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Hillary: Iraqi Women Better Off Under Saddam
NewsMax ^ | 2/27/04 | Limbacher

Posted on 02/27/2004 8:32:32 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection

Sen. Hillary Clinton said this week that Iraqi women were better off under Saddam Hussein, arguing that when the brutal dictator ran the country women were at least assured the right to participate in Iraq's public life.

In comments that went unreported by the mainstream press, the former first lady told the Brookings Institution on Wednesday that since Saddam's removal from power, Iraq's post war governing councils had engaged in "pullbacks in the rights [women] were given under Saddam Hussein."

Sen. Clinton noted that while Saddam had been "an equal opportunity oppressor," women were at least assured certain constitutional guarantees.

While ignoring reports about the brutal dictator's rape rooms and other forms of persecution that were routine for women under his regime, Sen. Clinton insisted: "On paper, women had rights."

And for Iraqi women, those paper promises translated into real benefits, she claimed.

"They went to school; they participated in the professions, they participated in the government and business and, as long as they stayed out of [Saddam's] way, they had considerable freedom of movement," Clinton insisted.

But since Saddam's removal, the plight of Iraq's women has taken a significant turn for the worse, she contended.

"Now, what we see happening in Iraq is the governing council attempting to shift large parts of civl law into religious jurisdiction," Sen. Clinton explained, saying the loss of Saddam's guarantees amounted to a "horrific mistake" for women.

During her trip to Iraq last November, Clinton said Iraqi women told her personally how they felt less safe since the U.S. deposed Saddam.

"Women tell me they can't leave their homes, they can't go about their daily business. And there is a concerted effort to burn schools that are educating girls [and] to intimidate aid workers who are women," the leading Democrat complained.

The former first lady called on President Bush to issue a statement that the U.S. "will not become the vehicle by which women's rights in Iraq are turned back."

A full transcript of Sen. Clinton's remarks is available on the Brookings Institution Web site at: http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/comm/events/20040225.pdf. Her remarks on the worsening plight of Iraqi women can be found on pages 36, 37, and 38.



TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: beech; bich; brookingsinstitution; clintoontraitor; hillary; hillarytraitor; iraqiwomen; outrageousdems; traitor
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To: Tumbleweed_Connection
Put it to the test hitlery, sign up to be his paramor!
141 posted on 02/27/2004 1:04:02 PM PST by winker
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To: MamaTexan
That was in Saudi Arabia that the girls' school was burned.
142 posted on 02/27/2004 1:05:18 PM PST by Eva
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To: Toespi
She said that???


I hope the next time she is a room full of Iraqi women .. they Spit on That *itch
143 posted on 02/27/2004 1:36:52 PM PST by Mo1 (THE CUSTER CONSERVATIVES: "Not Smart... But Principled, Dammit!)
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To: Tumbleweed_Connection; Carl/NewsMax
If this is true, and it didn't appear as a front page scandal in every paper in the civilized world, it is a scandal about the press as well, and proves that both our current mainstream press and XXX-42 II are threats to our national security.

Tales of Saddam's Brutality
The Iraqi people talk about mass graves and Saddam’s crimes against humanity

-----

"Most afternoons, among the market stalls leading to the old city of Najaf young men set up TV sets in the street showing grotesque scenes of cruelty. Handcuffed prisoners are executed with sticks of dynamite shoved into their pockets. Screaming men plead for their lives as they are beaten by Saddam Hussein's secret police. Crimson fragments of bodies lie in the street, moments after a huge explosion, to the soundtrack of an Arab lament. The crowds gather round. People mutter and shake their heads. Then they queue to pay 1,000 Iraqi dinars (about 33p) [50 cents] for laser discs containing footage of the appalling scenes. These are the atrocity discs of Iraq, a booming mini-industry in a country still stricken by the consequences of the war. They are produced in home factories, with the simplest computer equipment."
-- The London Times, September 20, 2003

