The eye-opening documentary Lioness, directed by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers, deals with one of the least-covered aspects of the Iraq war: the role of American women in combat. Technically, there supposedly aren't any, because government policy expressly forbids it. In actual fact, the "nature of this war" has meant that, as one of film's interview subjects puts it, women soldiers in Iraq "have been forced to violate their policy in order to do their jobs," especially if you consider it part of their jobs to not get their heads blown off. (The military has been finessing the matter by playing games with the definition of what officially constitutes a "combat situation.") Lioness, which takes it title from the nickname of a women's unit in Iraq, pinpoints the April, 2004 siege of Ramadi as a turning point in the history of the use of women in combat. That day, Sgt. Ranie Ruthig and Specialist Shannon Morgan were on assignment with a Marine unit that was ambushed by Iraqi gunmen. As an officer tells the camera, there had been no intention to send the women into combat, but "combat found them." At one point, Shannon Morgan, who was standing in the street being fired on, looked around and realized that she was a lone target, the guys who had been standing there with her a moment earlier having retreated to cover without telling her. The officer describes this as "not an ideal situation." Or as Morgan puts it, "I kicked the squad leader right in the nuts."
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