The Pentagon is implementing new military plans that will make the concept of women in combat a reality.

The Center for Military Readiness warned this week that the Pentagon is flouting policies mandated by Congress in an effort to implement politically correct policies that increase the number of uniformed women put into harm’s way.

Others suggest the Pentagon tinkering with rules forbidding women in combat is a clear effort to increase boots on the ground as the troop-strapped DoD faces manpower shortages in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe.

Seven female U.S. soldiers have thus far been killed in Iraq and many more have been wounded. The question is, why? Aren't women supposed to be kept out of units that may see combat?

Female combat pilots and military police (patrolling the streets of Baghdad, for instance) are a recognized part of Congress’s loosening of the restriction on the roles females can play in combat operations, even though there remains fixed in the rule book a regulation that exempts women from direct ground combat units that engage in deliberate offensive action against the enemy.

Established by then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin on Jan. 13, 1994, the so-called “Aspin Rules” exempt female soldiers from assignments in smaller direct ground combat (DGC) units that engage in deliberate offensive action against the enemy, and from units that collocate with them.

So far, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has not approved any change in the Aspin rules.

However, the DoD has already started to sidestep the exemption of female soldiers from the flagged assignments in smaller direct ground combat (DGC) units that engage in deliberate offensive action against the enemy, and from units that collocate with them.

The Pentagon's modus operandi to skirt the rules: attach Forward Support Companies (FSGs) and their inevitable contingent of female soldiers to bigger support brigades – a separation the Army contends does not violate the hard-and-fast policy.

What’s more, the Army is mulling the idea of imbedding mixed-sex FSGs into actual combat brigades.

But as to this percolating plan, DoD officials concede it would violate the Pentagon policy against collocating women-included units and would require notification to Congress.

What really brings the issue to a head is the inevitable military personnel numbers game.

According to a Washington Times report, last May the Army told Pentagon officials in a special report that if it was forced to keep the vital FSCs all-male, it would simply not have enough soldiers.

“Army manpower cannot support elimination of female soldiers from all units designated to be unit of action elements,” the Army report concluded.

Excluding women “creates an immediate personnel readiness impact: issue of insufficient male soldiers in inventory to fill forward support companies ... Creates potential long-term challenge to Army; pool of male recruits too small to sustain force.”

"It doesn't seem to be a big deal," retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, who tracks military issues for the Women's Research and Education Institute, told the Associated Press.

"We could not do what needs to be done over there without women. If there needs to be a body search of an Iraqi woman, there's no way an American male could do that."

In a recent statement by the Army to The Washington Times, officials said further, “The Army takes seriously its obligations to develop planned force structure changes.

Unit of Action

"As such, the ongoing development of the new Army Brigade Combat Team, otherwise known as a Unit of Action, is taking place with the continued consultation of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the awareness of Congress.

"The Army will remain in compliance with public law and DOD policy regarding the assignment of women soldiers.”

Technically true.

However, writes Mackubin Thomas Owens, an associate dean of academics and professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., in the National Review, the "units of action" are not supposed to have women in them.

But they do anyway, almost surreptitiously.

"Army commanders," he writes, "have simply transferred forward-support companies from the maneuver battalions into "gender-integrated" brigade-support battalions, thereby avoiding the requirement to report the policy change to Congress.

"Of course, no matter where the FSCs appear on a table of organization, the fact is, they will live and work with the maneuver battalions all the time."

In other words, no matter what label the Army uses, units with women in them will be around combat constantly.

Another strong critic of all the DoD maneuvering, Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, says that if new DoD plans on the drawing boards go forward, yet more women will die – or be captured and possibly raped.

Donnelly's group has already publicized the fate of Private Jessica Lynch, who was captured by enemy combatants during the operation to liberate Iraq. Lynch's doctors claimed she was repeatedly sodomized by her Iraqi captors.

But Donnelly, the former member (1984-86) of the Pentagon’s Defense advisory Committee on Women in the Services and the 1992 Presidential Commission on the assignment of Women in the Armed Services, has been monitoring what she perceives as a steady and dangerous blurring of the already vague guidelines for keeping female soldiers from the thick of battle, and agrees with Owens' analysis.

Attaching Forward Support Companies (FSCs) and their inevitable contingent of female soldiers to bigger support brigades is a ruse to skirt the rules, Donnelly charges. “They are eliminating the collocation rule.”

In a letter of complaint sent to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, Donnelly states: “The Army’s most recent plans ... would force female soldiers into support units that are organic to and collocated with combined [unit of action] infantry/armor battalions. These plans, which are already in progress, constitute violation of current Defense Department regulation.”

Furthermore, Donnelly has already collected 20,000 signatures on a petition protesting the DoD initiatives.

“If we are opposed to violence against women at the Air Force and other service academies, why all of a sudden if violence happens at the hands of the enemy, we say it doesn’t matter?” Donnelly said.

“Female soldiers are not eligible for assignment to infantry and armor maneuver battalions, or to organic, collocated sub-units of the maneuver battalions. The Army has no power or authorization to change DoD rules unilaterally, without the approval of the Secretary of Defense,” she added.

The Army submitted lists of positions to be opened or closed under the Aspin rules, and they were approved with a memo signed on July 28, 1994, by Aspin’s successor, William J. Perry.

Since that time career fields below the brigade level in the infantry and armor have been designated under the direct combat probability coding (DCPC) system to be “P1,” meaning all male.

Military occupational specialties (MOSs) coded “P2” (military police, for instance) remain open to both male and female soldiers.

Meanwhile, those intrepid women of the “P2” variety carry on with little thought other than getting their jobs done.

One, Sgt. Erin Edwards, 23, often travels in armed convoys as part of her work as an aide to a commander of the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit.

Sgt. Edwards left her 3-year-old son and infant daughter with her in-laws to serve in Iraq because her husband serves in the Army in South Korea.

"I would love to be at home with my kids, but I'm doing this for them. I wouldn't want to do anything else," Sgt. Edwards told the AP.

Another, Marine Lance Cpl. Kay Barnes, is a 30-year-old reservist originally from Richmond Hill, Ga., and a crew chief on a UH-1N Iroquois “Huey” gunship serving in Afghanistan:

“They told me when I checked into my squadron they didn’t care if I were male or female, as long as I could carry a 50-caliber,” said Barnes. The GAU-16 50-caliber machine gun weighs approximately 65 pounds.

“I didn’t expect a vacation out here. I expect to perform as part of a team and accomplish missions as they arrive,” Barnes recently explained in an official “DoD Defend America” press release. “I didn’t see (myself) sitting around while my country was going to war without me.”

In choosing to join the marines, she said she wanted combat. “As far as I’m concerned, the bad guys have it coming,” she said. “If it’s in the best interests of America, then it’s in my best interests.”

This is the sort of sentiment expressed by many of the military’s women who will be around the combat zone; they feel they are as “tough as nails” and “bad as the boys.” But does America want its women in combat situations? It seems we’re saying no publicly and through Congress, but actions currently speak louder than words.