Main problem is, she's the prototypical Gucci feminist, from a very well-off Somali political family. Her sojourn in Dutch politics objectively involved a lot of harm done to the position of ordinary Muslims - including Muslim women - in the Netherlands, but because such women are often poor, don't speak Dutch or English and have traditional religious views, she wasn't especially interested in them... and certainly did nothing substantive that might have bettered their lot. After it was revealed that she'd lied to get into the country, she gets not only an AEI position, but the wheels greased for an American green card. She's had a life of privilege, and sees everything from that perspective.

And it's always kind of funny to hear a self-described atheist labeled as a 'moderate Muslim'.

about the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department...

From a few minutes ago: http://tinyurl.com/5poa5p

"...Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher stated, “This investigation pertains to actions of the RNC Welcoming Committee. The “Welcoming Committee” is a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self- described anarchists..."

From earlier this week: http://tinyurl.com/686uzq

"...Two members of Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher's Special Investigations Unit flunked when they took money planted in an FBI integrity test, a jury decided Wednesday.... The two men, both 48, are friends of Fletcher. Naylon was best man at Fletcher's second wedding. Rehak is a former St. Paul police officer hired by Fletcher despite reprimands in Rehak's police personnel file. Fletcher declined to be interviewed Wednesday ..."

Guess a big fat police raid helps distract people from earlier new like that. Those folks who were raided had better make sure that nothing was stolen in the raids, though.

This article - with its self-absorption, its condescension, its dumb-ass ignorance masquerading as 'balance' - is a good illustration of why Salon dropped Camille Paglia the last time around, in about 2001. And why they should do so again.

C'mon, Camille, you became a caricature of yourself almost instantly after _Sexual personae_... a combination of the worst of Ms. Manners and Phyllis Schlafly.

and especially page 3 - see http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2008/10/14/friendly_fire/index2.html

According to the Army, what's supposed to have happened at 16.20.16 (that is, within a single second) is that _three_ projectiles struck the house where the American soldiers were sheltering simultaneously. Only one of these is supposed to have exploded.

One was a ricocheting case stub and a cloud of steel pellets from a 120mm M1028 canister round, fired at a house then under fire by the tanks. This apparently bounced off the target house and impacted the house the American soldiers were in. No explosive in this round - it's like a big shotgun shell - so it didn't detonate.

The second and third projectiles were, according to this report, an 82mm and a 120mm mortar projectile, both fired _simultaneously_ so as to impact within a single second on the house, and presumably by different groups of Iraqi insurgents. The 82mm mortar round came in almost horizontally (which is difficult, as this round is gravity-fired by dropping it down the mortar barrel onto a fixed firing pin - doesn't work well if the barrel is nearly horizontal) and didn't detonate. It did, however, cause the injury that eventually killed one American soldier.

Strangely enough (and this point is not addressed in the report), although this 82mm mortar round is not supposed to have detonated, the round itself was never found. Since this round weighs about 7.5 pounds, and all kinds of other munitions debris was recovered from the site, this is more than a little surprising.

The _third_ round was from a 120mm mortar, arriving at the high angle usual for mortar rounds, and it did detonate, killing the second soldier.

There was also shrapnel from American 120mm tank gun ammunition (entirely different from 120mm mortar ammunition) found in the house, as well as a variety of other ammunition natures, but this is claimed to be from a different engagement.

Overall, this sounds too clever by half. Higher echelons were already claiming in the video that the story would be enemy 120mm mortar fire, even though _even given the Army report_ projectiles from the American tank canister round impacted the house at the same time as the mortar round supposedly did. Eventually the report says there are three simultaneous impacts, but surprise surprise, it was the vanishing 82mm and the 120mm mortar rounds that killed the American soldier in question.

... that means that thinking Californians need to get back up and get back to the task at hand. The tide of history is running against the homophobes.

Ross Johnson: "And if all you battlefield detectives think you can do it better, then you go out there and fight."

Been there, done that. And with that irrelevancy out of the way, maybe on to the issue at hand...?

The reasons for investigating this and similar cases are two-fold. You note the first yourself: "If you want to stop friendly-fire deaths then you will need to stop war. Short of that all you can hope to do is reduce them through improved technology and training."

It's going to be hard to improve technology and training if you deny that a problem exists. The post-Gulf-War improvement in battlefield ID came about because of a recognition that fraticide had happened. If it's denied, how can you do anything about it?

The second reason is: we already know that US Army personnel lie about these incidents when it's politically expedient. Look at the Pat Tillman case, for example.

... back in the Dark Ages of 2002 or thereabouts. Now Camille Paglia shows up for a periodic posturing. Salon seems to need to keep a token right-winger around, for the entertainment value.