Carson campaign chairman thinks it's time to reevaluate letting women serve in combat positions

A new year brings a new team for Ben Carson, and his recently promoted campaign chairman said on Monday he has reservations about allowing openly gay troops to serve and letting women go into combat.

Retired Army Major Gen. Robert F. Dees told CNN's Jake Tapper that "the military is designed to provide for the common defense of our nation," and "everyone is not good at everything." While "some women" are able to perform "certain tasks" in combat, "most" would not, for example, have the strength to carry a male soldier off a battlefield. "There are just certain realities where men can do certain things better, women can do certain things better," he said. "We don't need to throw everybody into every position as an experiment just because we're trying to appear to be fair to everyone."

When it comes to gays and lesbians in the military, "The first priority again is cohesion, and the second priority would be that the commander-in-chief listen to the best military advice," Dees said. "The administration has said, 'Do this, do this, do this,' apart from military and defense considerations." Carson told Tapper he would be willing to consider closing combat roles to women and gay troops. "One of the things that I learned in a long medical career is that you make decisions based on evidence, and not on ideology," he said.

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