------

"The day after the liberation, my aunt put out a black banner--an Arab mourning ritual--with the names of all her relatives who had been murdered by the regime on it. And she looked down her street, and there were black banners on almost every house. On some houses it looks like a long shopping list. She said to her neighbour, 'You too?' Under Saddam it was a crime to mourn people killed by the regime--it made you seem suspicious too. Everyone was suffering terribly, but they were suffering alone. They just didn't know that everyone else was hating it too."
-- Yasser Alaskary, co-founder of Iraqi Prospect Organisation, an Iraqi freedom group, The Independent (London), September 18, 2003

-----

"The bodyguard says he was disgusted by Uday's activities-he points to a floor-to-ceiling cage in the corner of the club's kitchen where he says monkeys were kept for Uday because he liked to have the animals watch him when he was deflowering virgins. ... It was his to make the singers who entertained Uday at the Boat Club gulp down a liter and a half of a 'cocktail,' a combination of 90-proof alcohol often with some drugs thrown in. ...

-- Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2003

------

At only 22, Tareq, a defender, has been to prison five times. After a while, he recognized a pattern to the punishment. "The first stage of the torture is the reception, when you are given a choice of which plastic cable you will be beaten with. Then you are beaten 15 to 20 times. The reception is over. In the next stage, you are thrown into knee-deep sewer water and told to swim," he says. Tareq was dragged bare-chested across hot asphalt. Made to run barefoot over broken glass and gravel. When it was time to leave, he says, "The farewell party is a beating."
-- USA TODAY, July 30, 2003

-----

"Ahmad was Uday's chief executioner. Last week, as Iraqis celebrated the death of his former boss and his equally savage younger brother Qusay, he nervously revealed a hideous story. His instructions that day in 1999 were to arrest the two 19-year-olds on the campus of Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts and deliver them at Radwaniyah. On arrival at the sprawling compound, he was directed to a farm where he found a large cage. Inside, two lions waited. They belonged to Uday. Guards took the two young men from the car and opened the cage door. One of the victims collapsed in terror as they were dragged, screaming and shouting, to meet their fate. Ahmad watched as the students frantically looked for a way of escape. There was none. The lions pounced. 'I saw the head of the first student literally come off his body with the first bite and then had to stand and watch the animals devour the two young men. By the time they were finished there was little left but for the bones and bits and pieces of unwanted flesh,' he recalled last week."
-- Sunday Times, London, July 27, 2003

------

One of the condemned women was pregnant. This presented a problem, said Ahmad, because under religious law a pregnant woman should at least be allowed to finish her term and deliver the baby before being executed. 'She was several months' pregnant,' he said. 'The doctor had verified it, she had said so and we could see her swollen stomach. She was taken in and out three times - everyone was unsure what to do with her.' Telephone calls were made to Uday by his representative. As they waited, the woman sobbed and begged for mercy for her unborn child. On the third telephone call the order was given to go ahead with her execution. 'At that the woman was beheaded - and knowing she was pregnant, I felt sick in the stomach and wished for Allah to open up the ground and swallow everyone there including myself,' said Ahmad.
-- Sunday Times, London, July 27, 2003

------

"They put me in a cell just 1m by 1.5m, painted completely red with no windows and lots of tiny stones on the floor and told me to count them. It did not matter what number you said it would be wrong. If I said 2000, they would say no, it's 2001 and beat me 10 times. Then they put me inside a circle and told me to run round and round for nine hours. After that they threw me on the hot pavement and a fat guard sat on my chest. Then they pulled me along by my ankles so that my back was streaming with blood.

"Another time they drew a bicycle on the wall and told me to ride it. They threw me in foul dirty water and said you must swim, then they kept pushing me under with a stick forcing me to drink.

