Female Warriors

[Allan W]

 

Her husband is an American and as neither she nor her husband were permanent residents or citizens of Canada when the children were born, the kids do not get Canadian citizenship.

 

Where are you getting all of this info? Everywhere I look, it merely says "partner" and nothing else.

 

From the horse's mouth...

 

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-192099639.html

[Hittite Under The Bridge]

I'd like to claim credit for the following, but I can't:

 

 

I wonder if she will stop shaving to avoid prosecution?

Edited September 22, 2012 by Hittite Under The Bridge

[Exel]

So don't let them get away with it. Let them take a hit in their salary, demote them, or whatever you need to do. Don't shift them to another job at a critical moment - if a woman gets pregnant knowing she's about to deploy, the risk of miscarriage lies solely with her. Of course at some point she needs to be taken out of service due to the pregnancy, but that should give the host unit weeks or even months to find and train a replacement.

 

A demotion or garnishment of wages still does not undo the pregnancy or fill the vacancy.

 

Her husband is an American and as neither she nor her husband were permanent residents or citizens of Canada when the children were born, the kids do not get Canadian citizenship.

 

Where are you getting all of this info? Everywhere I look, it merely says "partner" and nothing else.

 

No, but they should discourage others from willfully getting pregnant.

[thekirk]

It's easy when you're a predominantly self-defense force, and not so easy when your entire force is theoretically deployable.

 

People snarking from the sidelines should bear in mind that the unique national conditions that are both cultural and mission-related do not necessarily translate over to other nations whose cultures and missions are quite different--And, as such, perhaps ones observations of such unique national experiences do not apply outside ones narrow personal experience.

 

 

For the record I was talking about deployed forces, not national service. Of course we only deploy volunteers who want to go and be in-theater. You don't want to be there? You're out on the first plane - man or woman, doesn't matter. Ensures the people who are in-theater are motivated. So motivated, in fact, that very, very few terminate their service during their deployment even when they are fully able to do so at any moment. Even in situations where no one would have held it against them if they quit - like casualties in their squad, seriously ill family members back home, injuries sustained in combat, etc.

 

I know of more people who were kicked out than who left on their own request, even though requesting to leave mid-deployment isn't even held against you on your record. What this ensures is that women don't have to get pregnant - or men fake injury - to get out. They can simply ask.

 

Funny thing that, motivation. But if you can't manage to motivate your personnel, what you can do is instill military discipline. Getting pregnant is entirely voluntary in this day and age, so you can prescribe harsh penalties for anyone who gets pregnant (or gets someone pregnant) during their tour or just before it. Better yet, you could make it clear that getting pregnant wont get you out of doing your duty. Women don't quit working until rather late in the pregnancy either, so make it clear to them that they will still deploy as planned even if they do get pregnant.

 

If I wanted to man a small, insignificant force that couldn't even deploy or supply itself at mid-continental ranges, I could probably do the same. Especially, if I were working with a mostly homogeneous culture that still valued many of the old military virtues. As we are not talking about that, I'll leave you to your narrow view of how "things ought to be". That they do not work outside the narrow lane you've experienced is something I'll just have to leave for you to learn on your own.

 

You also have a laughably impractical idea of how things would work in the United States military culture, with it's schizoid ways. "...you could make it clear that getting pregnant won't get you out of doing your duty.". <snort> Yeah, right--The first commander to even suggest implementing that rule is going to have a very circumscribed career, once the civilians get wind of his ideas. A pregnancy is, I'm afraid, going to remain very much a "get out of jail free" card, no matter how much fantasists want to make believe such rules are enforceable. I couldn't even keep a pregnant female from cluttering up my manning roster and not doing her damn job--The idiots actually let women into jobs working with fuels, knowing full well that exposure to teratogenic compounds isn't authorized for 'pregnant or nursing women. So, the chickies can get the jobs, get preggers, and then never work in them as long as they're either pregnant or nursing. I had one female fuel handler who was supposed to be in my section doing her damn job, and who spent the entirety of the three years she was in our unit as a clerk working in personnel, simply due to her having two kids in that time frame.

