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Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Lifts Military Ban on Women in Combat

Jan. 23, 2013 3:18pm Madeleine Morgenstern

Lt. Colleen Farrell, U.S. Marine, with the Female Engagement Team, 1st Battalion 8th Marines, Regimental Combat Team II stands in formation during a ceremony for the 235th birthday of the Marines at Camp Delaram in Helmand province, Afghanistan on Nov. 10, 2010. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military’s ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war.

The groundbreaking move recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff overturns a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. Panetta’s decision gives the military services until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.

A senior military official says the services will develop plans for allowing women to seek the combat positions. Some jobs may open as soon as this year. Assessments for others, such as special operations forces, including Navy SEALS and the Army’s Delta Force, may take longer.

The official said the military chiefs must report back to Panetta with their initial implementation plans by May 15. The announcement on Panetta’s decision is not expected until Thursday, so the official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Panetta’s move expands the Pentagon’s action nearly a year ago to open about 14,500 combat positions to women, nearly all of them in the Army. This decision could open more than 230,000 jobs, many in Army and Marine infantry units, to women.

In recent years the necessities of war propelled women into jobs as medics, military police and intelligence officers that were sometimes attached – but not formally assigned – to units on the front lines.

Women comprise 14 percent of the 1.4 million active military personnel.

This post has been updated.

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Comments (154)

Centralsville
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 5:17pm
When you see men and women from behing marching it is easy to tell which ones are the women. They are the short ones with the big butts and narrow shoulders that can’t keep up and can’t carry as much weight. Our nation is insane. Liberalism is a brain disorder. Don’t be too hard on the women when training them, they will start crying and you, as a trainer, will be in trouble. Be gentle when preparing the women to get down in the mud and the blood of combat, don’t hurt their sensitive feelings.

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Rotten Toe
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 5:11pm
…ah, yes…recalling the first 30 minutes from the movie Saving Private Ryan. See all you gals at the cemetery real soon!

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- Dismayed Veteran
  Posted on January 24, 2013 at 2:27pm
  And Saving Private Ryan was only make believe. Real life is much worse.
  
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demsrtraitors
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 5:03pm
I wonder will military get rid of the TWO SEPARATE PT test standards? You will never hear a woman say “hey I want equal standards on my PT test”. The dirty secret in the Military is there IS a quota on promoting females and minorities. If you don’t promote a certain percentage because of their race and gender/ sex then the services are open for lawsuits and an bad publicity. Clearly only White Males are the ones who are legally discriminated against.

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Crushedandadone
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 5:01pm
This is insane.

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shammo
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:55pm
Thats real safe. How about the guy in the listening post relying on a 120 lb girl to cover his back? Of course Leon P has never been in a fox hole or even close to one. What a dirt bag.

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tangeletti2
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:50pm
very bad idea…. I wonder where this came from??? Just wanted a note in the history books as he goes out of office?

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demsrtraitors
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:41pm
more destruction of America and her Military. Oh the liberals know exactly what they are doing. Just sit back and watch the liberals burn the Constitution as millions of mexicans keep invading our nation. All the while our Soldiers and Marine are fighting and even dying protecting Afghanistan’s border. Gaze in wonder as guns and gun owners are rounded up. Hopefully you won’t be wondering if water or gas will be coming out of the shower pipes at the FEMA camps

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Centralsville
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:34pm
For years I watched men and women play basketball at my kids college. The women play first, so there will be some people in attendance, then the men come out. It is night and day. When the men take the court after watching the women play it is like someone turned up the volume. It isn’t even the same game. Now you want to put women in war, much more male and violent than a basketball game. I cringe at the thought of my daughters in combat. My daughters are women, not equipped mentally or physically to do combat. They are traditional feminine women. If women are put in combat then they should sign up for the draft just like men. They should be forced to carry the same weight as men in the same conditions even though I know they can’t. I think political correctness in our society is nothing more than female think introduced when women first began sharing power with men. Now it has come to this. Women are not fit for combat and most women would be horrified at the thought of being forced into combat. Political Correctness will be our undoing.

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- jman-6
  Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:45pm
  Just a sad sad endpoint to our Nation’s Moral Depravity and Culture of Death!
  
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Crushedandadone
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:32pm
That’s it. America is done for. The left has won, once and for all.

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Dismayed Veteran
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:31pm
What is a female engagement team? No such thing existed in the Army in 1970. Or is this just a USMC unit?

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TheTram
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:23pm
Anyone remember watching GI Jane with Demi Moore? Watch a lawsuit come flying at the NAVY to lower their testing requirements so more woman can pass the 6 month bud class.

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dukeofpaducah
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:23pm
Each time women are given the privilege to join with their mail counterparts, the training is dumbed down to the point that neither sex will be effective in what they need to do.

Being a straight man has got to be a tough deal these days, in the armed forces.

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Camptown Races
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:19pm
Still yet to come….. V.A.W.A. laws added and amended to Articles of the Geneva Convention. I can’t invent enough jokes about this travesty. If I were a male soldier, I would just sit back and let every one of them now REALLY ‘take it like a man’…… The enemy has truly invaded from the inside… Get ready for a very heavy body count unlike anything we have seen before. And the “patriarchy” will be to blame…. ONCE AGAIN.

