Woman Combat Politics
by Elaine Donnelly

According to Washington D.C. tradition, August is the best month for releasing bad news and sweeping it under the rug because members of Congress are out of town. So it was on August 9, when the RAND Corporation finally released their long-overdue report on women serving in or near direct ground combat.

Congress passed legislation ordering the Department of Defense to produce a report on the many issues affecting women in or near land combat by March 31, 2006. But Dr. David Chu, Assistant Defense Secretary for Personnel & Readiness, passed off the project to RAND Corporation, which missed the deadline by more than a year and a half.

The substandard document that RAND finally released on August 9 dismisses the consequences of allowing Army officials to make up their own rules. It denies the existence of current Defense Department regulations, and rests its case on an obsolete (1992) Army rule -- but only part of that rule -- for purposes of expediency.

Authors of the RAND resorted to setting up “straw man” arguments that would be laughable if they were not so serious. For example, the report makes much of a non-existent word, “colocate,” which supposedly has a meaning different from the word “collocate,” a genuine word that still exists in the Defense Department “collocation rule.” This is the silliest “debate” since “potato” vs. “potahto,” and someone needs to call it off.

RAND’s Rubber Stamp Report is a disservice to both men and women in the military, and to members of Congress whose concerns about oversight have been disregarded once again. The Center for Military Readiness will be analyzing this issue in more depth, and encouraging members of Congress to schedule hearings soon.

Elaine Donnelly is President of the Center for Military Readiness.