it would allow her the most options “to do the most soldier-like things,” Fisher recalled in an interview with CNN.
In 2006 and 2007, Fisher served at what would become Combat Outpost Keating, one of the most dangerous bases in Afghanistan. Fisher – who then went by her maiden name, Mathis – led a platoon of Military Police, supervising 36 troops, including six other women, attached to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 71st Cavalry.
With Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announcing today that the Pentagon would end its policy of excluding women from combat positions, Fisher – reached at Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks, where she is currently a small group leader for an officer leadership course – said the Army was acknowledging what has already in many ways become a reality in the military.
“It’s a formalization of what we’ve been experimenting with the last ten to twelve years in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Fisher told CNN. “I think that those two conflicts have probably given the Army a pretty good idea of whether or not an actual policy change was warranted.”
Even though Fisher is Military Police and not Infantry or Cavalry, she says “given the nature of the fight over the last ten years or so, it’s made us all very dependent on each other as far as branches, interdependent as far as combined action and combined arms. So there has been a lot of bleed-over for missions regardless of what branch you are based on the conflict.”
During one mission in October 2006, Fisher and her MPs were teamed up with Able Troop’s 3rd platoon when they had to push through a complex ambush. The female MPs returned fire along with the male soldiers. Actually, one male soldier recalled, with their AT-4 grenade launchers, the MPs had stronger firepower than the scout platoon.
read more here
Single mom fought alongside combat troops in Afghanistan
CNN iReport
By Ashley Fantz, CNN
January 25, 2013
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
An unemployed single mom with bills to pay decides to enlist in the Army
In Afghanistan, Kimberly Bratic worked with a combat team
One of her three sons struggled with her decision to leave
She just got home to Ohio and still cannot find a job
(CNN) -- Kimberly Bratic hauled her gear up Afghan mountains. She went into areas where Taliban lived. She grieved when fellow soldiers were blown up by a suicide bomber. She missed her family for a year, and heard the worry in her sons' voices when she got the rare chance to call home.
She lay awake, thinking, "What if I don't make it home?"
The only difference between the 39-year-old single mom and the men she went on 70 missions with was their job titles.
U.S. lifts ban on women in combat
The guys were combat infantry. She was a public affairs specialist, the person who documented their experience training Afghan military and police. read more here
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