 

There's the fantasy way of thinking, which all too many idiots in the chain of command ascribe to, and then there's what really happens when these policies meet real people. I come at it from that end, and I remain convinced that my initial idealism about women in combat was completely flawed, and will likely never work well. Up until I'd had several years of managing the collision between idealism and reality, I thought it would be no big deal. After a few years, I looked around at the rubble, and realized that it was, indeed, a big deal.

 

I suppose that a culture that did not allow little girls and immature women to use sexuality as a tool, and which did not train them to exploit it at every opportunity, might manage to make a truly gender-neutral military possible, one where only physical capabilities controlled what job you did, or where you were assigned. As such a society does not exist anywhere in the world, and is very unlikely to, I remain a converted fan to the wisdom of our elders, and their belief in strict gender roles.

 

Women have a responsibility and an ability to contribute to national defense in the Army. It just isn't in front-line direct combat.

Edited September 22, 2012 by thekirk

[R011]

Her husband is an American and as neither she nor her husband were permanent residents or citizens of Canada when the children were born, the kids do not get Canadian citizenship.

 

That exception only applies if a parent is a diplomat or employee of a foreign government.

 

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-29/page-2.html#h-3

 

I'm afraid her Canadian-born kids are Canadian citizens. When they turn eighteen, they can move back here and sponsor her application for immigration if they choose. Until then, they would not count in her favour should she apply to immigrate. Deportations of illegal immigrants with children who are Canadian citizen are not uncommon.

 

As for supporting them, that only applies if they live here. Unless they have someone here who can legally assume custody, this is unlikely. As the father apparently isn't being jailed, custody will probably devolve on him.

[Allan W]

Hmm, you're right on the citizenship issue.

[Skywalkre]

If you want a strong argument to keep women out of deploying, argue it's for their own safety in regards to rape. That issue has to be the biggest blemish on the US armed services over the last decade. While things have improved, the numbers are still disgusting.

[Rocky Davis]

No, but they should discourage others from willfully getting pregnant.

 

What you are not understanding is this - people in the US Military that decide (upon themselves) that they do not want to continue that with which that person signed a legal, binding military service contract (to adhere to for so many years), will get desperate enough to do anything to get shed of said contract. That includes desperate things such as shooting one's foot off, intentionally doing crazy things that endanger others etc.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Rocky Davis

[Sardaukar]

No, but they should discourage others from willfully getting pregnant.

 

What you are not understanding is this - people in the US Military that decide (upon themselves) that they do not want to continue that with which that person signed a legal, binding military service contract (to adhere to for so many years), will get desperate enough to do anything to get shed of said contract. That includes desperate things such as shooting one's foot off, intentionally doing crazy things that endager others etc.

 

I think he (Exel) and me both especially understand that. In for a penny, in for a pound.

 

I think that what he meant was that getting into to, what is seen as very very elite service, is itself an achievement. Trying to get out of professional deployment is almost unheard of.

 

Even getting into regular service in FDF is bit close to SF selection. Meek will not continue. Multiple layers of selection.

[thekirk]

If you want a strong argument to keep women out of deploying, argue it's for their own safety in regards to rape. That issue has to be the biggest blemish on the US armed services over the last decade. While things have improved, the numbers are still disgusting.

 

Got any real proof of that, outside of the ravings of the activists?

 

Were there any reality to what they claim, then statistically, I should have seen multiple rapes among the females I had working for and around me. The only sex crimes that I personally know of both involved a not very bright degenerate we had who sold a stolen laptop to his boss that was filled with child porn, and one false accusation of rape because a girl caught someone she thought was her boyfriend fucking someone else. Were those lurid projections true, I should have spent a lot of my time dealing with it. I didn't.

 

Which is not to say it doesn't happen, either. It's just that the activists have hopelessly polluted the discussion about rape in the military by including everything from some newly-enlisted teenager expressing discomfort at having to change clothes in the field in a shared tent (an actual attempted complaint of sexual harassment on my watch... She described the situation to the nice people over at EO as being "...raped by their eyes...". None of the men in the tent at the time had even expressed a vague interest in watching, either--too damn tired, and the girl was just a little on the unattractive side. I should point out that she was laughed out of the EO office.), and the mentally-ill delusional dischargee who claimed that her boss had sent King Kong to rape her in the guard tower. All of these claims get rolled up into the statistics they quote, and the actual rate of successful prosecutions in these cases is ludicrous by comparison.

