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
<
"She looks around her and sees men losing their tempers all the time," says the coach, Lisa Parker of the Strickland Group. "She wants to know why the rules are different for men.">>
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0714/p01s02-usec.html
If this woman is an executive she either has training or experience to show that temper tantrums are inappropriate in a business setting. Using the rationale that the men do it too is specious. And it's that kind of reasoning that I think undercuts equality. Apparently there was a double standard but NO executive should be having hissy fits.
Just my thoughts.
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
LInndie England (along with many of the other soldiers in Iraq) are all young, away from home and under very difficult circumstances without their loved ones nearby. While I think what these soldiers did was reprehensible, I find that most probably those in charge totally dropped the ball in this whole thing are unltimately responsible for providing the circumstances and atmosphere for this sort of thing to happen.
I also think that the ages of the people serving in the military coupled with the trying circumstances they are under also plays a part in these pregnancies as well.
<>
You both have a point. There most definately IS a double standard for the behaviour of women executives and male executives. I have seen so many male bullies in the business world it isn't even funny. They get promoted and the women don't. However, the answer isn't for the women to stoop to the level of the men but for the men to raise the bar and start behaving like grown-ups.
The fact remains that women have to outperform the men in many aspects just to keep themselves on an "equal" footing. I doubt this will change any time soon, based on some of the attitudes displayed by certain individuals on this board (and this is, after all, sort of a cross section of the opions that are out there in the world).
While I agree that the "women don't belong on subs or ships" statement is a load of crap, I do have to say that we can't just say that the men have a lack of restraint. I'm surrounded by people who have served in the military, some female and some male...the female military members a lot of times are just as...shall we say....randy and unrestrained as their male counterparts. I can imagine many of my fellow females would want to conk me on the head for saying that, but it's very true.
In all reality we should be concerned as to why service members are having unprotected sex and spreading goodness knows what.
Pages