She is known as the The Bomb Lady around the Pentagon, or, "one of the most important weapons-developers of the modern era," according to one who knows something about these things. Her most recent innovation is the JEFF, which analyzes biometrics, and therefore helps identify bad guys. The lady who developed the bunker-busting bomb says: "The best missile is worthless if you don�t know who to shoot." She came to the U.S. at age fifteen when Vietnam ran out of bullets, as she says. She says this about why she does what she does: "My life is payback: I�m indebted to the soldiers and to Americans." She tells the Washington Post reporter that when she went to see "The Deer Hunter" she walked out enraged over how America was portrayed in the middle of it. So did I. Read her great story and you be grateful to her heart and work.
Imagine the torment Laura Blumenfeld felt in writing that piece as she sized up the various elements of it:
Frankly, I'm amazed the story appears at all. On the whole the narrative structure is all wrong. The only thing it has is a successful woman in a sexist military-industrial society. But the "bomb" thing negates it.
This one quote probably saved it: "'I don't want My Lai in Iraq,' Duong said at the Pentagon." That's a nice reference to an American atrocity. The narrative is there. Weak, but there.