Women in Combat

I think this Slate discussion on women in combat raises a lot of interesting issues, but here's a couple that jump out at me (from Stephanie Gutmann):

The only people who truly want to see women in combat are some TV producers who think it's a "sexy" issue and approximately 500 cranks assembled on college campuses and in NGOs around the Beltway.

Maybe she qualifies as a crank, but my criminal law professor (also my boss this summer) has been leading discussions on this topic here all year. I'm not sure whether she wants ANYONE in combat, but if we do go to war, it seems clear to me that she wants to do away with the exclusion of women from Infantry/Armor/Artillery.

These women never came very close to combat themselves and have found second careers haunting congressional hearing rooms, trying to extract maximum drama from military tours that were largely bureaucratic.

Maybe I didn't read closely enough, but when was the last time Gutmann took up arms in her country's defense?

And of course, the best question: if women are so undermining the military, why didn't we see that in Iraq? It seems we fought at least as effectively as we did in the first Gulf War, before most of the changes Gutmann objects to.