One of these days the media will actually give him and the people who have agreed with him credit, but for now they’re too busy sucking up to the administration.
U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
You mean the truth, Farris? Why don’t you go to Iraq to see for yourself?
Please, Please, Please keep Howard Dean front and center!!! We need him to keep saying things like “women will be worse off in Iraq than they were [under] Saddam Hussein”.
No, fool, the court martials prove that noone who condoned the torture is being held responsible. You really think a low level person with serious cognitive disabilities concocted the whole Abu Gharib torture without some sort of approval from the Pentagon?
Think maybe the “non-Americans have no rights” meme is helping keep the rape rooms and torture chambers open?
Perhaps you’ve heard of Abu Ghraib? Or the daily bombings of civilians?
D*mn. I was sure hoping you guys wouldn’t feature that Dean guy again. He just kills us with his tell it like it is attitude.
Who can forget: “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”
Or: (on Osama):I’ve resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found.
Or: (on Bush and 9/11): The most interesting theory that I ve heard so far which is nothing more than a theory, it can t be proved is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis.
Yeah. That Deano is a killer. I mean Democratic lawmakers and governors are just dying to be seen and photographed with him, aren’t they (Sorry Governor Dean, the Senator will be out when you visit. What? You’ll come a week later. He’ll still be out, then too. No Governor, he’ll be gone for the rest of his term. Bye now.) . It would just kill us if you guys kept him on for the whole term.
Dugger, Please, please not Yeargghhh Man!!!!
Women’s rights are going to be lost in the New Iraq. Perhaps not entirely, but already women are being forced back into Burkhas, are not allowed to own property, and other bits of Sharia law. Of course, barbers are being murdered for shaving men’s beards, so I guess it’s a kind of equal-opportunity religious oppression.
I see. So the Rape Rooms are still open and mass graves are still being filled?
Show me a photo with Rumfeld or Gonzalez stacking the pyramids and then I’d join you in the call for their dismissal.
The fact that the Abu Gharib gang was court martialled just goes to show they were acting AGAINST orders.
Still, I beg you to make Abu Gharib your cause. You, O, and Dean keep trying to win the 2004 election. We Rightys will go ahead and take care of 2006 & beyond…
I don’t remember Rumfeld and the “torture memo” guy being court marshalled? Link? I do remember Alberto Gonzalez being promoted. Hey, just like Saddam!
Are you really that stupid to think that some low-level enlisted personnel and low-level officers were solely responsible for the torture?
You “Moral Equivalency” guys rock! Of course, the fact that those responsible for Abu Gharib were court-martialed while those committing attrocities under Saddam were promoted goes completely unnoticed by your side.
Not by the American public though, as elections show. So that’s good.
“Reality-based” indeed!!!
*IF* they had been ordered to tortue as you claim and *IF* this sort of action had been approved from the Pentagon, then they would NOT have been court-martialled. Because the defense “I was ordered to by Gonzalez himself” would have been enough to escape punishment.
Honestly, the cognative dissonance required to be a liberal today is incalculable. If you so believe that “women today are worse off” in Iraq, you should be writing the NYT, WaPo and all the rest for not blaring “the truth” of Dean’s genius all accross this great land.
nickname, you need to get with SaveFarris. He might help you with that moral equivalency problem you got there.
SaveFarris:
In other words, unless we’re killing and raping them, they have nothing to complain about? what an ass.
Are you really that stupid to think that some low-level enlisted personnel and low-level officers were solely responsible for the torture?
so are you saying that the idiots in Wisconsin that slashed the tires of the republican get out the vote vans we’re under the orders of Kerry himself?
It’s silly and absurd to suggest that because they are “low-level” that they cannot also be “low-lifes”.
