Combat support ban weighed for women

WASHINGTON -- The Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee plans to introduce today a proposal to bar women from mixed-gender military support units operating in Iraq, expressing concern that female soldiers are engaging in direct combat despite US laws keeping them from serving on the front lines.

But the Pentagon, already straining to fill the ranks, maintains the military critically needs female soldiers to help the men on the battlefield. While top generals say they don't intend to change the ban on women in combat, they add that keeping them from support companies -- transport, supply, and medical units working close to the front lines -- would hurt military readiness.

''The proposed amendment will cause confusion in the ranks, and will send the wrong signal to the brave young men and women fighting the global war on terrorism," General Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, wrote last week to Representative Duncan Hunter of California, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a chief sponsor of the measure. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House supports the Pentagon.

Yet Hunter and other influential Republicans in Congress, backed by conservative groups such as the Center for Military Readiness, believe women's presence in forward support units that could wind up in combat reduces the military's overall effectiveness. They say women are not as suited to combat as men and that gender integration in fighting units causes dangerous distractions.

''The nation should not put women into the front lines of combat," Hunter said in a statement. ''In my judgment, we will cross that line soon unless we make a policy decision. Forward support companies go forward into battle. That is why they are labeled 'forward' support companies. The American people have never wanted to have women in combat, and this [amendment] reaffirms that policy."

Forward support companies, one of the Army's newest structure changes, usually number about 225 soldiers -- up to 20 percent of whom are women -- and are intended to operate close to fighting units rather than behind combat lines. The objective is to make the Army's divisions modular, agile, and more self-sufficient.

The Army has maintained for months that the forward support companies, introduced in the late 1990s and currently serving with the Third Infantry Division in Iraq, comply with the ban on women in combat: When the units they accompany go into battle, the women are ordered to stay behind, according to the Pentagon.

But critics point out that, due to the nature of the fighting in Iraq, combat troops and support companies can come under attack at any moment, leaving little time to separate men from women. And as insurgents become more sophisticated at guerrilla warfare, even rear-echelon troops are always in the line of fire.

The clash between conservatives and the Pentagon shows how the Iraq war is putting pressure on a decades-old policy, according to specialists. The policy keeps women out of ground combat units, but allows them to serve on ships in war zones and as military police, as well as pilot fighter jets and helicopters. According to Defense Department figures, at least 39 US servicewomen have died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, most of them killed by hostile fire.

''Essentially, we have already crossed the bridge" said Thomas Donnelly, a strategist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. ''To try to use the occasion of the Iraq war to walk back the policy on women in combat seems to be ill-timed."

Michael O'Hanlon, a military specialist at the left-leaning Brookings Institution in Washington, said the Iraq war has clearly raised ''huge philosophical questions" about the role of American women in wartime. While the House GOP is raising an important issue, O'Hanlon said, he is concerned that Hunter's amendment, if approved, would be ''pretty disruptive to an ongoing operation. It is well intentioned and may be the right answer, but it seems rushed."

Aides said Hunter wants the committee to ban women from forward support companies in an Armed Services Committee meeting today intended to approve the 2006 defense authorization bill. A committee spokesman said the proposal, adopted in McHugh's subcommittee last week, has already been tucked into the House defense bill and could be removed only by a counterproposal.

Representative John McHugh, a New York Republican who heads the Armed Service Committee's personnel subcommittee, said last week that the proposal isn't a ''Neanderthal initiative to keep women out of the Army," but is simply intended to reinforce the ban on women in combat.

Committee Democrats are poised to fight the Hunter proposal. ''You are sending a message that women can't do this job," Representative Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat, said in a hearing last week.

Representative Susan Davis, another California Democrat, asked, ''Can we really afford to toss out 20 percent or more of the individuals who are serving so capably in these units?"

Still, there has been widespread debate in military circles about whether the forward support companies comply with a separate Defense Department policy that prohibits women from serving in units that ''collocate" with ground combat forces -- units that, in other words, are positioned alongside troops that engage directly with the enemy.

Because women are ordered to stay behind when fighting starts, the Army contends it is following the collocation rule; Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told Congress in a Jan. 13 letter the new structure ''is consistent with both Department of Defense and Army policy and no change to the extant policy is required."

But many conservatives believe the units blur the line between combat and support functions.

''The forward support companies under the new Army modularization will be called on to go forward into battle," said Hunter. ''Rocket-propelled grenades, machine gun fire, and all the other deadly aspects of war will make no distinction between women and men on the front lines."

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, said she believes the Army is being disingenuous by saying it is following regulations. She said Hunter's legislation is needed because gender integration ''distracts from the combat mission. That imposes a burden."

Military leaders, however, are urging Hunter and other supporters to kill the proposal.

''Women soldiers have made incredible contributions in the war on terrorism through service and their demonstrated bravery," said Colonel Joseph Curtin, a top Army spokesman in the Pentagon.

Curtin said the Army is ''closely reviewing the structure for the modular units to determine where women can and cannot perform their duties," but maintained that the Army will follow the law.

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com. Material from the Associated Press was also used in this report.