hi, i'm lisa fletcher and you are in the stream. the military is ramping up to open combat jobs to women in 2016, but after 55% of female recruits failed the pull-up test, are they ready for the physical demands of combat? ♪ our ding -- digital producer is here tonight. it's so good to have you. >> it's so good to be here.

>> man, twitter is exploding. >> it is one of our more extreme active computeties tonight. >> and that says a lot. >> people are talking about it. and we our first ajam "stream" -- ed a ver tiesment . . . so community keep tweeting at us. it's a very active topic. >> it is indeed. women make up 14% of the active duty military, but until

recently they weren't allowed to work in ground combat jobs. but leon panetta lifted that ban, and put a deadline to open all jobs or prove why women are unfit. >> i think it's a great thing. i think it's a step forward to more equal opportunity for women. >> i thinkment some females should be allowed in combat. i don't feel it is for every female. >> they should be able to do everything exactly to what the guys have to do, and if -- i'm just concerned that it would cause problems with the mission. >> for the women that have served in combat zones, i have not seen a huge number of women that wanted this. >> with 55% of female marine recruits failing the pullup test, the corps decided to delay the requirement for women, raising questions about combat

readiness. in the debate about gender equality, how do gender realities come into play. joining us is a retired sergeant in the marine corps. a retired colonel in the air force and president of grace after fire, and a former marine corps officer who served in iraq and afghanistan and has a new novel coming out called "green on blue," about the complexities of surviving in war. about 290,000 women have served. and people hear that and it gets a little confusing. so explain to us what kind of jobs women are doing now, what they can't do, and what could change in 2016. >> essentially being in combat is not the same as performing a combat mission. i am in a field that would

support combat operations and combat in a wide variety of ways. a lot of the death toll is very high among motor transport. many women were experiencing death and injury. however, we were not in an offensive tactic position, we were in defensive tactic positions. one is, if the enemy comes at you, do i know how to fire a weapon? do i know basic hand to hand combat skills? yes, i do. but i was not trying to perform offensive tactics in killing, that woulddy destroy the enemy as readily and quickly as possible. >> kim talk about that, these differences between offensive and defensive positions. >> i think you have to talk about the realities of today's battle space, and just like the

sergeant says is once you are in the area of operations, you are in combat, and iud's don't care if you are offense or defense, and snipers don't care. what is important is anyone who comes under that fire is trained to the best they can be trained to do to protect everyone in their squad or anywhere else. and that's one of the things i think that training everyone in the military for combat will do, and again, offensive and defensive, i get her point, but all members who enter today's battle space should be trained at the max and for anything that they can encounter when they are in harm's way. >> which marines do. >> elliott we are talking about offensive and defensive positions. when you are in combat on the ground is there difference between an offensive position

and being able to set your rifle and take your shot at will versus somebody jumping you with a knife and now you are in a knife fight. talk a little bit about whether or not you feel women are capable of doing both physically. >> i -- i think combat is -- it is an incredibly physical thing. you know, in my combat experience, you know, i serve in situations where men were -- were going down as heat casualties in this the middle of combat, and these were physically fit guys, but there is a larger issue at play, where if this is going to happen and 2016 is the day on the wall, it's how -- how is this going to be implemented? and i say it is a very dangerous thing to be playing around with standards, to be establishing one set of standards for men, and one set of standards for women if we are integrating. and that's for two reasons.

the first is i think you would be doing the women that are coming in to what have previously been all male combat units, you are putting them at a huge disadvantage. so i think that's a real challenge. so we have got to look at -- not only should this be happening, but also what is the best way to implement it? and i think too little of the conversation is on the implementation. >> speaking of standards, lisa, we asked our community about lowering standards and whether standards for women and standards for men. and i want to share a tweet from mikey . . . so -- >> yes. >> jesse, look, what do you think about lowering standards -- or that women have one and men have another. >> people get very confused. the physical fitness test is not an equality test.

