Donnelly said that Dr. Chu had earned the award by fitting the dictionary definition of “patsy,” as inscribed on the engraved plaque: “An Official Whom Feminists Have Used to Impose Their Policies on the Men and Women of the Military.” 

Both Dr. Chu and another nominee, Secretary of the Army Francis J. Harvey, were faulted for allowing the Army to violate Defense Department regulations that exempt female soldiers from placement in units that embed or “collocate” with direct ground combat troops, such as the infantry.

The third nominee was the English Department of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.  In August the English Department drew media attentiion because it had given a prestigious writing award to a cadet's thinly sourced thesis advocating the inclusion of professed homosexuals in the military.

Admiral Rodney P. Rempt, Superintendent at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, was also nominated for repeatedly using “double standards involving women” (DSIW)in disciplinary matters, including several high-profile prosecutions for alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct by male but not female midshipmen.

Outlining the background and actions of Dr. Chu and three runner-up nominees, Donnelly stressed, “All are honorable men and we do not question their patriotism or integrity. We do question their judgment in implementing personnel policies that advance the agenda of radical feminists for the military.”She expressed the hope that this award will cause all the nominees to consider constructive ways to avoid being nominated again next year.

Speaking at the CMR reception at the National Guard Buildingin Washington D.C., Donnelly defined "feminist" as a person who believes that there are no differences between men and women, except those due to stereotyping and conditioning.  Doctrinaire feminists demand the elimination of regulations exempting female soldiers from direct ground combat, while simultaneously demanding or tolerating double standards that are not helpful to women in the military.

Donnelly explained reasons why there were four nominees in competition for the CMR “Patsy” Award:

David S.C. Chu

Dr. Chu, who was appointed Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness in June 2001, is senior policy advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on personnel assignments, training, recruitment, and discipline. Dr. Chu served two years in the Army, ending in 1970, but the primary focus of his career has been bureaucratic management of military budgets and installations. A Yale graduate, Chu came to DoD from the RAND Corporation, a defense contractor that produces reports for DoD.

Dr. Chu has allowed Army officials to order female soldiers into units required by regulation to be all male.  Civilian and Pentagon feminists and their allies in the media have praised these actions, even though they have not been authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld or reported in advance to Congress, as required by law.  Nor has the Pentagon produced the legally required analysis of proposed regulation changes on women’s exemption from Selective Service registration.

Dr. Chu has been repeatedly asked to produce documents to support his claim that the Army is still complying with policy and law, but the legally required documents apparently do not exist.

In 2005 the House Armed Services Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Duncan Hunter(R-CA), passed legislation to codify current rules affecting women in or near direct ground combat. CMR had informed Chairman Hunter that female soldiers were being “assigned” to legally open brigade-level positions, but physically placed in “attached” forward support companies required by the collocation rule to be all male.

Secretary Rumsfeld insisted that Chairman Hunter withdraw the HASC-approved bill.  Instead, Congress passed legislation in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act mandating a full report on the use of women in or near close combat.  That report was due by March 31, 2006, but the office of Dr. Chu has not complied with Congress' mandate.  Instead, Dr. Chu diverted the task to his previous employer, the RAND Corporation.

In 1997 RAND produced a similar report on women in the military that deliberately downplayed or eliminated comments about the problematic consequences of gender integration, which researchers had heard from soldiers who were interviewed in the field. CMR discovered the alterations by obtaining an original copy of the RAND report, and comparing it with the well-scrubbed version that was eventually released. (See CMR RAND article here.)

During the current war unprecedented numbers of courageous servicewomen have died in service to our country.  As of October 17, 67 American women have died in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, compared to 16, mostly nurses, in the Vietnam War.

More Decisions by Default

• Dr. Chu has retained former President Bill Clinton’s problematic “don’t ask, don’t tell” regulations, which are inconsistent with the homosexual exclusion law that Congress actually approved in 1993.  CMR supports the 1993 statute, but not the expendable enforcement regulations set forth by Clinton to accommodate homosexuals in the military. That policy, known as "don't ask, don't tell," has caused endless confusion about the eligibility of homosexuals to serve in the military. 

• On October 11 Under Secretary Chu announced that  Army drill instructors have been using kinder, gentler tactics, with little or no shouting or deliberate stress, in order to retain more trainees.  He also announced that soldiers who suffer injuries are being sidelined and allowed to heal, instead of being discharged as they have been in the past. Translation: In order to make the numbers for recruiting and retention, the Army will keep recruits in their “comfort zone,” even though military life in or near close combat is anything but a comfort zone.  Within safe limits, tough, adversative training saves lives by transforming soft civilians into soldiers ready for the stresses of military life. Watering it down inverts priorities and lowers standards for everyone.  

