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After a rocket-propelled grenade sent the Black Hawk helicopter tumbling out of the sky over Iraq, the medics got to work fast on the co-pilot, Capt. Duckworth. Standard operating procedure: cut away the desert-camo uniform before burnt fabric melds with burnt flesh. Get at the wounds. Stop the bleeding. Save what's left.
When you show up at Walter Reed Medical Center in that kind of condition, you show up naked, with nothing except the hospital gown. So you're given a "comfort kit," a little backpack containing some toiletries and clothes. Duckworth awoke there around Thanksgiving 2004, a few weeks after the shootdown, to find a comfort kit waiting with slippers, a shaving kit and men's jockey shorts.
She had to laugh.
"It was great. I don't have feet, so I can't wear the slippers, and you know, I just had my legs blown off, it's not like I'm gonna shave my legs any time soon," she chuckles. "I don't have jockey, I'm not gonna wear men's jockey shorts."
Tammy Duckworth had just become the first female double amputee from Iraq, losing one leg above the knee and one below, but she had been a woman for a while already.
"They just had kits for men," Duckworth says. "It never occurred to them to make kits for women."
Duckworth is one of more than 282,000 American women who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during a decade of war, according to Pentagon figures. That's more than six times the number of women deployed in the first Gulf War and more than 35 times the number sent to Vietnam.
The 207,308 women currently serving on active duty comprise some 14.5 percent of the U.S. armed forces, according to the military. While more than 2 million women have served since the Revolutionary War, some 1.9 million of them are currently living -- an unprecedented generation of women at war. The number of female veterans has doubled since 1990 and is expected to skyrocket given further drawdowns in the Middle East.
They are helicopter pilots, linguists and flight nurses, mechanics, mental health administrators and homeland security-force directors, intelligence officers and combat correspondents, Ph.D.s and amputees, Purple Heart recipients and prisoners of war. Over seventy have become generals. Two, one in the Army and another in the Air Force, have four stars.
Duckworth, who received the Purple Heart, is one of 868 servicewomen who have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. One hundred forty-four have been killed.
Yet while women are undeniably at war, the full extent of their roles and capabilities still isn't formally recognized by the military brass. Today's servicewomen perform many of the roles that official policy says they cannot. Often, their service and suffering remain ignored by or invisible to the Pentagon and the public.
Women in the military cannot be treated equally any more than police women or firefighter women can be treated equally.
For some reason the left wing gets all warm and fuzzy when they hear about a woman who was forced into combat suffer horrific wounds. Why does the greatest Country in the world force women into combat? To show that they care about women?
In order to shoehorn women into positions that they clearly don't belong, the standards are lowered. When the standards are lowered, they are lowered for everyone. Instead of the biggest and strongest, we end up with the smallest and weakest. The military has been home to warriors since the beginning of time. Lowering standards to squeeze women in where they have no place is part of the methodology of removing warriors from the military and replacing them with housewives.
In order to shoehorn women into positions that they clearly don't belong, the standards are lowered. When the standards are lowered, they are lowered for everyone. Instead of the biggest and strongest, we end up with the smallest and weakest. The military has been home to warriors since the beginning of time. Lowering standards to squeeze women in where they have no place is part of the methodology of removing warriors from the military and replacing them with housewives.
Actually I don't know Katz, at the firing range women usually scored pretty high when I was out there. They are capable of firing on the enemy if they need to.
In order to shoehorn women into positions that they clearly don't belong, the standards are lowered. When the standards are lowered, they are lowered for everyone. Instead of the biggest and strongest, we end up with the smallest and weakest. The military has been home to warriors since the beginning of time. Lowering standards to squeeze women in where they have no place is part of the methodology of removing warriors from the military and replacing them with housewives.
Actually I don't know Katz, at the firing range women usually scored pretty high when I was out there. They are capable of firing on the enemy if they need to.
But what happens when one of these beautiful girls is captured by the enemy?
Women in battle is a bad idea period.
We are better than this, and I am still waiting for equal treatment for the girls who are in the military.
When was the last time a guy was able to wear a ponytail into battle? Oh, and earrings as well....
Actually I don't know Katz, at the firing range women usually scored pretty high when I was out there. They are capable of firing on the enemy if they need to.
But what happens when one of these beautiful girls is captured by the enemy?
Women in battle is a bad idea period.
We are better than this, and I am still waiting for equal treatment for the girls who are in the military.
When was the last time a guy was able to wear a ponytail into battle? Oh, and earrings as well....
In a perfect world we would have enough male volunteers to where we wouldn't need to put female Military members in harms way, the reality is we don't. We have tens of thousands of perfectly able bodied young men lazing about and we have American women fighting for their lives overseas, and our enemy would like nothing better than to get their hands on some our women, back in Iraq during the height of the war Al Qaeda in Iraq put the word out that they were offering a handsome sum of money to anyone who can bring them a female GI, god knows what they wanted to do with her.
But what happens when one of these beautiful girls is captured by the enemy?
Women in battle is a bad idea period.
We are better than this, and I am still waiting for equal treatment for the girls who are in the military.
When was the last time a guy was able to wear a ponytail into battle? Oh, and earrings as well....
In a perfect world we would have enough male volunteers to where we wouldn't need to put female Military members in harms way, the reality is we don't. We have tens of thousands of perfectly able bodied young men lazing about and we have American women fighting for their lives overseas, and our enemy would like nothing better than to get their hands on some our women, back in Iraq during the height of the war Al Qaeda in Iraq put the word out that they were offering a handsome sum of money to anyone who can bring them a female GI, god knows what they wanted to do with her.
I agree with ya 100%
I still dont think we should send em into battle.... it scares the crap outta me to know what they would do to terrorize a father and mother here if they were to capture one of our daughters and held them for the world to see.
We are fighting animals.
I must add this though... with the rules of engagement our fighting men are faced with, its no wonder a smart young man would think twice about stepping up only to be thrown under the bus the first time he was to fire his weapon at the enemy.