 

The CID guy investigating the above case of false accusation was quite jaded by the whole thing, by the time we had to deal with him. Per what he said while interviewing the accuseds leadership, I got the little gem from him that roughly 60% of his cases were clearly fraudulent, another 30% were likely fraudulent, and something like 10% were probably real, honest-to-God cases of rape. Take that for what you will.

 

If the rate of rape were as high as the activists claim, I had to be the luckiest senior NCO in the Army, because I never personally witnessed, participated in, or dealt with an actual victim of rape. By their odds, that's statistically so unlikely as to be impossible.

[thekirk]

No, but they should discourage others from willfully getting pregnant.

 

What you are not understanding is this - people in the US Military that decide (upon themselves) that they do not want to continue that with which that person signed a legal, binding military service contract (to adhere to for so many years), will get desperate enough to do anything to get shed of said contract. That includes desperate things such as shooting one's foot off, intentionally doing crazy things that endager others etc.

 

I think he (Exel) and me both especially understand that. In for a penny, in for a pound.

 

I think that what he meant was that getting into to, what is seen as very very elite service, is itself an achievement. Trying to get out of professional deployment is almost unheard of.

 

Even getting into regular service in FDF is bit close to SF selection. Meek will not continue. Multiple layers of selection.

 

Which is precisely the point I'm trying to get across to him. He's used to a quality of human material that an army the size of the US Army or Marine Corps just does not have the ability to recruit, and trying to extrapolate from that to being able to say "Well, if we can do it, surely you can, as well...".

 

It just is not the same. The deployment forces that Exel is talking about are about as far from the US Army's operating conditions as a exclusive boutique is from WalMart or Ikea. Conditions and inclusions that make sense when you're talking about a small, carefully selected unit do not apply across a broad mass of a much larger force. And, I don't think that the various Scandinavian forces have quite the problem the US has with the idiot civilian activists chronically distorting common-sense adaptations to accommodate these "little, minor changes" like integrating women into the combat arms.

 

Frankly, if they let the military do the things that ought to be done, I'd say sure, go for it: Let the women try out for it, and if they meet the standards, we'll welcome them with open arms. The problem is, that's not going to happen. They just can't help themselves--They're going to want to guarantee equality of outcomes, and when 2LT Suzy Jones doesn't make the cut at Ranger School, they're going to either remove Ranger School as a discriminator, or they're going to water down the course to the point where it's of no value, whatsoever.

[Archie Pellagio]

Regarding rape, evidentally it is serious enough concern on major FOBs that a significant number of ISAF nations issue all fermale personnel with rape whistles.

 

As for integration, the current plan in the ADF is to phase it over three years, with the next RMC (think Sandhurst/West Point) class giving female officers the option to try for combat arms positions and work from there.

 

Curiously enough, since the initial phase began at the beginning of this year asking for expressions of interest for internal transfers, only three women applied, all officers, all navy, all for clearance diver spots.

 

At the end of the day like it or not, this stuff is happening, the only options people really have are bitch and moan on the internet or try to make it work as best as possible.

[Skywalkre]

If you want a strong argument to keep women out of deploying, argue it's for their own safety in regards to rape. That issue has to be the biggest blemish on the US armed services over the last decade. While things have improved, the numbers are still disgusting.

 

Got any real proof of that, outside of the ravings of the activists?

Who needs activists? The DoD releases enough info on their own. Just go check out the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response website. Then go check on the DoD website for the changes Panetta put into place/asked for back in April.

 

Plenty of stuff out there, try opening your eyes.

 

Were there any reality to what they claim, then statistically, I should have seen multiple rapes among the females I had working for and around me. The only sex crimes that I personally know of both involved a not very bright degenerate we had who sold a stolen laptop to his boss that was filled with child porn, and one false accusation of rape because a girl caught someone she thought was her boyfriend fucking someone else. Were those lurid projections true, I should have spent a lot of my time dealing with it. I didn't.

This is a trend with you. Unless you've seen something firsthand you don't buy it. /shrugs That's something you need to get over.

