Via Shakespeare’s Sister comes this Salon article about women soldiers in the glorious war (if necessary, watch the ad):

The female soldiers who were at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, for example, where U.S. troops go to demobilize, told me they were warned not to go out at night alone.
“They call Camp Arifjan ‘generator city’ because it’s so loud with generators that even if a woman screams she can’t be heard,” said Abbie Pickett, 24, a specialist with the 229th Combat Support Engineering Company who spent 15 months in Iraq from 2004-05. Yet, she points out, this is a base, where soldiers are supposed to be safe.
Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” she told me. “It was for the guys on my own side.”

And some of this, I’ll remind you, was happening before military recruiting fell off to the point that standards were lowered to get warm bodies.

The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, according to just-released Pentagon data. Such waivers allow recruits with criminal records, medical problems or poor aptitude scores to enlist despite problems that otherwise would bar them from service. Most are so-called “moral waivers,” which include some felonies, misdemeanors, and drug and traffic offenses. Such waivers grew in the Army from 4,918 in 2003 to 8,129 last year.

It’s unconscionable that women should be forced to carry protection against their own so-called buddies. The Salon article even points to several cases of women dying of dehydration because they didn’t drink enough liquid. Why? Because they were afraid to go to the latrines after dark.
This war must stop. It’s failed the Iraqis, it’s failed the American public, and it’s failed the soldiers fighting it.