What is the matter with the men of this country -- our political and military leaders -- that they acquiesce in the policy of sending mothers of infants out to fight Saddam Hussein? Are they the kind of man who, on hearing a noise at 2 a.m., would send his wife or daughter downstairs to confront an intruder?

Three young women were part of the maintenance crew that took a wrong turn and was ambushed by the Iraqis. Shoshana Johnson, fortunately, has been rescued, thanks to an Iraqi who told the Americans where the U.S. POWs were hidden.

In the joy of reconciliation, let's not forget the shame on our country that this single mother of a two-year-old baby was assigned to a position where she could be captured. She didn't volunteer to serve in combat; she volunteered to be an Army cook.

Jessica Lynch didn't volunteer for combat either. She wanted to be a kindergarten teacher and joined the Army because jobs were scarce in West Virginia.

Jessica was rescued by U.S. troops thanks to an Iraqi who was disgusted by the way his fellow Iraqis were slapping her around as a wounded prisoner. Even that Iraqi understood that a female POW is different from a male POW.

The third woman, Lori Piestewa of Arizona, didn't make it back alive. Her body was discovered by our troops in a shallow grave.

Lori was the single mother of a 4-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter. Did the Iraqi threat to U.S. national security really require those two children to sacrifice their only parent?

The reason these sorry things have happened is that the men in our government and in our military lack the courage to stand down the feminists and repudiate their assault on family and motherhood.

Shoshana, Jessica and Lori were the victims of trickle-down feminism. The female officers (plus the militant feminists who would never serve in the military) demand the "career opportunities" of combat roles, and claim that a servicewoman is fully deployable six months after giving birth, while the privates get the really dangerous assignments.

The pictures of a terrified Shoshana being interrogated by her Iraqi captors and of Jessica carried on a stretcher show the toll on the mothers. How about the costs to the little ones left behind?

The war picture that graphically shows this side of the problem was of an apprehensive two-year-old, Teresa Garcia, hanging on for dear life to the legs of her mother, Army Captain Dorota Garcia, as she stood suited up with rifle and gear, ready to depart for Iraq from Fort Hood, Texas.

Cable television is giving us 24-hour-a-day front-line coverage of the war in Iraq from imbedded and non-imbedded journalists. Funny thing, one statistic is missing from their comprehensive reports.

How many mothers of infants and toddlers (among the 212,000 women in the U.S. military today) are over there in the Iraqi war? How many are single mothers, and how many are married mothers whose husbands are already serving in Iraq, leaving their children parentless at home?

How many are like Army Spc. Tamekia Lavalais, leaving behind her 21-month-old baby whose father is already in Iraq. She said she wouldn't have joined the Army "if I'd known this was going to happen."

The government won't give us the count on mothers, and reporters seem afraid to ask. Is it because that statistic is classified information that would be harmful to national security if the enemy knew it, or because that statistic would be harmful to the reputations of U.S. politicians and generals if the American public knew about our military's anti-motherhood policy?

Or is it because reporters are chicken in the face of the militant feminists? Bernard Goldberg tells in his best-selling book "Bias" that even tough Sam Donaldson "turns into a sniveling wimp when it comes to challenging feminists."

The politicians have brought this embarrassment on our nation because they allowed themselves to be henpecked by the militant feminists. The whole idea of men sending women, including mothers, out to fight the enemy is contrary to our belief in the importance of the family and motherhood and, furthermore, no one respects a man who would let a woman do his fighting for him.

Women serve our country admirably, both on the home front and in many positions in the U.S. Armed Forces. But there is no evidence in history for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to advance women's rights, promote national security, improve combat readiness, or win wars.

America is alone in this extraordinary social experimentation to send mothers to war. We hope, when the war is over, that the President and the military will change these shameful feminist policies.

Further Reading . . . Goodbye, Capt. Mom Wednesday, January 15, 2003 San Francisco Chronicle