 

Rape is a crime that often goes unreported. One of those official reports you can look up estimates that only about 20% of actual "unwanted sexual contact" that occurred in the military were reported a few years back.

 

Look how quickly you dismissed this? Maybe you never had to deal with it because soldiers under you felt it wasn't worth reporting (for various reasons).

 

Which is not to say it doesn't happen, either. It's just that the activists have hopelessly polluted the discussion about rape in the military by including everything from some newly-enlisted teenager expressing discomfort at having to change clothes in the field in a shared tent (an actual attempted complaint of sexual harassment on my watch... She described the situation to the nice people over at EO as being "...raped by their eyes...". None of the men in the tent at the time had even expressed a vague interest in watching, either--too damn tired, and the girl was just a little on the unattractive side. I should point out that she was laughed out of the EO office.), and the mentally-ill delusional dischargee who claimed that her boss had sent King Kong to rape her in the guard tower. All of these claims get rolled up into the statistics they quote, and the actual rate of successful prosecutions in these cases is ludicrous by comparison.

One of the reports I looked at (I'm not giving links, just pointing you in the right direction because you need to do a lot of reading) showed for incidents that were actually reported, over half resulted in punitive action of some kind.

 

The CID guy investigating the above case of false accusation was quite jaded by the whole thing, by the time we had to deal with him. Per what he said while interviewing the accuseds leadership, I got the little gem from him that roughly 60% of his cases were clearly fraudulent, another 30% were likely fraudulent, and something like 10% were probably real, honest-to-God cases of rape. Take that for what you will.

Maybe guys like this are why Panetta asked to have a military version of SVU put into place.

 

If the rate of rape were as high as the activists claim, I had to be the luckiest senior NCO in the Army, because I never personally witnessed, participated in, or dealt with an actual victim of rape. By their odds, that's statistically so unlikely as to be impossible.

I addressed this above. The possibility exists that something happened and the victim didn't report it. The fact that you never thought of that speaks volumes.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Skywalkre

[thekirk]

If you want a strong argument to keep women out of deploying, argue it's for their own safety in regards to rape. That issue has to be the biggest blemish on the US armed services over the last decade. While things have improved, the numbers are still disgusting.

 

Got any real proof of that, outside of the ravings of the activists?

Who needs activists? The DoD releases enough info on their own. Just go check out the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response website. Then go check on the DoD website for the changes Panetta put into place/asked for back in April.

 

Plenty of stuff out there, try opening your eyes.

 

Were there any reality to what they claim, then statistically, I should have seen multiple rapes among the females I had working for and around me. The only sex crimes that I personally know of both involved a not very bright degenerate we had who sold a stolen laptop to his boss that was filled with child porn, and one false accusation of rape because a girl caught someone she thought was her boyfriend fucking someone else. Were those lurid projections true, I should have spent a lot of my time dealing with it. I didn't.

This is a trend with you. Unless you've seen something firsthand you don't buy it. /shrugs That's something you need to get over.

 

Rape is a crime that often goes unreported. One of those official reports you can look up estimates that only about 20% of actual "unwanted sexual contact" that occurred in the military were reported a few years back.

 

Look how quickly you dismissed this? Maybe you never had to deal with it because soldiers under you felt it wasn't worth reporting (for various reasons).

 

Which is not to say it doesn't happen, either. It's just that the activists have hopelessly polluted the discussion about rape in the military by including everything from some newly-enlisted teenager expressing discomfort at having to change clothes in the field in a shared tent (an actual attempted complaint of sexual harassment on my watch... She described the situation to the nice people over at EO as being "...raped by their eyes...". None of the men in the tent at the time had even expressed a vague interest in watching, either--too damn tired, and the girl was just a little on the unattractive side. I should point out that she was laughed out of the EO office.), and the mentally-ill delusional dischargee who claimed that her boss had sent King Kong to rape her in the guard tower. All of these claims get rolled up into the statistics they quote, and the actual rate of successful prosecutions in these cases is ludicrous by comparison.

One of the reports I looked at (I'm not giving links, just pointing you in the right direction because you need to do a lot of reading) showed for incidents that were actually reported, over half resulted in punitive action of some kind.

