By Nina Liss-Schultz

The presence of women in the last decade of war has been significant: 275,000 women have been deployed — 13,000 to Afghanistan so far this year alone. At least 130 women have lost their lives during service since 9/11. And in February, the Pentagon eased the ban on women serving in combat roles. But despite the growing number of women serving, and in light of female service members’ growing combat roles, an Army task force on women’s health concluded that U.S. armed forces are ill-prepared to provide female soldiers with adequate health care “that’s both equal in quality to that of their male counterparts, and that also accounts for the medical issues unique to a female population.”

According to the report, which was covered first by USA Today, none of the health problems described by the task force — such as urinary or vaginal infections — would bar women from “serving in combat but instead create unnecessary physical discomfort.” Instead, the task force recommended creating a simple kit that allows women to self-test for these kinds of infections without having to approach a company medic, often a man, about symptoms. Results from those tests can then allow them to obtain proper medication.

The task force also issued other recommendations to address women’s health care:

• Build body armor and physical exercise uniforms that fit women. The Army says it is testing better-fitting body armor for women in August.

• Provide better security for tent lodging and bathrooms to lessen the risk of sexual assaults.

• Urge the Army, Marines and Air Force to conform with a Navy provision allowing 12 months for new mothers to spend with newborns to take full advantage of the health benefits of breast-feeding.

• Sponsor more research into better understanding of the mental health issues that develop when mothers separate from families to go to war.

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) told USA Today that “it’s disturbing that after a decade at war, women servicemembers do not have access to some of the simple, common-sense solutions in this report.” A key finding of the report is that the military fails to educate women about how to stay healthy. Because the military currently lacks health tutorials specific to women, female servicemembers often do not know, for instance, that contraceptives can mitigate the increased unpleasantness of menstrual cycles due to combat stress — an issue that was widely reported to the task force.

Right-wing critics of the Obama administration have called for more American action on Syria, advocating air strikes, pushing a Congressional resolution in favor of helping allies arm the rebels, and even hinting directly arming anti-government forces.

But so far the Obama administration has done none of these things. With the U.N. peace plan collapsing, that might soon change. But for now, administration officials have said arming the rebels would require much careful consideration, partly because the rebel forces’ make-up is unknown — a reservation shared by Romney adviser John Bolton.

So what is the Obama administration doing for the rebels in Syria? The details are hazy — much of the activity would likely be classified or inaccessible to journalists — but several recent media reports show that the U.S. has not taken a hands-off approach:

LOGISTICS AND COMMUNICATIONS ASSISTANCE – U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that “U.S. intelligence operatives and diplomats have stepped up their contacts with Syrian rebels in part to help organize their burgeoning military operations.” This includes helping with logistics and communications. The officials also told the Journal that the U.S. was considering providing intelligence to the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces.

CONSULTING ON ARMS SALES – As in Libya, the U.S. is reportedly not directly involved in arming rebel forces. But that doesn’t mean — in either case — the U.S. is not involved at all. The New York Times reported last week that Syrian activists claimed the U.S. was “consulted” on arms deals where Saudi Arabia and Qatar paid for the Turks to make the transfers (U.S. officials said “they recognized that Syria’s neighbors would do so”).

GATHERING INTELLIGENCE ON REBELS – The Journal also noted that “stepped-up links with the FSA are also part of an effort to gain a better understanding of the rebels’ capabilities and of the identities” in a bid to split the FSA from extremist anti-government fighters. This is in line with an earlier report that the administration considered facilitating allies’ work to arm anti-government forces.

TECHNOLOGICAL AID AND TRAINING – Time Magazine reported last week that the administration ran a robust program of helping rebel communications not only among each other and allies, but also with the outside world. Those enraging videos of Assad’s foces shelling densely urban areas? Some of them are captured by rebels carrying guns in one hand and U.S.-provided cameras in the other, and uploaded to the web over satellite communications provided by the U.S. and operated with U.S. training.

