Leave no man behind

This is a disgusting, tragic and horrific story.

Three soldiers have been relieved of duty pending an investigation into the strange death last month of Sgt. Gerald Cassidy who was found alone in his room, slumped in a chair. The autopsy revealed he’d been dead for hours before his body was discovered, and may have been unconscious for days before that.

Cassidy arrived Ft. Knox suffering blinding headaches, memory and hearing loss, and PTS.

May God be with his family and friends over the holidays, as the investigation drags on.

A battalion commander, company commander and platoon sergeant have lost privileges and been removed from the unit. What is disconcerting is that according the Army’s own rules, each injured service member in such a unit is assigned a doctor, a nurse care manager and a squad leader to manage treatment. What happened here?

Needless to say, as in the case of assigning women to combat collocated forward company units (which are supposed to be all-male), the Army doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to the ‘rules’.

X Posted at CB

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Women dying in the war against regulations

It’s not theoretically against the law for women to die in war; what is unethical is for the army to place them in harm’s way intentionally, against regulations.

This illegal, inappropriate behavior on the Army’s part- is what Elaine Donnelly talks about at The Center for Military Readiness, here.

Controversy about the Army’s “anything goes attitude toward women in land combat has gotten worse. As the Center for Military Readiness has been reporting since 2004, Army officials have been redefining and circumventing regulations regarding female soldiers, without authorization by the Secretary of Defense, and without the legally required advance notice to Congress.

This is outrageous, considering women like 2nd Lt. Tracy Lynn Alger are dying for no good reason.

She was in a direct ground combat-collocated forward support company – a battalion level unit that is required by current Defense Department regulations to be all male.

Read the rest, but what I warned in my letters to the editor and to my elected officials back in the 70’s – about “equal rights” eventually putting women into combat…has happened. And it’s happening dishonestly; through the backdoor.

I suppose the point is…women will die in war as long as they’re working with the military, but we don’t have to be STUPID about it, and put them intentionally in harm’s way alongside the guys who are physically up to the task of carrying a full battle rattle, etc.  It’s putting our men at unncessary risk, too.  War is hard, tough, and physically demanding.  Put the people who are best-suited for the job at the front, and put the girls who don’t have the upper body strength to carry a wounded fellow soldier-where they can do the most good.

Men and women, as I talked about at Cao’s blog, are not physically equal.  Weight Watchers recognizes the difference, and the difference is observed in competitive sports and body building.

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