"Once they told us we had to catch 10 flies during the night and 10 mosquitoes during the day or you would be tortured more. This was impossible so you had to catch the mosquitoes at night and hold them till daytime and vice versa with the flies. Then they would ask which is male and which is female. Whatever you said it would be vice versa."
-- Sunday Times, London, July 27, 2003

------

"When I was in Iraq a doctor from Basra told me that, after being jailed by the police some years ago, he refused to tell his inquisitors whatever it was they wanted to hear. Instead of beating him, he told me, they brought in his 3-month-old daughter. The interrogator tore the screaming infant's eye out. When the desired answers were still not forthcoming, the questioner hurled the little girl against the concrete wall and smashed her skull."
-- The New York Times, July 26, 2003

--------------------------

This is a very small number out of thousands and thousands of similar horror stories from Iraq. The Iraqi people have been telling these stories for years. The above is from the very public White House website, a small sample of a lengthy Iraq archive of Saddam's brutality - taken from international publications, available to anyone with access to the internet.

-----

Those involved in this war -- from a press charged with informing the public, to those on Capitol Hill accusing our heroes of fraud, holding back funds while they vote themselves a raise -- are long familiar with the horrors suffered by the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein. 

Except for rare and brief mentions, they choose to bury the evidence.

We waited six months for the UN to decide not to help.

During those 6 months, thousands of innocent children and political prisoners died.

Democratic Party, AP, BBC, the rest of the Bush and Blair lynch mob ~ Amnesty International, UN, France - how can you continue to ignore the mass-murder and spit on the heroes who planned and fought and won this war? 

Where is your concern for the Iraqi children? 

Where is your thanks to the US military and the Bush administration for providing both the necessary leadership and the tremendous skill and courage it took to remove this human WMD and his Ba'athist co-thugs?

Where is your gratitude for the sacrifices of the American mothers and fathers whose "children" were wounded or killed in the line of duty,  honorable men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of strangers in a foreign land?

They did not die in vain.

Thousands of children have been saved in the past eleven months.

Iraq is free.

The Cruelest Cover-up



144 posted on 02/27/2004 1:52:20 PM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl ("(We)..come to rout out tyranny from its nest. Confusion to the enemy." - B. Taylor, US Marine)
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To: Ragtime Cowgirl
"SENATOR CLINTON: You know, today, as we gather, we are at a unique moment in the foreign policy of this Administration. In the context of Iraq, we are seeing signs of a shift, even a reversal in the Administration's fundamental attitude toward international allies; toward international institutions; and multilateralism.

When you step back, the changes are striking. As we all know, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the Administration chose to ignore many allies and the United Nations before U.S. troops crossed the border into Iraq.

Now, an Administration that has celebrated freedom of action over collective action in Iraq, is scrambling for friends and institutions to bail us out. The go-it-alone instinct of this Administration has now demonstrably failed. Our experience in Iraq demonstrates that power, not harnessed to a sense of international legitimacy is a flawed strategy.

The question is whether the Administration's about-face in Iraq signifies a deeper re-evaluation of their attitudes toward the world. That is, has the Administration come to understand that the 50-year bipartisan consensus supporting multilateralism was not an excuse for weakness, but an exercise of strength?"...

Consider Hillary's theories from the 1960's.

145 posted on 02/27/2004 2:10:18 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection (www.whatyoucrave.com)
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To: Ragtime Cowgirl
bump for you - too bad her thighness is too cowardly to post here.
146 posted on 02/27/2004 2:19:04 PM PST by txhurl
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To: Tumbleweed_Connection
Mrs. Billy Clintooooon & Saddam - PERFECT TOGETHER!
147 posted on 02/27/2004 2:19:37 PM PST by leprechaun9 (Beware of little expenses because a small leak will sink a great ship!)
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To: Calpernia
Sen. Hillary Clinton said this week that Iraqi women were better off under Saddam Hussein

Thanks for the ping, Calpernia.

Hillary can find a useful liberal angle in any happening.

