Political Quotes

“I will point out, as I am sure the gentleman recognizes, there are helicopter pilots in the Army and there are helicopter pilots who are in combat, so it is perfectly appropriate to have a helicopter pilot talk about what it is like to serve in a combat role, and I think the gentleman would agree with me on that. There is one other aspect of this amendment that has always troubled me. We talk about combat MOSes, but the actual substance of the amendment would set a gender-neutral standard to be in the Army, period, and that is what is concerning because there are a lot of different jobs within the Army. There is combat, which you described, absolutely. We also need intel officers, we need linguistic experts, and we need a whole lot of people who will have a different set of qualifications. What the Army was concerned about with this last year, how we came to a compromise--which you have decided you didn't like, apparently, even though you guys are in the majority, and we passed this last year--was that they were concerned that if you required this you would be booting a ton of women out of the military now who aren't in combat roles. The breadth of this amendment is what concerns me.…”