 

The CID guy investigating the above case of false accusation was quite jaded by the whole thing, by the time we had to deal with him. Per what he said while interviewing the accuseds leadership, I got the little gem from him that roughly 60% of his cases were clearly fraudulent, another 30% were likely fraudulent, and something like 10% were probably real, honest-to-God cases of rape. Take that for what you will.

Maybe guys like this are why Panetta asked to have a military version of SVU put into place.

 

If the rate of rape were as high as the activists claim, I had to be the luckiest senior NCO in the Army, because I never personally witnessed, participated in, or dealt with an actual victim of rape. By their odds, that's statistically so unlikely as to be impossible.

I addressed this above. The possibility exists that something happened and the victim didn't report it. The fact that you never thought of that speaks volumes.

 

Where do you think those DOD stats are coming from? The same jobsworthies that are spouting the ridiculous claims. And, they're counting everything that can be even remotely termed as a "rape".

 

When the stats don't match personal experience, what does that tell you? That should start to make you question the statistics themselves, but in your case, it apparently doesn't.

 

I ran a Brigade-level S2 shop for three years. Every single fucking criminal report that happened in our command came across my desk. The number of rapes, in that timeframe? Zero. When the activists insist that one of every four women in the Army get raped, and you have a population that's around 15% female, I should have seen at least a few rapes, should I not? The only remotely sexually-based crimes that I remember seeing in that period were the two I mentioned.

 

The numbers reports you're using for this aren't just suspect, they border on fantasy.

[Sardaukar]

No, but they should discourage others from willfully getting pregnant.

 

What you are not understanding is this - people in the US Military that decide (upon themselves) that they do not want to continue that with which that person signed a legal, binding military service contract (to adhere to for so many years), will get desperate enough to do anything to get shed of said contract. That includes desperate things such as shooting one's foot off, intentionally doing crazy things that endager others etc.

 

I think he (Exel) and me both especially understand that. In for a penny, in for a pound.

 

I think that what he meant was that getting into to, what is seen as very very elite service, is itself an achievement. Trying to get out of professional deployment is almost unheard of.

 

Even getting into regular service in FDF is bit close to SF selection. Meek will not continue. Multiple layers of selection.

 

Which is precisely the point I'm trying to get across to him. He's used to a quality of human material that an army the size of the US Army or Marine Corps just does not have the ability to recruit, and trying to extrapolate from that to being able to say "Well, if we can do it, surely you can, as well...".

 

It just is not the same. The deployment forces that Exel is talking about are about as far from the US Army's operating conditions as a exclusive boutique is from WalMart or Ikea. Conditions and inclusions that make sense when you're talking about a small, carefully selected unit do not apply across a broad mass of a much larger force. And, I don't think that the various Scandinavian forces have quite the problem the US has with the idiot civilian activists chronically distorting common-sense adaptations to accommodate these "little, minor changes" like integrating women into the combat arms.

 

Frankly, if they let the military do the things that ought to be done, I'd say sure, go for it: Let the women try out for it, and if they meet the standards, we'll welcome them with open arms. The problem is, that's not going to happen. They just can't help themselves--They're going to want to guarantee equality of outcomes, and when 2LT Suzy Jones doesn't make the cut at Ranger School, they're going to either remove Ranger School as a discriminator, or they're going to water down the course to the point where it's of no value, whatsoever.

 

I get you.

 

I think it'd be better to compare situation with conscript units of FDF. We did manage to introduce women into combat arms. I think some of the main differences compared to US are almost extreme homogeneous society of Finland and similarly big tradition of equality between sexes. Thus, there is very little pressure either way.

 

If a woman wants to serve in combat arms in FDF, more power to her. It causes some minor problems, but it has never seen as major issue. One issue of course are sexual relationships, but FDF is quite relaxed about it. As long as someone is not your immediate superior/subordinate, no-one gives rat's ass about it. One exception is relations between conscripts and regulars..that was always frowned upon.

 

Even I have been in situations where UCMJ would have thrown big book on me. Just different culture and what is seen as acceptable.

 

To edit nad add...Israeli Caracal battalion does not seem many problems either. And their combat performance does not seem to suffer from inclusion of females.

 

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4285000,00.html

Edited September 23, 2012 by Sardaukar

[Skywalkre]

The numbers reports you're using for this aren't just suspect, they border on fantasy.