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Teufel Hunden
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:18pm
I guess with the gov’t allowing happy people to openly serve, this had to be the second shoe to drop. I pray to God that my Marine Corps can repel the scissors to the balls neutering attempts that this POS administration is trying to force on them.

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chaos175
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:16pm
Another social experiment for the politicians to force down the throatsof the military. A female engagement team is one thing. A woman machine gunner in an infantry platoon is something else entirely. If this succeeds, it will be credit for the Dems. If it fails, it will be military commanders failure in the main stream media.

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1SFG
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:15pm
Sorry women aren’t made like men. See my username. Think about it. Women can barely hump a 35 lb ruck. This is another step in the Commie in Chief destroying the military. One asinine PC step at a time! Glad I retired from this f-ing nightmare.

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- ranepowel
  Posted on January 23, 2013 at 5:50pm
  You didn’t serve with the women I served with. I was a combat medic in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and I saw my female counterparts haul wounded soldiers out on their shoulders day in and day out, with a 25lb med satchel around their lower back.
  
  You literally lie and lie, and act as if that’s honorable. Shame on you. If you ever did serve (which I doubt) you must have been part of the problem, and the rest of the vets I know are glad your kind is slowly dying off.
  
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RANGER1965
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:13pm
Of course this policy will have no correlation with the sudden increase in:

(1) Pregnancy
(2) Rape
(3) Man on Woman violence
(4) Unit Failure to meet standards
(5) Low Unit Morale

For those of you who don’t know there are 2 types of bias about combat soldiers, especially elite ones. The first is a liberal bias that they are all baby killing monsters with 3rd grade educations. The second is a conservative bias that they are all honorable little boyscouts.

The reality is of course nothing like either one. Most soldiers, especially the elite variety are stone cold professional on the job, but when not on the job most party pretty hard, they like to drink, fight and….(yeah lots of that other thing).

Most of these guys are 18-25, hard chargin’ door kickers They live in the mud and blood for months at a time. This isn’t a pilot’s ready room, or a dormitory. This is a hell.

I am certain that there are some women that can handle this, and there are some units that are highly disciplined that can handle an influx of women. But it’s not universal, and this entire policy will fail on a national level.

That’s my 2 cents.

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hauschild
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:10pm
Typical, idiotic leftists. They think they’ve solved a problem. Now, at some point down the line, they’ll have created another: Rape. A woman in combat will eventually get raped.

So, the loony leftists have just introduced rape into an equation where it never should have even been a variable.

The sheer lack of fundamental intelligence displayed by leftists would be breathtaking, if I weren’t used to it after seeing it on display for 40+ years.

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- Shamrock241
  Posted on January 23, 2013 at 6:20pm
  I know you are talking about rape from our own, but can you imagine how brutal that rape and murder will be from there enemy.
  
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B-Neil
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:06pm
My time is almost up. The Progressive liberals cannot have my manhood. Women play a vital roll in mankinds advancement toward the future other then in the kitchen or having babies. There are positions in our economys busisness world, our political world and our military. Combat is not one of them. Professional Football is not one of them. Woman are differant then men. Thank God for that. I’m proud to be a man. Women should be proud of there gender. What women accomplished in Industry during World War II cannot be construde that woman are capable of everthing. What we need is a reallity check. I have nothing but respect for women and there performance in life. I don’t want to see them get used and abused for a political agenda put on by ignorant attenchen getting woman who know they won’t have to face such activities.and there being backed up by men who lost there B—-. I just don’r want to see woman get raped and abused by our enamies. Thats just the man left in me.

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FlagWavingPatriot
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:04pm
Political correctness is a cancer.

This decision will take PTSD to a new level.

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ranepowel
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 4:00pm
I’d love for all of you speaking ill of this change to go tell an Israeli female combat soldier that they are inferior. Pllleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaassseee. I would love to watch all you fat, old white men and women get your butts kicked by a Jewish woman.

Of course, for many of you, that would require you stop drinking beer every night and abusing your wives and fornicating with farm animals, so this dream will have to stay a dream for now :(

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- tommytruck
  Posted on January 23, 2013 at 5:35pm
  Females in the IDF are not placed in combat roles.
  
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- ranepowel
  Posted on January 23, 2013 at 5:56pm
  Well, the facts say otherwise, jack ass. I served alongside Israeli women who were in the infantry.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracal_Battalion
  
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John.Galt
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 3:59pm
This just proves that liberals HATE women and want them to DIE at the hands of our enemies.

Why do libs hate women, blacks and gays so much?!?

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Uechi
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 3:57pm
Women would make great snipers many are better marksmen then men, There’s no more dangerous animal on Earth then a pissed off female. Physically very few can match their male counterparts.

As far as Israel goes they don’t have much choice. Small country small population limited options.

All in all I think that combat for females should be reserved for helicopters, jets and artillery maybe tanks. In general I think it is just plain dumb.

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Uncurable wound
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 3:56pm
Put 100 women in a room have them fight to the death against 100 men!
There will be 95 dead women on the floor…at least!
It is what it is!

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Centralsville
Posted on January 23, 2013 at 3:53pm
Our army, women and homosexuals. What a winning combination.

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