148 posted on 02/27/2004 2:43:13 PM PST by syriacus (Lib courts get rid of gender in marriage = Courts get rid of any legal consideration of gender = ERA)
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To: Tumbleweed_Connection
Hillary Clinton is certifiable.
149 posted on 02/27/2004 4:25:53 PM PST by kcvl
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To: Ragtime Cowgirl
A "Well Done" BUMP!!!
150 posted on 02/27/2004 4:39:45 PM PST by Pagey (Hillary Rotten is a Smug and Holier- than- Thou Socialist)
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To: nutmeg
Sen. Clinton noted that while Saddam had been "an equal opportunity oppressor," women were at least assured certain constitutional guarantees.

***

Well, there is a Clintonian logic to this; rape them but allow them to have equal opportunity for abortions.
151 posted on 02/28/2004 5:38:20 AM PST by Bigg Red (Never again trust Democrats with national security!)
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To: lafroste
both....she is an ox and a moron!!
152 posted on 02/28/2004 6:56:18 AM PST by cajun-jack
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To: cajun-jack
i wonder if any republican senator will respond..betch they wont
153 posted on 02/28/2004 6:58:45 AM PST by rrrod
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To: rrrod
of course they won't...she still has a copy of their FBI file....and most of them are so spineless they make trent lott look like tarzan.
154 posted on 02/28/2004 7:00:18 AM PST by cajun-jack
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To: cajun-jack
sad but true
155 posted on 02/28/2004 7:03:23 AM PST by rrrod
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To: Tumbleweed_Connection
Come on, Hillery. Those are stupid remarks.
156 posted on 02/28/2004 7:17:08 AM PST by pointsal
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To: Tumbleweed_Connection; Joy Angela; Liz; Ragtime Cowgirl; NYC GOP Chick; Alamo-Girl; ...
For historical and without a doubt 'further FReeper signage purposes', I have recently begun counting the number of times Hellary uses the phrase "You Know" during her speeches as she continues trapsing across our nation. I found when she goes off script, during the Q+A's, she is rather relentless in using his word. Here are last two.

During her Council on Foreign Relations speech earlier this year: 19 times
During her Brookings Institution Speech last week: A grand total of 50 times there! LOL
To think that the media elites labelled her one of the top 100 lawyers in America or one of the smartest women in America once upon a time is, uhhhhh......uhhhhhhhhhhhhh......(Howling Laughter!!!) You keep talking Hillary, we'll keep count! I don't believe at her age she is capable of dropping that term from her public blatherings either.
157 posted on 03/01/2004 12:03:52 PM PST by Pagey (Hillary Rotten is a Smug and Holier- than- Thou Socialist)
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To: Pagey
Her dialect in general was completely overhauled for the White House. Listen/read her comments back in the Arkansas era. "A snake is a snake", she will never change, politics or lineage.
158 posted on 03/01/2004 12:12:21 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection (www.whatyoucrave.com)
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To: Pagey
You keep talking Hillary, we'll keep count! I don't believe at her age she is capable of dropping that term from her public blatherings either.

Lol, thanks, Pagey!

You know, I will pay attention.

Speaking of speaking habit giveaways re. character ~ listen to Edwards divide the nation into groups and pit old against young, black against white, women against men, worker against employer, and ~ his favorite ~ powerless vs. the powerful. When we most need to unite to fight terrorists, he's criss-crossing the country, talking to university law students, women, Union workers, etc., sowing dissent and dividing America.

Spread the word. Once you know how he rallies support by playing on our basest human instincts, it's clear as crystal. (^:

159 posted on 03/01/2004 12:29:06 PM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl ("(We)..come to rout out tyranny from its nest. Confusion to the enemy." - B. Taylor, US Marine)
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To: Pagey
During her Brookings Institution Speech last week: A grand total of 50 ("you knows") there! LOL.

And when she reads from a prepared speech, the "you knows" increase. LOL.

160 posted on 03/01/2004 12:56:43 PM PST by Liz
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