Right...

 

Since it's clear you're not going to go read this stuff, here's one link for those interested with several of the yearly reports:

 

http://www.sapr.mil/index.php/annual-reports

 

Here's also one article from the DoD website on Secretary Panetta's changes earlier this year:

 

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=67954

[thekirk]

The numbers reports you're using for this aren't just suspect, they border on fantasy.

Right...

 

Since it's clear you're not going to go read this stuff, here's one link for those interested with several of the yearly reports:

 

http://www.sapr.mil/.../annual-reports

 

Here's also one article from the DoD website on Secretary Panetta's changes earlier this year:

 

http://www.defense.g...e.aspx?id=67954

 

Look, dumbass... I've read those reports myself. I have looked into the fantasy that you and your credulous ilk have bought into, and it does not match my personal experience. When that happens, I call bullshit.

 

I managed the S2 element for a brigade in both the continental US and while we were deployed. Part of that job is to monitor each and every criminal violation that comes up and is investigated. If the rape issue was as big as those statistics claim it to be, then I should have seen evidence of that in my job. I did not. What should that tell someone about the statistics?

 

Nine-tenths of those claims just do not pass the make-sense test, period. You want me to believe that women in a combat zone, who are carrying weapons and who have access to them are not going to use them to stop someone from raping them? That they're not going to take revenge on their assailants, if they were raped? For those statistics to be true, we should also be seeing a commensurate rise in the incidents involving blue-on-blue shootings by females delivering vengeance on their assailants. Do we see that? No, we do not.

 

I've talked this over with many of my female peers and bosses, when I was on active duty. The first time these stats really came forward to my attention was while we were preparing to deploy to Iraq for the second time. I brought them to the attention of my boss at the time, a woman who'd been on our first deployment with us. She looked at the statistics herself, laughed her ass off, and started poking holes in the methodology of how they were getting this stuff. It's just like the famed allegation of that Karpinski character, that women were dying of thirst and dehydration because they were afraid to go out after dark and use the latrines. Notwithstanding that nobody ever managed to actually find those dead women, or that the whole thing was the product of Karpinski's delusional imagination, they still roll up crap like that to make the statistics look good.

 

Rape happens. It happens in the military. But, it does not happen to "one of every four women" in the course of their careers, unless you really start to fudge the statistics. Which is precisely what they've done--And, in so doing, they both insult the integrity of a whole bunch of good men who would never participate or allow something like that to happen, and they infantilize the women they serve next to. As my boss female boss commented "Rape whistle? WTF do they need that for? They've got an M16 and ammo, for Christ's sake... If the little darlings don't have the balls to shoot someone raping them, what the hell are they doing in the Army in the first place?".

 

For the love of God, do you really think those numbers would make sense in a scenario where every single woman is carrying a loaded weapon? That someone would even feel comfortable committing a rape, knowing that his victim had easy access to both the means and the opportunity to kill him in return? Not too many people are really that stupid. Are you?

[Rocky Davis]

They're going to want to guarantee equality of outcomes, and when 2LT Suzy Jones doesn't make the cut at Ranger School, they're going to either remove Ranger School as a discriminator, or they're going to water down the course to the point where it's of no value, whatsoever.

 

That's exactly how I see that which will most likely happen. There will be an outrage from the highest levels of Command that will insist that something is wrong with Ranger School because 90% of female students fail (once they are admitted, which is in the process).

[shep854]

That's exactly how I see that which will most likely happen. There will be an outrage from the highest levels of Command that will insist that something is wrong with Ranger School because 90% of female students fail (once they are admitted, which is in the process).

 

Looks like the fix is going in; from Mil.com's 'Early Brief' 9/20/12:

 

Army Revamps Ranger School, Leadership Courses

 

http://www.military....html?ESRC=eb.nl

While the article doesn't say anything about actually changing the physically demanding nature of the course, there's a certain fishy smell about it.

Edited September 23, 2012 by shep854

[Rocky Davis]

While the article doesn't say anything about actually changing the physically demanding nature of the course, there's a certain fishy smell about it.

 

I'm not even going to touch that one!