Saddam’s Iraq was no paradise for women. Sexual violence against women was an official part of state political control. On the other hand, women in civil life had more power and freedom vis-a-vis men than in any other Arab country. Saddam brutalized everybody who posed a political threat. But he never forced ordinary women to observe religious customs that they did not believe in. Today, women across the south of Iraq, including in once-cosmopolitan Basra, are being forced to wear the burkha against their will. This is a result of the ascendancy of the new religious Shi’ite political class, including “moderate” SCIRI and radical Sadrites. And there are numerous documented cases of Iraqi women raped in Abu Ghraib by Iraqi prison guards. And no, they are not being court martialed. The exchange above about US troops abusing Iraqis is besides the point. What matters is how women are treated by Iraqis. Still, abuse of women for political purposes was much, much worse under Saddam. But in many other ways, life for women in general is much worse in the post-Saddam era. And considering that the new repressions affect ALL women - BECAUSE they are women and not because they or their family members oppose the regime - it is in many ways worse than the brutal crimes committed against political prisoners.
What’s stupid was that the torture and abuse was entirely predictable–that sort of thing is all too common in power situations like that. Higher command was entirely negligent in not providing enough oversight to make sure it didn’t happen. And authoritarian types are particularly vulnerable to this sort of negligence….
Don’t presume evil when mere stupidity will do to explain the situation.
elrod, that is interesting and troubling if true.
Do you have any news stories on the burka thing.
Give me a link. This isn’t a challenge, I am honestly interested in reading more about that. Where ever you got the info from.
Thanks!
I heard that one of the reasons for the delay in the Iraqi constitution was for women’s rights
the defense I was ordered to by Gonzalez himself would have been enough to escape punishment.
The UCMJ clearly dictates that all service members have a duty to disobey unlawful orders.
Topic, people:
Remember, these were among the reasons the Bush administration gave for our grand adventure after the WMD rationale failed to pan out.
“Bringing democracy to the middle east”? Gone. “Protect the world’s oil supply”? Gone. “Freedom for the Iraqi people”? Gone.
All that’s left of all of the reasons is: “Saddam is a bad man.” In a world full of bad men, why is this one worth 1850 American lives? It’s looking more and more like the real reason was the first given: “He tried to kill my Daddy.”
Sorry, I screwed up the last Amnesty International article on violence against women. Here it is.
elrod: thanks
The number of radical armed groups has increased in Iraq. Many of them have issued threats against women not observing the Islamic dress code or against women human rights activists. In Basra, women and girls not wearing the hijab have been threatened. Now almost all cover themselves.
Other than Amnesty’s criticism in the lack of women in government, which arguably could be made for many countries. It looks like the thugs (who are not in power) would like to continue to beat the crap out of their women are up to this crap and threatening those that seek change.
Many reports indicate that women’s human rights activists and organizations are being threatened. According to the organization Women for Women, threats and lack of security forced half of their workers to stay at home for two days in the past week - the other half was evacuated to Jordan. Yanar Mohammed, a member of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, has received several death threats, including one by e-mail from an Islamist group known as the Army of Sahaba. When she asked officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) for protection, she says they told her that they had more urgent matters to attend to.
nickname,
Best info on this stuff comes from Human Rights Watch. They also documented Saddam’s atrocities better than anybody else. Their 1993 report on the Anfal genocide of the Kurds is absolutely harrowing, and meticulously researched.
Here is a report from the summer of 2003 about abuse of women in post-Saddam Baghdad.
This is a story on a demonstration in Basra against Islamist repression of women by militias.
Another story from the UK Observer on the general decay of women’s rights in the South.
Probably the best source of new repression against women was Steven Vincent, the American journalist who was murdered there after writing about corruption in the New York Times.
And there is this story on violence against women in post-Saddam Iraq. Again, women without the veil are targeted.
Hope this helps.
nickname,
The problem is that the thugs doing this are not, by and large, the Sunni insurgents trying to blow up the government. They are Shi’ite militia given free reign by elected Shi’ite councilmen in Basra and they are protected by the police. People forget that Sadrists actually won a lot of council elections in the South. But even where Sadrists aren’t in control, other militia from supposedly moderate Shi’ite parties enforce these same rigid codes against women.
And yes, they will beat up women’s organizations protesting the restrictions. But the first crime here is the restrictions themselves. Like the women of Kabul victimized by the Taliban, Basra’s Westernized women had no desire to mimic their more rural, traditionalist sisters in the burkha.
these are overwhelming odds for women in this backwards part of the world. Even the US didn’t have sufferage until recently.