WASHINGTON—Female veterans and feminist activist groups are commending the Pentagon this week following a watershed policy change that will lift the ban on women in combat roles, rendering the battlefield an equal-opportunity death zone. “The U.S. Armed Forces have been gender-neutral in their victims for years, and now they’re finally leveling the killing field for female combatants as well,” said Nadine Hynes, a retired Marine Corps Lance Corporal who was unable to add to the carnage of Iraq’s blood-soaked, limb-strewn slaughterscapes due to the Pentagon’s 1994 rule barring women from infantry and artillery roles. “Now, women will have the same opportunity to accidentally gun down innocent civilians or be ripped apart by insurgent rocket fire as men.” At press time, servicewomen were celebrating the likelihood of additional policy gains that would include the right to return from service equally haunted by their ordeals, and the right to face just as many hurdles to proper mental health care as their fellow servicemen.

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