females have 20% less upper body strength, 20% less lung capacity and 40% less muscle mass. so why would i grade her the same as i would a man. now a combat -- a combat fitness test is different. that should be the same because the pft in the marine corps is not a combat fitness test, it's a physical fitness test. why is the 50-year-old general not taking the same test as the 19-year-old young man. because you are grading his level of fitness that is appropriate for his or her age. when you are talking about combat fitness that is a different grade, a different standard, and yes, you need them both to be the same. the infantry marine corps has

kept their test the same. united states marines are ready. i know how to handle myself in any combat situation. that's why the enemy knows not to attack our patrols because they know they can attack. however, we are not promoting the attack. we are in a defensive posture. the odds of us being in hand-to-hand combat is very slim. much of the population does not know the difference between a physical fitness test and a combat fitness test. >> so is the pullup test just making more women eligible to essentially try out to be in the marines? >> essentially the marine corps sent women to do training without meeting the minimum standard. i was a recruiter, and i shouldn't ship a man without being at the minimum standard. 50% of these women were allowed

to go to the boot camp did not pass the standard, and then went to the press. during my era we did a flex arm hang. please nobody tell me that the female marines are not tough enough. when i don't see sailors doing pullup, soldiers, or airmen doing it. so the marines have this idealistic standard. and now we're pointing the fingers at the women. they were set up for failure. you have to test their physical fitness, not an equality test. it's not an equality test. >> all right. coming up, is the military an equal opportunity employer. and can and should its definition be different than

civilian definition. keep sending us your thoughts. >> for on the field news, we turn to the nfl.

next week's conference championship matchups are set, new england will travel to denver, that means tom brady and the patriots will meet peyton manning for the third time. the 49ers travel to seattle to face their bitter rival for the third time this season. that's your look at sports this hour. >> getting a fresh start. >> from living the life that i live, i thought by now, i should be dead. >> a unique business that's giving troubled women a second chance at al jazeera america gives you the total news experience anytime, anywhere. more on every screen. digital, mobile, social. visit aljazeera.com. follow @ajam on twitter. and like aljazeera america on facebook for more stories, more access, more conversations.

so you don't just stay on top of the news, go deeper and get more perspectives on every issue. al jazeera america. ♪ i definitely would have been pretty angry, if we were to be separated. because there's no reason for us to be. we're just soldiers, and everybody is the same. we're all green, male or female, regardless of what your race is, there's no reason for us not to be able to do the job if we're capable of doing it. >> julio before the break we asked our community to weigh in

on this. >> and they are weighing in on it. and we're getting tweeted. we got a tweet from jessica who says . . . so lisa, a lot of questions about equality and equal opportunity, so the debate is continuing. >> kim, you were part of the first group of women to ever have combat job in the air force. what does equal opportunity mean in the military and is it different from job to job and branch to branch? this >> i think the military does a really good job in adapting to the social changes. number one, no matter what your gender is, you hold a rank, you have absolutely equal pay and parity. and that is not seen in any other corporation or business in

this country. so i think the military does a really good job as far as, like i said, adapting to that. my experience, of course was in theoff -- aviation field. and we heard many of the arguments back in 1984 when we brought women into the aircraft. we proved they could fly the high-performance fighters and pull the trigger. women have been tributing to the success of this military for many, many decades, and it's important that we continue to do this, because diverse teams make for better teams, and i think -- i think that's an important thing to capitalize on, are these tremendous talents that women can bring to the pool. and i'll just say one more point and take a pause.

i think the audience needs to remember that only 1% of this nation's population will serve in uniform. 1%. so if you want the best and the brightest to put on the uniform and do the difficult task of waging america's war, you want the best talent that america can bring to bare, and some of that will reside in our female population. >> jesse, when we're talking about againer equality versus gender reality. what is the reality that very many women can ever perform physically like their mel counterparts. >> the military has never been an equal opportunity employer. too tall you are not joining. a pilot can tell you that flat out. too fat, you are not joining. high blood pleasure, flat feet,

heart murmur. you cannot have those or you are discharged or not eligible to join. so we are very critical with physical standards. you can be discharged for very minor issues all the way through. the second thing is there are physical limitations that women do have. women are serving in combat. we have clarified that. twitter followers have clarified that. we're talking about infantry units where you are talking about being in the infantry field for a longer time, women have higher rates of discharge in the marine corps? why is that? lots of physical disability. if you are going to have an 80% attrition rate you are doing a

big disservice to that service. no women have succeeded the infantry officer's course. they do have a high attrition rate among men are not making it too. >> elliot, i was reading something that a high-ranking officer had written, and he said do women have equal opportunity supposing they are in the infantry or special ops to survive or help fellow soldiers do the same? how confident are you if women would have equal opportunity to do either of those -- >> i'm not sure what he means by equal opportunity -- >> i think he is saying can she pull you out of the battlefield if necessary? >> yeah, yeah, sure. the -- i'm a graduate of the infantry officer course. so i have been through that

training, and, again, i think there's a smart way to do this, and a dumb way to do this. the dumb way to do is is a little bit of what we're seeing right now, where you have all of the services playing with the is regulations. and if this is going to be something that happens, it will be the prerogative of our pollty makers. and they determined by 2016, we'll have a fully integrated -- >> what is the good way to do it? >> the worst thing you can do is start lowering standards and start playing with standards. keep the standards exactly the same, and just say anybody can apply, male, female, we don't care. some day one of those people are going to make it. they are guys who make it through this. they are your next door