[shep854]

While the article doesn't say anything about actually changing the physically demanding nature of the course, there's a certain fishy smell about it.

 

I'm not even going to touch that one!

[shep854]

From Mil.com;

http://www.military....html?ESRC=eb.nl

 

First Women Fail Marine Infantry Officer Course

 

 

WASHINGTON -- The first two female lieutenants to volunteer for the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course failed to complete the program, the Marine Corps said Tuesday.

The first woman did not finish the combat endurance test at the beginning for the course in late September. Twenty-six of the 107 male Marines also did not finish the endurance test.

The second woman could not complete two required training events “due to medical reasons,” said Capt. Eric Flanagan, a Marine spokesman.

She is receiving treatment and is in “good condition,” Flanagan said, though the Marine Corps is not releasing specifics about her medical condition or any identifying information about either of the women.

The women will now attend their primary military occupational specialty schools, Flanagan said.

 

I hope they recover fully and succeed in their MOS'. I also fervently hope the Corps won't get pressured to 'adjust' training requirements, like the Army over Ranger School.

Edited October 17, 2012 by shep854

[m1a1mg]

kirk, but I think you're totally wrong on this. Your "evidence" is purely anecdotal. The numbers don't lie. That you believe there are so many people making up rape stories says more about you than them.

 

Further, you're full of shit about "all" transgressions going through the brigade S2 shop. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

 

Finally, the Army actually believes the numbers reported to be low, as Soldiers further up in rank don't report.

[Exel]

Just out of curiosity, what on Earth would a rape investigation or sexual abuse claim do in S2?

 

That's about as personal and confidential as anything gets and they sure wouldn't be waving those papers around to anyone not directly involved with the investigation where I've served. It's not exactly your run-of-the-mill bar fight investigation. Not saying that's not the way it's done in the US, but sure wouldn't fly here. Or in NATO.

[thekirk]

kirk, but I think you're totally wrong on this. Your "evidence" is purely anecdotal. The numbers don't lie. That you believe there are so many people making up rape stories says more about you than them.

 

Further, you're full of shit about "all" transgressions going through the brigade S2 shop. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

 

Finally, the Army actually believes the numbers reported to be low, as Soldiers further up in rank don't report.

 

Really? What made the blotter report and was investigated that got missed by the S2? I'd love to know, because if it was, then whoever was running the S2 shop in your units wasn't doing their jobs. Everything that may have an impact on whether or not someone who holds a security clearance or who might be granted one is supposed to go through that office, one way or another.

 

My evidence may be anecdotal, but when your statistics don't match personal experience, then what? If I am told by the powers-that-be that X percent of the MOS is African-American, and I go out and actually look at the unit I'm in, and those statistics match the reality, then I don't question the statistics. When I compare the numbers about rape with what I've seen and experienced, and they don't match, I seriously question the numbers. Take a look at what they are claiming as far as the quantity of rapes that take place, and then compare them to what you know of. Do they match? At all? Are they even close? It may not be readily apparent to you if you're in a unit without significant numbers of women, but it sure as hell is if you've got the quantities present in most combat support units.

 

The other thing? CID. Sit down and actually talk to the investigators, and ask about how many of their cases are founded and unfounded. Typically, the numbers are horrifying, because for every ten or so cases ours were investigating, there were only one or two that were even remotely close to being something could even be prosecuted. Typically, most of their cases boiled down to what happens in a lot of cases at colleges and universities--Buyer's remorse. When you have girls who casually report being "raped" in order to save their reputation, you get a lot of false accusations. One of the cases I'm thinking of foundered on the fact that the young lady involved let herself be videotaped taking part in a group-sex escapade. She apparently forgot about the tape, because she went on to charge the three guys with rape. One of them produced the tape, and the upshot was that she was on tape, demonstrating clear consent and desire, and not in a state of drunken intoxication. What was screwed up about that one? She got off scot-free, after having made false accusations, and the three involved males were all charged with the usual catch-all "good order and discipline" paragraph for taking part. It was like they got in trouble for embarrassing the command, which was BS.

 

Believe what you want. The fact is that what I witnessed during my time on active duty did not even remotely resemble the Army those statistics describe, unless someone was running a rape camp somewhere I wasn't stationed.