Posted 9:45 PM by Scoobie Davis

Is Ann Coulter Completely Whacked? I'm Transcribing; You Decide
I don't know where to start. Read it for yourself and decide. The following is part of Ann Coulter's interview with KABC radio's Al Rantel May 5, 2004. No, this is not a hoax:

RANTEL: . . .What is your general take on all of this [Abu Ghraib]?

COULTER: Well, the point I just made on Hannity & Colmes--which no one has been making--is that this is yet another lesson in why women shouldn't be in the military.

RANTEL: Oh, really? You're bringing this up? It's funny because somebody mentioned that and I kind of pooh-poohed it. So tell me more.

COULTER: Well, you can't avoid the fact that there are a disproportionate number of women involved, for one thing, in the abuse photos. It was a girl general who was in charge of running our Iraqi prison. And, you know, for one thing, I'm a little disappointed in Rumsfeld--he allows the greatest fighting force on the face of the globe to have girl generals--what are we doing with girl generals? But I think as a general matter, besides the fact that women don't have the physical abilities to do the training exercises while carrying even a medium-size backpack, women are more vicious than men.

RANTEL: Really?

COULTER: These are a few, you know, I mean, in general, these abuse photos are manifestly a few bad apples in an overwhelmingly honorable military. I don't know if you remember, but back during the Afghanistan war--and that was even the war that liberals pretended to support--our military was trained how to bury the dead so that their heads were facing Mecca. That's an incredibly honorable thing to do--and, by the way, it's something that doesn't occur to a woman because we are vicious. You don't want us in the military.

RANTEL: Uh, uh, you're not being tongue-in-cheek here, Ann, at all?

COULTER: No, I am not. I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek about how vicious women are, but I do think it is a serious problem having women in the military. Men are used to this sort of thing. I mean, C. S. Lewis himself said, remarking on the differences between men and women, if your dog bit a neighbor's child, who would you like to go deal with: the woman of the house or the man of the house? Men are much more capable of engaging in combat and still being honorable about it. I'll give you another example that seems completely off-point and perhaps you'll think I'm insane but I was watching the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night and, you know, Jay Leno was telling a lot of jokes, cutting both ways, and you see people, even somewhat slimy people like Richard Ben-Veniste in the audience, but he was laughing uproariously at the jokes--even the ones that were to the detriment of John Kerry or the Democrats. But the women journalists, ohhhh, they're very dour, they're angry, they don't laugh if the joke doesn't go their way. This is what women are like. Men are better at engaging in combat while behaving in an honorable way. And it is--now I will swing back to the abuse photos.

RANTEL: Yeah.

COULTER: It is simply a fact--I have only seen five of the abuse photos--there are females in two of them. We don't have a military that's 40 percent female.

RANTEL: Now there's the one picture with the girl--that woman with the cigarette hanging out of her mouth--the woman soldier with the cigarette--and she's holding the gun at the guy's genitals. Is that the one you're referring to?

COULTER: There's that one and there's also a female in a pile-of-bodies photo.

RANTEL: Right. Well, you know, this is an angle I hadn't thought of. What--

COULTER: And [unintelligible] a woman general--a girl general.

RANTEL: The brigadier general, [Janis] Karpinski.

COULTER: Yeah, and, of course, we have affirmative action to get more women generals--girl generals--running the--Come on! Come on! That's silly. No civilized society allows women in the military--this is separate and apart from the fact that you should not be allowing women to fight.

RANTEL: I'm a little speechless only because I can imagine some our listeners saying, "Ann is a woman. Ann is an amazingly successful woman, you know, three times New York [Times] best-selling author and great political commentator and successful at everything she's ever done. Why do you think that women can't do these jobs in the military?"

COULTER: Well you definitely wouldn't want me fighting in this war--all 99 pounds of me--if you want to win. [Coulter cackles]

RANTEL: But wait. Wait a minute. I recognize that there are physical differences between the average man and the average woman with the possible exception of Janet Reno, but I'm talking about--

COULTER: [cackles]

RANTEL: But you seem to be making a blanket statement that putting women in general, as females, in the military is a bad idea.

COULTER: Yes, and in addition to our manifest physical limitations, I think women are more vicious than men.

RANTEL: That would explain Hillary Clinton.

COULTER: Yes!

RANTEL: [Laughs]

COULTER: It would explain the White House Correspondents' Dinner with these dour feminists sitting, frowning at jokes that cut against them. You know, I will admit that there are many men who are women [Coulter chuckles] and there are some women who can behave like men, but as a general matter, women are overwhelmingly unable physically to be in the military and I think also psychologically.

RANTEL: Yeah, that's the part I'm getting to. So you think there's a psychological difference between them. We know the physical is obvious.

COULTER: It's in our genes to protect the hearth and home. to respond viciously to the enemies, to intruders, whereas, just think of immediately after the 9/11 attack, I was huffing and puffing and fuming the very night of it that we weren't already dropping bombs in Afghanistan?--

RANTEL: But I think a lot of guys--men and women were, don't you think?

COULTER: I suspect that actually is how the Democrats would have responded because they are women. . .