The private war of women soldiers.

Yesterday, Salon.com had an interesting article about women soldiers in Iraq. It's definitely worth a read and certainly the author raises a lot of good points.

But it was not a balanced account. What the author did not relate is the number of false reports of rape and sexual assault in the Army. Now, I don't know if this problem is rampant in the whole Army or just in our area but I've now heard of several incidents where a female soldier accused or threatened to accuse a male superior of sexual assault in retaliation for not being promoted, being punished for some kind of UCMJ infraction or to get out of deploying. Luckily, the new measures in dealing with sexual assault were able to easily and quickly clear the inappropriately accused parties. But it was still a mess for all involved.

Before I married my husband, I was all for women in the military and women in combat. But hearing and seeing CPT Dick's and his colleagues' experiences and reading articles like this make me wonder if it wouldn't be better, for all involved, if women were not in any deploying units in the Army. It's a tough question for me, because I do believe in equality, but I wonder if the situation in Iraq just makes it untenable.