• Donnelly noted that Dr. Chu had correctly rejected the recommendations of Wellesley College’s Centers for Women, which has been pushing for an “Office of Victim Advocate,” or OVA, in the Pentagon. Credit for not establishing a powerful “Office of Male Bashing” in the Pentagon was reduced, however, because someone in his office awarded $50,000 to Wellesley College to study the idea in the first place.

The Department of English - U.S. Military Academy

In August 2006, several reporters called CMR for comment about the the U.S. Military Academy's English Department's controversial decision to presented the “Brig. Gen. Carroll E. Adams Award” to then-Cadet Alexander Raggio. Cadet Raggio was recognized for writing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Be: A Philosophical Analysis of the Gay Ban in the U.S. Military.”The thesis drew national attention because it promoted the feminist/homosexual agenda for open homosexuality in the military.

The controversy did not center on Cadet Raggio’s right to think or write independently, and his rights of free speech were not an issue at all. CMR has questioned the judgment of the West Point English Department, which lent support to the activist homosexual cause by recognizing Raggio’s paper with a prestigious award.

The paper might have deserved recognition if it had been thoroughly researched and persuasively written. It was not. At best, the thesis was written at the level of a high school term paper. It failed to convey even the most basic information about the subject, or even to quote from the text of the 1993 law or its legislative history.

The paper made unsupported assertions about religion, and misled the reader with the false claim that Congress actually voted for Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. To the contrary, Bill Clinton imposed that policy administratively, in December 1993, with expendable enforcement regulations that are inconsistent with the law. An analysis of the difference between the two is posted here.

Factual errors, significant omissions, and thinly sourced or unsupported arguments caused the paper to read more like a polemic than a scholarly thesis. This was no surprise because Raggio limited his research to sources cited by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military.

The Santa Barbara, CA-based CSSMM presents itself as an objective source, but it is actually an activist group that relentlessly pushes for homosexuals in the military. The CSSMM has offered honoraria to individuals who write papers or schedule college campus events promoting that cause, and routinely releases contrived “studies,” based on fauxdata, to promote their doctrinaire agenda.

West Point’s special recognition of the Raggio paper created a wave of publicity that is still contributing to widespread confusion about the 1993 homosexual conduct law. Instead of an award for “excellence,” cadet Raggio deserved a failing grade.

Francis J. Harvey

President George W. Bush appointed Francis Harvey, a former corporate businessman with a doctorate in Metallurgy and Material Sciences, as Secretary of the Army in November 2004. As the Army’s highest civilian official, Mr. Harvey has statutory responsibility for all matters relating to Army manpower and personnel, as well as weapons systems and equipment acquisition.

In his many visits to soldiers worldwide, Secretary Harvey stresses his support for the well being of soldiers.  Mr. Harvey has shown little regard, however, for the overwhelming majority of military women who do not want to be forced into or near direct ground combat units. 

Infantry, armor, and Special Operations forces, and certain support units that collocate with them 100% of the time, are required to be all-male.  All deployed soldiers serve "in harms' way," but the missions of direct ground combat troops, which engage the enemy with deliberate offensive action under fire, have not changed.

Dr. David Chu and Secretary Harvey have misled Congress by claiming that the Army has not violated the DoD “collocation rule,” which exempts female soldiers from placement in forward support companies (FSCs) that constantly embed or "collocate" with direct ground combat troops.  This claim is based on semantics and sophistry that a private Army briefing recognized as “subterfuge.”  [See numerous articles posted elsewhere on this website.] 

Starting in 2004, some female soldiers were "assigned" to legally open positions at the brigade level, but physically placed in battalion-level forward support companies.  These embedded support units are required by the collocation rule to be all male.

In February 2005 Dr. Charmaine Yoest and Elaine Donnelly visited with Secretary Harvey at the Pentagon. They were shown a document indicating that 24 of 225 positions in a unit that typically collocates with land combat troops would be gender-integrated.

When Donnelly and Yoest asked Secretary Harvey how these assignments could be made without violating regulations, he said that the female soldiers would not be collocated with the all male units when actual combat began. Army officials have since claimed, without authorization, that female soldiers may be collocated with infantry units if they are not “conducting” direct ground combat.

Secretary Harvey’s ludicrous plan to evacuate female soldiers on the eve of battle would destroy unit cohesion, common sense principles of war, and the long-standing slogan “Train As We Fight.” CMR has dubbed Harvey’s illusory scenario the “Beam Me Up, Scotty”plan, since Star Trek transporter machines would be more likely available than extra Humvees and helicopters to evacuate female soldiers when they are needed most. 

The Harvey plan also disprespects Congress, because it redefines regulations without authorization and circumvents the congressional notification law.

