http://www.mediaite.com/tv/liz-trotta-clarifies-remarks-about-women-in-the-military/
Last Sunday, Fox News’ Liz Trotta made several inflammatory comments about women in the military; stirring up the ire of Jon Stewart and countless pundits. Yesterday, Trotta was back on Fox News, given a chance to clarify her comments and explain what she meant. She took the occasion to blame feminists and the New York Times for pushing the ideas she was speaking out against.
“This is a subject that has never gotten a fair and open hearing either in the national media or in Congress,” Trotta said, reading from a prepared statement. “The political correctness infecting the Pentagon has resulted in silly and dishonest fairy tales about female heroism. Has anyone forgotten the Jessica Lynch story?” Trotta said that, “by all accounts, including her own,” Lynch was not mistreated. “Yet the Pentagon saw fit to send in the SEALs to rescue her from a hospital in a videotaped operation that seemed headed straight to Hollywood.”
Trotta then added that, “there are countless other stories of fake heroism or exaggerated prowess in which women are the stars, many of them tailored for the New York Times and its agenda to promote militant feminism no mater what the truth.”
Later in her appearance, Trotta noted that:
The military is not a social services operation, or a testing ground for gender wars. It is a fighting machine. Women are not as strong as men. Their instincts and reactions in crises are markedly different. There’s a reality the left will not face: biology is not destiny.
“I certainly did not say all military men are rapists,” she added. “I believe that the environment of combat, by definition, sets up the situation where basic instincts rule. Any scientist will tell you that testosterone rules.”
Watch a clip of Trotta’s interview below, courtesy of Fox News:
Watch her original remarks below:
This is a serious but not a new problem - here's to hoping someone in the military high command does the right thing....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8564
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming -- one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begins -- before they are even recruited.
But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq, and in the United States, following rape. The military has characterized each of the deaths of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from "non-combat related injuries," and then added "suicide." Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide, strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of "non-combat related injuries," with several identified as "suicides."
94 US military women in the military have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in OIF. 13 US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.
Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from non-combat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by "natural causes," and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain that were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. 5 deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.
8 women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas (six from the Fourth Infantry Division and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of "non-combat related injuries" on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious "non-combat related injuries" on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four deaths have been classified as "suicides."