It looks to me that the blame is attributed to people who look to keep women out of combat. Did I miss something?
Maybe. Donnelly was instrumental in getting women who had been training in a RSTA removed from the unit. Here's a pertinent snippet:
Early in 2002, several other conservative women's groups joined with Donnelly at a news conference in Washington, drawing attention to the violation of rules on women in combat, and calling for the DoD to abolish the old Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), which was apparently behind it all.
''Nothing was done, however, until I brought the matter to the attention of Deputy Secretary Dr. Paul Wolfowitz during a meeting in his office in April 2002. I told him about what had happened in December, and waited to see what he would say. He asked his aide to check it out, and he did.
''Two days later I was told that my information was accurate, and that the situation would be corrected. On April 26, 2002, Lt. Gen. John M. LeMoyne gave the order to reassign the women being trained in the RSTA squadron at Fort Lewis, restoring the program to compliance with law and policy.''
And:
What now confounds Donnelly is the fact that despite all the controversy about the RSTAs in 2001, which was resolved in favor of compliance with law and policy, the Army has now dropped the RSTAs from the list of units that are supposed to be coded all-male.
IMO, Donnelly is easily confounded. I can easily see how women would be valuable, especially in an urban situation, for ''Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Target Acquisition ''. The following is a snippet of an Army publication about Objective Force Concepts:
... Operations in urban and complex terrain require the Objective Force to aggressively accomplish a multitude of complex warfighting tasks:
(a) The first, and quite possibly the most difficult, operational challenge for the Objective Force will be the collection of intelligence. Intelligence collection is often hindered by limited LOS, the inability for the collection teams to see in densely vegetated, complex terrain, and the inability for collection teams to map structure interiors and subterranean passageways in urban terrain. As a rule, reconnaissance teams do not conduct extended surveillance operations due to sustainment issues, and the increased probability of detection over time. The presence of an enemy force that may be family or clan-based may inhibit the teams ability to fit in or hide within the urban area.
The Marine Corps has the right idea. That being said, there are numerous examples of women doing well in combat.