Women in combat

Rico's father forwards this, from one of America's female veterans who served in Iraq,
delivered with a first-hand-been-there-done-that background:

The Marine in question (who, for purposes of publication, will go by the
pseudonym of Sentry) had previously submitted this as a comment at National Review, but her story was compelling enough that we checked into her background, contacted her, and decided to republish it here in its entirety. We offer the following as a third-party testimony, to stand scrutiny on its own merits:

I'm a female veteran. I deployed to Anbar Province in Iraq. When I was
active duty, I was 5'6", 130 pounds, and scored nearly perfect on my
PFTs. I naturally have a lot more upper body strength than the average
woman: not only can I do pull-ups, I can meet the male standard. I
would love to have been in the infantry. And I still think it will be
an unmitigated disaster to incorporate women into combat roles. I am
not interested in risking men's lives so I can live my selfish dream.
We're not just talking about watering down the standards to include
the politically correct number of women into the unit. This isn't an
issue of "if a woman can meet the male standard, she should be able to
go into combat". The number of women that can meet the male standard
will be miniscule; I'd have a decent shot according to my PFTs, but
dragging a 190-pound man in full gear for a hundred yards would destroy
me-and that miniscule number that can physically make the grade and
has the desire to go into combat will be facing an impossible
situation that will ruin the combat effectiveness of the unit. First,
the close quarters of combat units make for a complete lack of privacy
and everything is exposed, to include intimate details of bodily
functions. Second, until we succeed in completely reprogramming every
man in the military to treat women just like men, those men are going
to protect a woman at the expense of the mission. Third, women have
physical limitations that no amount of training or conditioning can
overcome. Fourth, until the media in this country is ready to treat a
captured/raped/tortured/mutilated female soldier just like a
man, women will be targeted by the enemy without fail and without
mercy.
I saw the male combat units when I was in Iraq. They go outside the
wire for days at a time. They eat, sleep, urinate, and defecate in
front of each other and often while on the move. There's no potty
break on the side of the road outside the wire. They urinate into
bottles and defecate into MRE bags. I would like to hear a suggestion
as to how a woman is going to urinate successfully into a bottle while
cramped into a Humvee wearing full body armor. And she gets to
accomplish this feat with the male members of her combat unit twenty
inches away. Volunteers to do that job? Do the men really want to see
it? Should they be forced to?
Everyone wants to point to the IDF as a model for gender integration
in the military. No, the IDF does not put women on the front lines.
They ran into the same wall the US is about to smack into: very few
women can meet the standards required to serve there. The few
integrated units in the IDF suffered three times the casualties of the
all-male units, because the Israeli men, just like almost every other
group of men on the planet, try to protect the women, even at the
expense of the mission. Political correctness doesn't trump thousands
of years of evolution and societal norms. Do we really want to
deprogram that instinct from men?
Regarding physical limitations, not only will a tiny fraction of women
be able to meet the male standard, the simple fact is that women tend
to be shorter than men. I ran into situations when I was deployed
where I simply could not reach something. I wasn't tall enough. I had
to ask a man to get it for me. I can't train myself to be taller. Yes,
there are small men, but not so nearly so many as small women. More, a
military PFT doesn't measure the ability to jump. Men, with more
muscular legs and bones that carry more muscle mass than any woman can
condition herself to carry, can jump higher and farther than women.
That's why we have a men's standing jump and long jump event in the
Olympics separate from women. When you're going over a wall in Baghdad
that's ten feet high, you have to be able to be able to reach the top
of it in full gear and haul yourself over. That's not strength per se,
that's just height and the muscular explosive power to jump and reach
the top. Having to get a boost from one of the men so you can get up
and over could get that man killed.
Without pharmaceutical help, women just do not carry the muscle mass
men do. That muscle mass is also a shock absorber. Whether it's the
concussion of a grenade going off, an IED, or just a punch in the
face, a woman is more likely to go down because she can't absorb the
concussion as well as a man can. And I don't care how the PC forces
try to slice it, in hand-to-hand combat the average man is going to
destroy the average woman, because the average woman is smaller,
period. Muscle equals force in any kind of strike you care to perform.
That's why we don't let female boxers face male boxers.
Lastly, this country and our military are not prepared to see what the
enemy will do to female POWs. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, insurgents, jihadis,
whatever you want to call them, they don't abide by the Geneva
Conventions, and treat women worse than livestock. Google Thomas Tucker
and Kristian Menchaca if you want to see what they do to our men (and
don't google it unless you have a strong stomach) and then imagine a
woman in their hands. How is our 24/7 news cycle going to cover a
captured, raped, and mutilated woman? After the first one, how are the men
in the military going to treat their female comrades? One Thomasina
Tucker is going to mean the men in the military will move heaven and
earth to protect women, never mind what it does to the mission. I
present you with Exhibit A: Jessica Lynch. Male lives will be lost
trying to protect their female comrades. And the people of the US are
not, based on the Jessica Lynch episode, prepared to treat a female
POW the same way they do a man.
I say again, I would have loved to be in the infantry. I think I could
have done it physically, I could've met almost all the male standards
(jumping aside), and I think I'm mentally tough enough to handle
whatever came. But I would never do that to the men. I would never
sacrifice the mission for my own desires. And I wouldn't be able to
live with myself if someone died because of me.

Sentry

Rico says it falls into the old Sergeant Rock 'nuff said' category...