In addition, CMR faults Secretary Harvey for retaining co-ed basic training, even though Army officials have admitted that it is “not efficient” or as effective as single-gender training, which allows tougher, more disciplined training of both men and women in the Marine Corps.

Basic training has one purpose: to transform civilians into soldiers. The process of "soldierization" is undermined by distractions that are common in co-ed basic training, and the result is a breakdown in discipline.

When scandalous, undisciplined behavior was revealed at Abu Ghraibprison in Iraq, CMR noted that the "animal house" atmosphere began with sexual misconduct between male and female soldiers who had not been properly trained or supervised. There have been many military sex scandals in recent years, but Abu Ghraib was the worst of them all.

Vice Admiral Rodney Rempt, USN

Vice Adm. Rodney Rempt graduated from the Naval Academy in 1966, and was appointed Superintendent in August 2003. In his distinguished career Adm. Rempt commanded several ships and was President of the Naval War Collegefor two years. Elaine Donnelly acknowledged that Adm. Rempt means well, but his policies started to cause dissension in August 2005.

A Defense Department Task Force, dominated by professional “victim advocates,” criticized Adm. Rempt for tolerating sexual harassment or abuse of women. Some members of the USNA Board of Trustees, particularly feminist Senator Barbara Mikulski(D-MD), aimed their outrage at Superintendent Rempt.

CMR defended the Naval Academy because data on substantiated cases of sexual abuse did not support the Task Force’s intemperate criticism. Adm. Rempt nevertheless rushed to implement problematic Task Force recommendations.

The greatest current need in the Navy and Marine Corps is men for the combat arms—Marine infantry, submarines, and Navy SEALS.  But instead of recruiting more men to fill that need, Superintendent Rempt boasts about unnecessary gender quotas, which are increasing the percentage of female midshipmen to more than 20%.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen is partly to blame for unjustified gender quotas at the Naval Academy, which inevitably lead to real or perceived "double standards involving women," or DSIW.  CMR's concern centers on Adm. Rempt, however, because of his zeal in pursuing what he calls a “zero tolerance”policy regarding sexual misconduct at the Naval Academy.

That policy has worsened real and perceived double standards, which are not helpful to women who expect true equality.  According to a 2005 DoD Inspector General survey, approximately 73%of Naval Academy men and women believe that there are double standards in disciplinary matters.

Superintendent Rempt aggravated that problem in January 2006.   Lt. Bryan Black had already apologized for using profanity and inappropriate language in the presence of Academy women.  Black was willing to accept non-judicial punishment in a fair venue, but USNA prosecutors began court-martial proceedings against him.  In the same month Superintendent Rempt invited all midshipmen to several performances of a racy interactive play on date rape called “Sex Signals.”Never mind that performances of the play, which were subsidized by the USNA, were full of the same profane words for which Lt. Black was being court-martialed.

In another case, a midshipman used a mild cuss word with a female midshipman, who responded with a mild profanity of her own. He was dismissed from the Academy and required to pay back the cost of his tuition, but the female midshipman graduated normally. When Elaine Donnelly asked Naval Academy spokesmen to comment on the case, without mentioning names, they denied the incident and discriminatory punishment.

Adm. Rempt also has been faulted for the highly publicized prosecution of former quarterback and midshipman Lamar Owens, which still remains unresolved. Adm. Rempt decided to grant immunity to a female midshipman binge drinker, but the jury did not convict Owens was of rape. Both Owens and the accuser were involved in drinking and “conduct unbecoming” in Bancroft Hall, but a double standard favoring only the woman has become another example of DSIW.

Military women are not to blame for demoralizing double standards – policy makers are. Because the U.S. Naval Academy has become a center of DSIW, Superintendent Rempt was nominated for the CMR “Patsy” Award.

Award Tops 2006 CMR Celebration

The name of the winner of the CMR “Patsy” Award was announced at a reception at the National Guard Building in Washington DC, following a CMR Issues Briefing titled “Respect for Women: Where is the Military Taking Us?” Participants in the panel discussion, which was recorded and broadcast four times by C-SPAN 2, included Donnelly and National Review Washington Editor Kate O’Beirne, noted attorney Charles Gittins, and Karin Agness, founder of the college based women’s group Network for enlighted Women (NeW).  [Program ID 194816]

Donnelly presented the “CMR Spotlight Award” to Janet Parshall, who hosts the popular Salem Radio Network program “Janet Parshall’s America."  She also recognized the contributions of Ambassador Robert D. Stuart, Jr. of the Stuart Family Foundation.

Donnelly has requested an appointment with Dr. David Chu to present the CMR “Patsy” Award to him personally, and hopes to meet with all the nominees to discuss constructive changes that might be made to remedy problems of concern to CMR.

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