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WASHINGTON (AP) —
The men in the U.S. military's most dangerous jobs care little about political correctness or gender equality. And they have a message for their political leadership.
When they are fighting in the shadows or bleeding on the battlefield, women have no place on their teams.
In blunt and, at times, profanity-laced answers to a voluntary survey conducted by the Rand Corp., more than 7,600 of America's special operations forces spoke with nearly one voice. Allowing women to serve in Navy SEAL, Army Delta or other commando units could hurt their effectiveness and lower the standards, and it may drive men away from the dangerous posts.
An overwhelming majority of those who agreed to respond to the RAND survey said they believe women don't have the physical strength or mental toughness to do the grueling jobs.
Some of the broader conclusions of the survey, taken from May through July 2014, were disclosed by The Associated Press earlier this year, but the detailed results and comments written by respondents had not been released.
The Pentagon released the summer survey and other documents when Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced last week that he was opening all combat jobs to women. That decision was based on recommendations by the military service secretaries and the leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Special Operations Command. Only the Marine Corps asked to exempt women from certain infantry and frontline positions, but Carter denied that request.
Half the men who got the 46-question survey responded to it, and Rand did not identify any of them. In some cases people who feel most strongly about an issue are more inclined to answer surveys.
Some 85 percent of the respondents said they oppose opening the special operations jobs to women, and 70 percent oppose having women in their individual units. More than 80 percent said women aren't strong enough and can't handle the demands of the job. And 64 percent said they aren't mentally tough enough.
"I could list hundreds of reasons why women cannot do the job that a Green Beret is required to do, but as I only have 1,000 characters, I will choose the one that I think is the most important," said one respondent. "I weigh 225 pounds, and 280 pounds in full kit, as did most of the members of my ODA (a 12-man Army Green Beret unit). I expect every person on my team to be able to drag any member of my team out of a firefight. A 130 pound female could not do it, I don't care how much time she spends in the gym. Do we expect wounded men to bleed out because a female soldier could not drag him to cover?"
Another said politicians don't win the covert wars.
"Gender equality is not an option when the bullets are flying," he said. "Most males in the area of the world I work in would rather back hand a female than listen to her speak. There is a reason we send men to do these jobs."
Some were even more blunt.
"No one wants this. Do us a favor and listen to what we are saying for a change. Can Washington really afford to take that risk so politicians can brag to the public that they brought gender equality to SOF?" said one, who continued profanely.
Some saw it as inevitable.
"This integration will happen eventually and we might as well embrace it while we have current solid leadership and incoming solid leadership at the top to facilitate the transition," one said.
The deep challenges the survey revealed with integrating women into tight-knit commando teams are not lost on the Pentagon. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, posted a memo and video online last week after Carter's announcement, explaining the decision and vowing that the qualifying standards for special operations jobs will remain the same.
He noted that women have already moved into some special operations jobs, including as helicopter pilots and crew, members of cultural support teams in Afghanistan and in civil affairs and information operations.
And he added, "If candidates meet time-tested and scientifically validated standards, and if they have proven that they have the physical, intellectual, professional, and character attributes that are so critical to special operations - they will be welcomed into the special operations forces ranks."
The bulk of those who responded to the survey were young, white married men. They worry that having women in their small teams could fuel jealousy at home or create problems with sexual harassment or illicit affairs. And they rely on and trust their teams and units as family.
Ninety-eight percent agreed that their unit is united in trying to accomplish its missions. But when asked whether men and women in a unit would be united to accomplish a mission only 48 percent said yes. Nearly 33 percent said no, and almost 20 percent were undecided.
And nearly 60 percent said they expected that women assigned to their unit would be "treated unfairly" at least some of the time.
Some, however, said they might be willing for women to serve in some, more peripheral special operations jobs. Several suggested that women could be used as attachments or additions to some units, just not as actual members, such as the cultural support jobs they fill now.
But that's where they drew the line.
"They have no place in a team room. We all know this but nobody has the b(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)s to say it," said one man. "We are hunter killers, we are coarse, we bleed, we get blown up, we fight together. And we do the same with our HN (host nation) counterparts. At the end of the day we want to crack a beer and talk, joke about very unpolitically correct things. They are not going to feel part of the team. They will feel alienated, and they will be frustrated, and they will be angry. And before you know it the whole team is falling apart."
NEW YORK (AP) —
Life expectancy in the United States has stalled for three straight years, the government announced Wednesday.
A child born last year can expect to make it to 78 years and 9½ months — the same prediction made for the previous two years.
