Women find it’s a new Army

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Female American troops in Iraq have killed Iraqis with bombs and bullets. They’ve won medals for valor and Purple Hearts for combat wounds. They’ve been captured as prisoners of war, killed by enemy fire and buried as heroes in Arlington National Cemetery.

American women have participated more extensively in combat in Iraq than in any previous war. They’ve taken on roles nearly inconceivable just a decade or two ago — flying fighter jets and attack helicopters, patrolling streets armed with automatic weapons and commanding units of mostly male soldiers. Seven have been killed in combat.

Yet all this has gone largely without much comment in Washington, despite the attention given to rescued POW Jessica Lynch.

Congress debated the issue of women in the military after the 1991 Gulf war, voting months later to loosen the 1948 ban on women in combat. The issue hasn’t come up on Capitol Hill during this war, however.

“It doesn’t seem to be a big deal,” said retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, who tracks military issues for the Women’s Research and Education Institute.

“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.”

Military women in Iraq say they are doing their jobs just like their male colleagues. 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 said recently.

Opponents of women in combat haven’t resigned themselves to this turn of events. They’re trying to pressure President Bush to reinstate restrictions on women serving in support units that travel close to the front lines, such as Miss Lynch’s 507th Maintenance Company, which was ambushed in Nasiriyah. That unit included the first American woman soldier killed in the Iraq war, Pfc. Lori Piestewa.

Six other female soldiers have died in Iraq since October: Pfc. Analaura Esperaza Gutierrez, Pfc. Rachel Bosveld, Pfc. Karina Lau, Spec. Frances Vega, Chief Warrant Officer Sharon T. Swartworth and Staff Sgt. Kimberly Voelz.

Elaine Donnelly, an opponent of women in combat who is spearheading a petition drive on the issue, said she believes it’s important that women not be put in danger of being captured and raped. Medical records indicate Miss Lynch was sodomized while in Iraqi captivity, but she has said she does not remember it.

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