A military watchdog is pleased that the Senate Armed Services Committee is demanding straight answers about the issue of women in combat.
Elaine Donnelly and the Center for Military Readiness have been warning about the issue for years, and on Feb. 2 the committee held the first hearing on the issue in a quarter-century.
At the center of that controversy is Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who was grilled by Republicans over his dismissal of a U.S. Marine Corps report that criticized mixed-gender combat units.
OneNewsNow has reported on that study in past months, pointing to a Los Angeles Times story about the report. Women failed at 93 of 134 tasks, such as hauling artillery shells and evacuating casualties, the story said.
During the hearing, Mabus admitted he didn’t read the study when he overrode the Marine Corps’ request for an exemption for its front-line units.
A post-hearing story by The Conservative Review noted that senators complained Mabus “had gone to the press to criticize the 1,000 page report the day after it came out, when he had not yet read it.”
“He was the one with the preconceived attitude,” Donnelly says of Mabus. “The only flaw in the study that was done by the Marines was the fact that it did not support the preconceived agenda of the Obama administration.”
Citing its report, the Corps requested an exemption from the Pentagon, the only armed service to do so. Mabus immediately refused to honor the request.
At the Feb. 2 hearing, U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan told Mabus he appears to be “agitated” and “annoyed” that the Marine Corps conducted a study of women in front-line combat.
“To me it seems like you might want to think about complimenting the leadership of the Marine Corps as opposed to implying that they weren’t taking this seriously,” Sullivan told Mabus. “They were clearly taking this seriously.”
Mabus has seemingly gone after the Marine Corps ever since. When the report was released last fall, he suggested the Marine women in the study weren’t physically qualified to be part of it.
On New Year’s Day, Mabus ordered the Marine Corps to integrate its male and female boot camps – and gave the Corps 15 days to produce a plan. That order also told the Corps to drop “man” from titles to better integrate women.
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Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
The Left is trying to ruin our military with this kind of nonsense. When the country becomes ungovernable it will be time for the adults to take it back.