[Vision2020] stroke inducing editorial: real reason behind Iraq prison abuse is WOMEN!

[Debbie Gray]

THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN IRAQ
By Cal Thomas

Tribune Media Services

What was the cause of the loss of unit cohesion and breakdown of
discipline at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?

Dave Bischel, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police unit who
returned home last month from duty at the prison, was quoted in last
Friday's (5/14) New York Post: "There were lots of affairs. There was all
kinds of adultery and alcoholism and all kinds of crap going on."

When I was in the Army in the mid-1960s, I never saw or even heard of
anything approaching this. I did hear of one sergeant in my unit who was
court-martialed and reduced in rank for having an extramarital affair.
Adultery was taken more seriously then by military and civilian culture.
Discipline and a sense that one was representing the country were
instilled from the first day of basic training until discharge.

The one dirty little secret that no one appears interested in discussing
as a contributing factor to the whorehouse behavior at Abu Ghraib is coed
basic training and what it has done to upset order and discipline.

Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba observed in his report on the breakdown at Abu
Ghraib prison that military police soldiers were weak in basic operational
skills. Is that because 10 years ago, for political reasons, politicians
and feminist activists within the ranks established coed basic training to
promote the fiction that men and women are the same and putting young
women in close quarters with young men would somehow not trigger natural
biological urges?

The fallacy of that thinking began to show up less than two years after
the coed policy was implemented. Sex scandals were reported at Aberdeen
Proving Ground in Maryland and at basic training facilities around the
country.

Former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, R-Kan., headed an independent advisory
committee in 1997 that studied coed basic training. The committee
unanimously found that bundling men and women together in such situations
"is resulting in less discipline, less unit cohesion and more distraction
from training programs." A year later, the House passed legislation to end
coed basic training, but the Senate called for a congressional commission
instead. Key findings of the 1999 commission escaped notice, but in 2002
an Army briefing concluded that gender-integrated basic training was "not
efficient," and "effective" only in sociological terms. Should sociology
be a concern of people who are supposed to know how to fight wars?

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, has
noted: "Social experiments - particularly the unrealistic theory that men
and women are interchangeable in all roles and military missions - have
failed the test of Abu Ghraib. 'Equal opportunity abusers' are not
typical, but the debased activities of a few Americans reveal what can
happen when uniformed soldiers - lacking a firm grounding in legal, moral
and ethical values - wield unsupervised power over other human beings."

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski says she was ignorant about the abuse behavior
and sexual misconduct allegedly practiced by the MPs under her command.
Why? Did she not know the right questions to ask, or was it a matter of
"see no evil" because of the sexual politics involved?

>From the "don't ask, don't tell" policy pertaining to homosexuals in the
military, to the politically correct assignment of women at the most
sensitive levels, politicians, military and civilian commanders pretend
that the powerful sex drive can be controlled and made irrelevant in the
pursuit of military objectives. On ABC's "Nightline" last Friday, several
women said they had been raped by fellow soldiers. They said the Army has
not properly investigated their claims.

The military has tried to desensitize men through a program called
Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) so that any enemy could
not exploit a captives' heightened concern about female colleagues being
physically and sexually abused. In 1992, SERE trainers said the entire
nation would have to be conditioned to accept combat violence against
women.

Congress and the Pentagon need to do something about coed basic training
and the assignment of women to certain jobs that put them and what should
be the military's primary goals at risk. If they do, they are likely to
find a connection between the disciplinary breakdown at the jail of ill
repute in Iraq and the sexual politics of people who think the military is
just one more sociological playground which can be changed into something
it isn't.

(Cal Thomas hosts "After Hours" on Fox News Channel Saturdays at 11 p.m.
ET. Direct all MAIL for Cal Thomas to: Tribune Media Services, 435 N.
Michigan Ave., Suite 1500, Chicago, Ill. 60611. Readers may also leave
e-mail at www.calthomas.com.)

(c) 2004 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

As Madeline Kahn as Mrs White in the movie 'Clue' said: "Flames! flames!
FLAMES!!... on the side of my face... breathing... breathless... heaving
breaths...heaving breath..."

Debbie
mind now boggled

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  Debbie Gray      dgray@uidaho.edu      http://www.uidaho.edu/~dgray/
  We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to
  have the life that is waiting for us." --Joseph Campbell
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