Subject:  Myth Buster on women in the military

Bartcop,

Horowitz is not only a whore, he's a lazy whore.  I did the google thing like
Keysale did and came up with the same problems, so I tried a different tact.
I searched for "Women in the military" "Gulf War".  What comes up?
A buster of myths on women in the military.

Whorowitz should spend more time sourcing his stories and less time spreading his ignorance.

~Margie

From: http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/myths.html

-excerpt-  (There's much more at her site)

3. The Desert Storm "nondeployable for pregnancy" claim:

Columnists and commentators had a field day with this one - distorted statistics
hit the press like pot bellies on beer guzzlers. They threw numbers around that
practically had the whole military pregnant and undeployable.

The reality is that yes some women were undeployable for reasons due to pregnancy
- as were many more men undeployable for substance abuse, alcoholism, court martials,
sports related injuries, off-duty fight related injuries and pending charges of domestic violence.

According to Linda Bird Francke in "Ground Zero" - "No official records were kept on the
impact of pregnancy on women's deployabilty rate to the Gulf war or their evacuation from the Gulf."
According to General Holm in "Women in the Military" - "after the war DOD
reported to Congress that the deployment of women was "highly successful".
 

12. The "time lost for pregnancy claim":

This vacuous old saw has been grinding for twenty years and is dragged out
every time another hack writer is looking for an argument against military women.
Yet as far back as 1975 the Navy discovered that men lost 190,000 days
to drug rehabilitation and another 196,000 days to alcohol rehabilitation -
almost twice the "time lost" by women to pregnancy. Pregnancy reports and
surveys have been generated over and over and by 1990 speculation was rampant
that pregnant women were costing the military a proverbial fortune in early
returns from overseas bases. Well surprise, surprise - another study showed
that the average cost of the early returns for men was $7,174. while the
average cost for women due to pregnancy was $2,046. Among medical
evacuations, AIDS and substance abuse accounted for up to 8 percent,
pregnancy for barely one percent.

Source: Linda Bird Francke in "Ground Zero"

Sadly the "out of control media" is no help - it continues to foster these
myths on both cable and network televison - pandering to the righteous
ranters that for some reason don't see the military as the place for women to
seek the opportunities offered by the nation's largest equal opportunity
employer - the Department of Defense.

For instance see:

1. An Open Letter to PBS for specious broadcasting against military women!
    Click  Here

2. More "televisioneering" against military women:
    This time a cable cabal.