In most of the years since World War II, life expectancy in the U.S. has inched up — thanks largely to medical advances, public health campaigns and better nutrition and education. The last time it was stuck for three years was in the mid-1980s.
It's not clear why life expectancy has been flat lately, but suicides and fatal drug overdoses probably are playing a role, experts believe.
Some researchers have wondered if U.S. life expectancy will peak, due to the nation's obesity problem and other factors. But there no evidence that's happening now, said Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, agreed.
"It's too early to tell. Three years does not a trend make," he said.
The United States ranks below nearly 40 other countries in life expectancy, according to the World Bank. Japan and Iceland are at the top of that list, at more than 83 years.
U.S. health officials come up with the life expectancy figure each year by looking at how old people were when they died and the cause of death. They use statistical modeling to predict how long people born today will live if current trends continue.
The CDC report is based on all the 2014 death certificates. There were about 2.6 million deaths, or about 29,000 more than the previous year. The increase reflects the nation's growing and aging population.
Other findings:
— Infant mortality dropped again slightly, to a record low of 5.8 per 1,000 births.
— The 10 top causes of death remained the same: heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases like emphysema and bronchitis, accidents and unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, flu and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide.
— Death rates fell significantly for five causes, including the top two — heart disease and cancer.
— The largest increase was in Alzheimer's disease — 8 percent.
— Suicides and unintentional injuries — a category that includes falls, traffic accidents and drug overdoses — each went up by about 3 percent.
Overdoses are driving up those death rates, said Ian Rockett, a West Virginia University researcher who studies overdoses and suicides.
Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. have been rising for more than 20 years — primarily from the abuse of powerful prescription painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. Heroin-related deaths — though far less common than painkiller deaths — have also recently spiked.
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson wants to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 70 as part of a health care plan released Wednesday that would reshape the popular program for the nation's elderly in addition to overhauling Medicaid and repealing President Barack Obama's health care law.
The retired neurosurgeon is set to outline his health care plan for the first time on Wednesday while campaigning in Michigan. An outline provided to The Associated Press by the Carson campaign provided little detail and no estimates of costs and coverage.
His proposal relies largely on tax-sheltered personal accounts to promote patient choice, and foster competition among private insurers, reflecting a belief that patients and doctors can set right much of what they see as wrong with the health care system.
"The best, most effective health care decisions are made at the granular level, between individual patients and doctors," Carson wrote in the proposal. "The more distant the decision-making process from that relationship, the less predictable the outcome will be."
The $3-trillion-a-year U.S. health care system is one of the most complicated parts of the economy, and change does not come easily, as Obama's overhaul has shown. Carson adviser, Texas-based physician Kristin S. Held, said the plan would produce "substantial" savings by cutting government and private health care spending by trillions of dollars, but could not detail the specific numbers.
The key to Carson's approach appears to be tax-sheltered 'Health Empowerment Accounts," to be opened for every citizen at birth. Immigrants — both those in the country legally and illegally — would be excluded from the plan, Held said.
The tax-sheltered accounts would be paired with high-deductible major medical insurance. Routine costs could be covered from the accounts, which would build up balances with time. It's a concept that has been popular with Republicans since the George W. Bush years.
Carson would also gradually increase the Medicare eligibility age to 70 from the current age of 65, a change that has been highly controversial when Republicans floated it in the past.
Medicare itself would be restructured, providing beneficiaries with a fixed payment for a private insurance plan of their choice. Democrats deride that as a "voucher" system that would shift costs to retirees. But under Carson's plan, Medicare beneficiaries would also be able to participate in the health accounts.
Medicare subsidies would not be based upon income, Held said, noting that Congress would ultimately approve the specifics.
Carson's plan for Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people, involves the federal government providing states with "fixed-dollar support," which the states must use to pay private insurance premiums and set up health accounts for beneficiaries.
The release of Carson's health-care plan comes as he tries to reverse a recent slide in the polls sparked by questions about his command of public policy. He has struggled particularly with foreign policy in recent weeks, but also previously offered mixed messages on domestic issues like health care.
Once he declared his candidacy, Carson said he'd scrap Medicare and Medicaid — two longtime targets of conservatives — and spend the money instead on giving each American $2,000 a year for a health savings account. Then he hedged, and said Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries could choose whether they wanted the stipend or their existing government coverage, though he has not explained how to pay for both structures at once.
Health care offers Carson a relatively safe area to demonstrate policy fluency given his background. He stopped practicing medicine just two years ago after nearly three decades as the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Carson emerged as a national figure in Republican politics after condemning Obama's health-care overhaul during the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast.