The Nation's Pulse / Men and Children First
Hoffman, Julie
Men and Children First by Julie Hoffman Army Maj. Rhonda Cornum, whose Blackhawk helicopter was shot down over Kuwait, was one of only two American female POWs taken in the Gulf War. As such, her...
...The same legislation also established the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces...
...Does Cheney want to be remembered for the victory in the Gulf or as the guy who put your daughter in army boots...
...n July 1991, Congress passed the Defense Authorization for 1992, which repealed the combat exemption for female aviators in the Navy and Air Force...
...If they bring out a joint chief or a young lieutenant colonel up for promotion, there is simply no question that he is muzzled...
...Major Cornum happens to be a strong advocate of lifting that ban, and when asked if she had been abused during her captivity she replied that she had been treated no differently from any of the men...
...Anna Quindlen linked them in a recent column on the Tailhook incident: "It seems never to have occurred to [the military] that if you treat women like second class citizens by denying them promotion to combat positions, your male personnel will get the idea that they can treat them like second-class citizens in other ways, too...
...Last summer, for example, as the legislation to repeal the combat exemption for female aviators was being debated, members of DACOWITS coordinated lobbying efforts with uniformed female officers, who were allowed to violate military rules against such activities...
...But it is understood that if he spills the beans he'll have to eat them...
...John Ripley, USMC...
...Indeed, in a televised interview on the conservative "Family Forum Live," he mentioned that in one of the battle groups he visited, the only ship that couldn't return enemy fire was the ammunition supply ship—because it was staffed by women...
...no special edition of "Nightline...
...It invites the suspicion that the year-old cover-up of what happened to our women POWs in Iraq was motivated less by respect for the women's privacy than by politics...
...With an office in the Pentagon directly down the hall from the Secretary, the thirty-eight members—most of whom are women—enjoy the proThe American Spectator September 1992 43 Red Hills of Africa by Ronald Radosh tocol rank of a three-star general and all the privileges that go with it, including direct access to the Secretary of Defense...
...his Pentagon appear to be more afraid of the issue of women in combat than they were of Saddam Hussein...
...Like most of those who have propelled the social upheavals of the last twenty-five years, the GI Janes have been successful because they've been smart enough not to put it before the American people all at once in black-and-white...
...Stung by the drunken antics of Navy pilots at Tailhook, the Administration proved it can move quickly when it wants to, collecting the scalp of Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III...
...First, he gave a riveting account of the gruesomeness of real-life ground combat—like the 300-percent casualty rate in certain theaters of the Vietnam war...
...Much of the pressure on Cheney comes from a taxpayer-funded feminist lobby within his own department: the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS...
...We sometimes find ourselves in difficult positions where by virtue of having opened up opportunities we end up with that kind of situation," he said...
...But instead of dampening expectations, the Secretary of Defense talks about "expanding" roles for women...
...Of course, there were a few red faces when the USS Acadia—dubbed "The Love Boat"—returned home with one out of every ten women aboard pregnant...
...Colonel Ripley is a 30-year veteran who served two tours in Vietnam and has been decorated with the Navy Cross, a Silver Star, two awards of the Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Vietnamese Distinguished Service order, and the Cross of Gallantry, and was nominated for the congressional Medal of Honor...
...Though it makes little sense torepeal the combat exemption before the commission files its report, this is precisely what the legislation would allow...
...Any active-duty military person has a lot to lose," says Marine Col...
...A t a time when a Secretary of the Navy is forced to resign because drunken aviators got out of hand at the annual Tailhook convention, it is astonishing that the molestation of American women POWs has been all but ignored...
...There is nothing overt here, no piece of paper or instructions...
...She had, she said, been "violated manually—vaginally and rectally...
...Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Julie Hoffman is executive assistant at the Washington office of Eagle Forum...
...But when one of the commissioners, Elaine Donnelly, asked her to elaborate, Major Cornum dropped a bombshell...
...Colonel Ripley retired a week after his commission testimony...
...Donnelly's question was actually a follow-up...
...no outrage on the part of those who only months before had presented Anita Hill as the victim of shocking sexual harassment...
...According to Maryland Democrat Beverly Byron of the House Armed Services Committee, lifting the exemption for female pilots is "what America perceives as the next step...
...Second, he gave a frank answer to the question of whether women should serve in combat: "Hell, no...
...With the movement to repeal the combat exemption for women picking up steam, even the most battle-scarred warriors are too intimidated to speak their minds...
...Cornum and Army Specialist Melissa Coleman had been subject to "sexual indecencies"—we might never have heard the truth...
...But Secretary Cheney, who harbors presidential ambitions, is straddling the fence—and is under strong pressure to appoint a woman as Secretary of the Navy, which would all but clinch combat for women...
...His was the most remarkable testimony before the commission, for two reasons...
...There were no screaming front-page headlines...
...If not for an inadvertent slip in earlier testimony by Hays Parks, the Pentagon's expert on the Geneva Convention and POWs—he mentioned that both Maj...
...Secretary Cheney has stated that he will direct no change in policy until the commission has filed its report to the President (due November 15), and he has taken no position on the combat exemption...
...Proponents point out that the legislation only repeals the combat exclusion for pilots, but there's little doubt that this is merely the thin end of the wedge...
...no exposés on "60 Minutes...
...And the language coming out of the Senate Armed Services Committee would force him to put women in "testing" combat roles...
...DACOWITS voted last year in favor of putting women in combat and knows how to take advantage of the old double standard even as they are bent on saying it doesn't exist...
...totally consistent with the reasonable, acceptable, incremental process that I have found so successful over the years...
...What should have been a fact-finding commission has turned into one big "gee-aren't-these-gals-great-and-courageous-and-don't-they-have-the-right-to-do-what-the-boys-do" fest...
...After three months of schmalz and generic praise of women, the commission had not yet gotten the Pentagon to hand over pregnancy rates from the Gulf, or statistics on how many women were sent home, how many were not deployable, and how many were raped...
...All along the commission had been led to believe that our female POWs had not been tortured or abused...
...Colorado Democrat Pat Schroeder, House sponsor of the legislation, tipped her hand by introducing just a few weeks ago a measure that would chuck the current ban on homosexuals in the military, too...
...As such, her testimony about her week of captivity carries great weight with the special presidential commission looking into the existing ban on women in combat...
Vol. 25 • September 1992 • No. 9
