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Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 881
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 12:12 pm: | 
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Yesterday, CIA Director Porter Goss and other military personnel told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is fueling a growing insurgency and creating fresh enemies throughout an increasingly resentful and angry Arab world.
Goss: "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists.
"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."
Said Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby yesterday: "Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment. Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."
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ina
Citizen
Username: Ina
Post Number: 171
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 12:20 pm: |
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From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Iraqi women find election a cruel joke
By HOUZAN MAHMOUD
GUEST COLUMNIST
I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting the elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?
In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and U.S.-led military assaults since Saddam Hussein's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.
Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other Middle East women, women in Iraq are losing even their basic freedoms -- the right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality but the subjugation of women was never a Baath Party goal. What we are seeing is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection taking Iraq into a new dark age.
Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing makeup or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.
The new norm -- enforced at the barrel of a gun by Islamic extremists -- is to see women as the repository of honor and shame, not only on behalf of family and tribe but the nation. Ken Bigley's abductors perversely wanted to redeem the "honor" of Iraq through obtaining the release of female prisoners. Since when did Islamic groups -- the very people doing the hostage taking, torturing and killing -- start caring about the rights of Iraqi women?
Take the case of Anaheed. She was suspended to a tree in the New Baghdad area of the capital and then first shot by her father (a solicitor no less) and then by each member of her tribe. She was then was cut into pieces.
This to clear the shame on the tribe's honor for having wanted to marry a man she was in love with. This happened in late 2003, months after the "liberation."
In the last six months at least eight women have been killed in Mosul alone -- all apparently by Islamic groups clamping down on female independence. Among these, a professor from the city's law school was shot and beheaded, a vet was killed on her way to work and a pharmacist from the Alkhansah hospital was shot dead on her doorstep.
The occupation has unleashed this new violence against women, while in some cases adding its own particular variety. Iraqi women have been tortured by U.S. soldiers in prisons. The social taboo against speaking about sexual abuse is so strong in Iraq that these women will almost certainly have no one to turn to upon release.
Methal Kazem is one woman who spoke publicly of her treatment by the occupiers. Last February a U.S. helicopter landed on the roof of her house. She was hooded and handcuffed and taken to Abu Ghraib.
Accused of being a former Baathist secret policewoman, she was made to run on sharp gravel, tied up and suspended and made to listen to the screaming of other inmates. She heard one man repeatedly screaming "do not touch my honor" and Methal believes that the man's wife was being raped in front of him.
When Allied forces handed over power to the interim government last June, they should, as Amnesty International has argued, have handed over prisoners. Instead they have illegally detained more than 2,000 without charge. Few of these may be women but it still leaves thousands of wives, mothers and sisters in distress and despair.
I also believe that American soldiers have raped Iraqi women. They dare not talk about it, however, as they face being killed by their own families if they do. My associates in Iraq have been counseling Liqaa, a former Iraqi female soldier, who was raped by an American soldier in November 2003. The savage truth is that if she returns home, male family members may murder her for her "dishonor."
If Iraqi women take part in the elections, who are they to vote for?
Women's rights are ignored by most of the candidates. The U.S. government appears happy to have Iraq governed by reactionary religious and ethnocentric elites.
The one glimmer of hope is that courageous demonstrations against rape and kidnapping have taken place. In September, a women's protest fused opposition to the occupation, a demand that all Islamic militia forces leave cities and a call for safe streets for women. This new women-led secular progressive movement is against the interim government and against the violence and restriction of political Islam. Those who support us should publicly renounce these phony elections and campaign for a truly free Iraq.
Houzan MahMoud, an Iraqi living in Britain, is the United Kingdom head of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. This article was first published in The Independent in Britain.
Get much sleep, George?
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notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 2073
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 1:56 pm: |
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Libs and many non-libs alike felt it was obvious that, given more freedom, Iraqis might make many choices that were really not so appealing from an American or Western point of view.
Currently, Iraq still has a very long and fragile journey before it is both democratic and stable. Some of the oppressed are now free to become oppressors themselves. Meanwhile, we have polarized much of the world, turning large amounts of the populations of many countries against us.
What do we do? |
Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 882
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 2:21 pm: |
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Well, the one thing we must NOT do is give the impression that we have somehow taken over Saddam's role, gotten comfortable living it up in his palaces, while ordinary Iraqis cannot get proper electricity, food or plumbing. |
Robert Livingston
Citizen
Username: Rob_livingston
Post Number: 883
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 2:22 pm: |
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Oh, wait.
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notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 2077
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 4:54 pm: |
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Hey!! There's no g*ddam beer left in the fridge!! |
Mustt_mustt
Citizen
Username: Mustt_mustt
Post Number: 277
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 6:14 pm: |
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Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy - In the beginning, Bush went to war telling the nation and the world that Iraq was a terrorist haven and that it had irrefutable links with Al Qaeda where there were none - the terrorists and the link to Al Qaeda. In the end, we have both, thanks to Wolfowitz who hammered it into Rumsfeld, who hammered it into Cheney, who then hammered it into Bush. As I mentioned it before several times, it would be politically naive on our part to believe that the "luminaries" I mentioned above nurse altruistic reasons for bringing democracy, freedom, liberty, and all that jazz to the middle east and nations that are "out of step with the middle east."
It is in the VITAL INTEREST of the US NOT to see a true democracy take shape in Iraq. Or in Saudi Arabia, or in Jordan, and oh, not to forget the Emirates. Now let's not even go to Latin America, what with Negroponte just being confirmed the intelligence czar. For those of you who are interested, check out the man's backround in an article written by David Corn in the www.thenation.org. It is worth a read.
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