While calls to do more are understandable given the humanitarian crisis unfolding daily in Syria, those who, like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), claim the U.S. “won’t do anything to help the Syrian people” are being disingenuous. Along with the aforementioned involvement by the U.S. (and to the chagrin of reflexive advocates of solely violent force), the Obama administration continues a robust diplomatic push, including U.S. and international sanctions, for greater pressure on the Assad government.

The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and the Foreign Policy Institute’s Jamie Fly this weekend penned an article calling on President Obama to ask Congress to authorize military force against Iran. The piece came just days after a Kristol-led pressure group unveiled a television ad pushing for war.

But Congress has already backed away from authorizing force and even GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, despite his hawkish advisers, rebuffed the belligerent ask. Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Romney distanced himself from Kristol’s article:

ROMNEY: I don’t believe, at this stage, therefore, if I’m president, that we need to have a war powers approval or a special authorization for military force. The president has that capacity now.

[...W]e cannot survive a course of action which would include a nuclear Iran, and we must be willing to take any and all action. They must — all those actions must be on the table.

Watch the video:

One of Romney’s advisers — John Bolton — has has recently been pushing for war with Iran but outside of Romney’s militaristic rhetoric, his Iran policy is virtually indistinguishable from that laid out by Obama, including the president’s oft-repeated view that all options remain on the table to deal with a potential Iranian nuclear weapon.

And despite Kristol’s insistence that even if Obama doesn’t ask for an authorization for military force, “Congress can act without such a request,” such a move would be moot: Congress, in each chamber in the past month, overwhelming passed bills specifically repudiating the notion of authorizing force. The Senate passed a new round of U.S. sanctions in Iran in a bill that included language explicitly stating, “[N]othing in this Act shall be construed as authorizing the use of force against Iran.” And the house passed the 2013 defense authorization with an amendment stating the same thing.

A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

But that measured take doesn’t satisfy Kristol, who has been at odds with the Romney during the campaign. As editor of the Weekly Standard and head of the Emergency Committee For Israel and Foreign Policy Initiative, Kristol can make a lot of noise but it seems that no one is heeding his advice.

Mitt Romney’s pledge to massively increase military spending — close to a $2 trillion increase over the next ten years and boosting the Pentagon’s base budget to 4 percent of GDP — combined with his promises to cuts taxes and reduce the national debt is leaving many national security and defense experts scratching their heads, particularly because the presumptive GOP presidential nominee has not said how he’d pay for it.

A poll of defense budget experts conducted by Defense News finds that Romney’s pledge to grow the defense budget “appears politically impossible, if technically doable.”

Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said about Romney’s plan:

If you put all of the promises together, it doesn’t all add up. The administration may change, but the math remains the same. Harrison said. If you want to increase spending on defense over the next decade and reduce the deficit, then that necessarily means sharp reductions in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid or sharp increases in taxes, or some combination of the two.

Indeed, previous increases in defense costs, specifically those incurred by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, were largely paid for by increasing the deficit instead of through reductions in domestic spending or raising taxes. That decision, said Defense Leon Panetta last week, was a “mistake.” “Frankly all of us bear the responsibility to bear those costs if we’re willing to engage in war,” said Panetta. But that commitment to balance defense spending against budget cuts and/or tax hikes is nowhere to be seen in Romney’s proposals to grow military spending.

“I think with any discussion of major increases to any aspect of federal spending at this point, you have to say what the offset is,” Michèle Flournoy, who until recently served as President Obama’s undersecretary of defense for policy, told DefenseNews. “You have to say what you are cutting instead. Are you increasing revenues to do that?”

Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution said last month that Romney’s military spending plan doesn’t “reflect fiscal reality.” Indeed, Romney, who has committed to cutting taxes, has already effectively ruled out the possibility of raising taxes to pay for military spending. That leaves unpopular reductions in Medicare and other domestic spending to balance the budget in a Romney presidency. But “they don’t want to specify those, because they don’t want to lose the senior citizen vote,” said Gordon Adams, who oversaw defense budgeting at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration.