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Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Re: Dartmouth Women at War

A friend and former army-type responds:
If you want to pass anything on to the Reviewers, tell them that coming from one who was in Military Intelligence, albeit a short time, that women in intell or jag positions or even in other MOS's are just as likely to be deployed during active combat on the front lines. Alex Wilson's statement "Women serving as military intelligence analysts or with the JAG Corps, for example, wouldn't ever be put in Iraq until it was at least theoretically no longer an active theater of operations" is false.

How do I know? Because I have several female friends in Iraq right now, counter intelligence people and interrogators, and I have another friend working in Afghanistan. At this point, more and more commanders are viewing women and men in intell positions as equally deployable and useful. One reason perhaps is that they have a tremendous shortage of interrogators & counter-intell. people in the field at present. They currently have just a few hundred at present to cover the entire globe but there is now an order for over 1,000 new intell people in the Interrogator MOS alone. Among the new trainees who actually graduate - nearly 50 % are women. Scary or not, they can't afford to be picky, they need "bodies" as the Army calls them, and women help fill that gap. Also, in many cases, the women outperform the men. In other branches, I can guarantee you that there are women pilots dropping bombs over Baghdad tonight.

And our source adds, "Joseph Scott '00 is a patriot missile officer and is currently helping to launch missiles from Qatar, though by this point in he may be in Iraq." Best wishes to him and his compatriots.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 12:01 AM

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