neighbor, they are in good shape, and they make it through it. and same with social operations. so i think eventually you'll see some women make it through this. and the standard has to be the same. because if it's not women will come to these units and have a huge stigma attached to them, and frankly culturally it is not going to work. if women make it through the course and it's the exact same standards as the men made it through, then i think you could see culturally this is going to work. but at the end of the day, the united states has a military that represents its values to the country. so if we has a nation have decided through elections and other such means that we want the policy makers into office who believe there should be a fully integrated military, that military should reflect the fact that everywhere men and women

show the exact same opportunities, and if that's what the american people decide, then there's a smart way to implement it. >> we're getting our community, and there is a specific question i want to bring up . . . kim is that true? are there less men joining the military? >> i'm not a recruiter, so i'm not going to speak to that, but let's just pull back and look at where the military has been in the last 12 years. it has been engrossed in two wars in which if you signed up, you were going to see either iraq or afghanistan and for very long periods of time. so militaries thatment come out of post-war environments usually see a dip in the recruiting

aspect for certain services, that is the natural evolution of a post-war military. >> back toel lot's point, we got a comment regarding that from the public affairs department of the u.s. embassy, if we can pull that up . . . pap >> jesse is there a lot more da to collect? >> i think that should have been done before this was imply mernted. these are our policy makers that we elected. so people gefrns this think about who you are voting into office and what they want to stand for. we have seen no combat readiness need to do this first of all. second of all -- i love one of our wonderful generals -- mad

dog mattis, he said when the enemy gets their females in combat, maybe we're talk about this. your enemy is usually on methamphetamine, so you have an unequal advantage. so what are we looking at here to prove a point for equality? this is about us winning a war. it's not about equality. it's about having the most efficient combat readiness team available. what are our odds of attrition? that's another not study they have evaluated. think should have looked at what are the odds of a female getting past a four-year enlistment. i have a girlfriend of mind who needs two hips replaced because of the combat load she carried

when she was in her 20s. >> all right. coming up, keep sending us your thoughts, julio is going to get them in, in two minutes. ♪ >> al jazeera america is a straight-forward news chan

♪ we're back. we're talking about women's combat readiness as the military gears up to open up all combat goals by 2016. >> right. it's everyone combat ready and we got a couple of tweets . . . so you can see it's all over the place as well. >> yeah, elliot we're still looking ahead to 2016, two years away. i know you have been talking about the implementation really needing to be the focus, but is getting women in to the infantry the right goal at this stage in

the game, pulling out of afghanistan right now? >> i don't think the two are mutually exclusive. i think at the end of the day, if the vision our elected leaders have is to have a fully integrated military, instead of launching study after study, there needs to be a vision of what does a fully integrated military look like? and that should be articulated. central to what that would need to have would be a single set of standards that -- that -- that exist regardless whether you are man or ament wap. so we have been talking about these three pullups that the women should have to do. if it is just going to be three pullups, it should be for every marine, man or woman. but maybe it also means that those fewer female marines are able to have arsesz to the full

number of jobs that exist in the marine corps. so these aren't a lot of issues that aren't being discussed as widely. and they are doing these physical studies on women. i think what is lacking here is a cohe's -- cohesive vision of what a fully integrated military would look like. >> if a female going to go into hand to hand combat with methed up enemies, they are going to have to have a hard time. women are in submarines and on

ships now. however, i didn't see the level of controversy that we are seeing now, because we have seen no proen need to do this. it is going to come at the cost of a lot of good women who do go in to combat to provide support to that infantry. i did field operations. i know it is like, and let me tell you that is a hard, long, difficult job, and the women do suffer more at trophy and spinal compressi compression, and they have not looked at the attrition rates, we get them all in, and how many are going to make it to retirement? am i the last generation? because i already have 20% disability. very few men make it, but even fewer women will. >> all right. on that note, until next time, we will see you online at aljazeera.com/stream. ♪

good evening, everyone, welcome to al jazeera america, i'm john siegenthaler in new york. turning on the tap. water is flowing again in some parts of west virginia, but fear still exists. pressuring points, first the bridge now the storm. the new question surrounding chris christie. this time over superstorm sandy funding. store insecurity, target may be just the tip of the iceberg in a holiday hacking spree. is enough being done? plus french connection the country's president, aledged affair, and the first girlfriend in the hospital. ♪