Pregnant soldiers leaving Iraq
Find a Conversation
| Thu, 06-17-2004 - 4:14pm |
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/003200406170322.htm
Pregnant soldiers leaving Iraq, US "unaware of numbers"
Washington, June 17. (PTI): Many U.S. women soldiers in Iraq are leaving the frontline and returning home, but the Pentagon does not want to reveal their numbers as the "embarrassing" statistic includes unwed mothers, media reported on Wednesday.
"U.S. Central Command is not tracking the number of troops who must leave the Iraq war theatre due to pregnancy, prompting military advocates to charge that the Pentagon wants to keep secret what could be an embarrassing statistic," The Washington Times said in a report.
The paper said that there have been anecdotal reports of unmarried women soldiers becoming pregnant in Iraq. One military police unit reported losing three women for that reason.
Lynndie England, the 21-year-old photographed holding a leash attached to a naked Iraqi prisoner, became pregnant during an affair with another soldier at the Abu Ghraib prison compound in Iraq, it said.
But overall numbers are hard to come by. "We are definitely not tracking it," said a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which runs the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I have been attending operations briefings for two years, and I don't think I have heard once that pregnancy has come up."
As in the case of England, said the paper, pregnancies can be embarrassing to the military. In May 2003, the Marine Corps was forced to bring a Marine back home after she gave birth on a Navy warship in the Persian Gulf. She told superiors that she did not know she was pregnant.

Pages
War is a game where the object is to kill enough of the opposition to win. Think about what it takes to kill people, day in and day out, to be on the defensive, where your life is on the line day in and day out. There is nothing uglier than that, so why is rape, sodomy, mass jerk off sessions, homosexuality, pregnancies, etc. any surprise? In order to be effective in war,that is, to win, a lot of regular rules of conduct and morals have to be erased completely, including said PC equality of the sexes. The question is, in terms of the objective, to kill enough of the opposition to win, do women help or harm? I think THAT should be the question, not whether or not we have a right to be there. I don't have an answer to that question, BTW. The decrease in volunteers make women a real asset. However, we don't know the psychological factors of the Arab populate to seeing female soldiers act in ways unheard of in their countries.
My brother, who served in Iraq I, told me that he doesn't think women should be in the battlefield. He said female soldiers are very capable, no doubt, but it makes a male soldier hesitate in the battlefield. Whereas a male colleague could get hit and he could still maintain focus during a firefight, if a female colleague gets hit, he feels obligated to help her immediately, which could very well get him killed. That, he said, and eventually, you have a lot of big-bellied soldiers running around.
Hi Charlamarla! It's been too long since you were here.
Missed you, Chris
I don't know...I've know plenty of women in the military that would have no problem creating a 'body count' if they needed to.
My brother, who served in Iraq I, told me that he doesn't think women should be in the battlefield. He said female soldiers are very capable, no doubt, but it makes a male soldier hesitate in the battlefield. Whereas a male colleague could get hit and he could still maintain focus during a firefight, if a female colleague gets hit, he feels obligated to help her immediately, which could very well get him killed. That, he said, and eventually, you have a lot of big-bellied soldiers running around.
1.
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
Fetuses, as we are told, are seperate lives, from conception. All children should be evacuated from a combat zone, if possible. That they are still physcially dependent on the mother, and the mother must also be evacuated, in order to preserve the life of the child, is a secondary consequence to the evacuation of the child.
And at ages 1 day to 9 months, they are too young to volunteer.
Fetuses can't do pushup either. Regardless of what women tell you it feels like.
It's not that women don't BELONG there per se but of all the rights that women clawed and scratched and fought to obtain this is one that I really don't understand. If anything, one of the few advantages to being a women in the past was not having to go and fight in these silly wars.
I have never had the desire to join the military or to fight in
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
<<>>
This sort of mentality makes me want to vomit!
It's the extremely RARE instance where a man holds a door for a woman these days (or for anyone, for that matter) so I seriously doubt that this sudden "nobility" will overtake these same men on the battlefield.
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- Bob Day, Marriage Equality Rally, Rochester NY
Help in the fight against a constitutional amendment!
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
________________________________________________
"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
"And I'm sorry, but the problems you listed are really the problems of the men...not the women."
Isn't that exactly the POINT??? Regardless of who the blame lies with, the point is, how can they BE MORE EFFECTIVE AT WINNING WAR??
"And I guess this just bothered me...why can't the soldiers be soldiers and still be 'human beings' at the same time?"
Because they are not in the same frame of mind you and I are. Are you aware that they even put chemicals in their rations so that soldiers can remain more alert and more aggressive?? That is what war is, treehugger. It's the ugliest thing that can happen.
"Are we really that immature? I understand the need for 'survival aggression' but not the rest of the base acts."
The majority of people that go into war haven't cleared their teens. So, yes, they are that immature. Moreover, we are talking about the REALITIES of war, not the IDEALISM of war. There has never been a war in history where all of the horrible things we've seen and heard haven't occured. People literally lose their minds. If they cut off body parts to keep as souveniers, why are we even discussing war like it is a regular state of being? You cannot judge what is done in war the same way what is done at home. It's not realistic.
Pages