Bread and Circus

The absolutely brilliant Billmon unearths this gem of a quote, showing just how far we've sold our soul in Iraq:

"Human rights should not be linked to Islamic Sharia law at all. It should be listed separately in the constitution," said Safia Souhail, Iraq's ambassador to Egypt.

The prominent women's rights campaigner denounced wording that grants each religious sect the right to run its own family courts -- apparently doing away with previous civil codes -- as an open door to further Islamicise the legal system.

Although in practice, many Iraqis end up having recourse to religious authorities or informal tribal law, the idea of a united civil code is central to the modern state, Souhail said.

"This will lead to creating religious courts. But we should be giving priority to the law," she said.

"When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve rights and the position of women. But look what has happened -- we have lost all the gains we made over the last 30 years. It's a big disappointment."

Who is Safia Souhail? She's the woman at this year's State of the Union address who hugged the mother of a slain US soldier. She was the prop in the speech, given right after the elections, to prove to the American people that we were on the right course in Iraq. And now she's screaming that women have never had less rights in the country than they do now.

It's disgusting that we let this Administration get away with this crap. Next thing we know, we'll learn that there were no purple ink stains on anyone's fingers. It's all bread and circus for this group of phonies, but on the ground in the real world, they're fucking things up for centuries to come.

I wonder what Laura Bush, who spoke so forcefully about women's rights in Afghanistan before we invaded, thinks about this setback to women in Iraq. Here's what she said in November 2001:

Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering: The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists. Long before the current war began, the Taliban and its terrorist allies were making the lives of children and women in Afghanistan miserable. Seventy percent of the Afghan people are malnourished. One in every four children won't live past the age of five because health care is not available. Women have been denied access to doctors when they're sick. Life under the Taliban is so hard and repressive, even small displays of joy are outlawed -- children aren't allowed to fly kites; their mothers face beatings for laughing out loud. Women cannot work outside the home, or even leave their homes by themselves.

The severe repression and brutality against women in Afghanistan is not a matter of legitimate religious practice. Muslims around the world have condemned the brutal degradation of women and children by the Taliban regime. The poverty, poor health, and illiteracy that the terrorists and the Taliban have imposed on women in Afghanistan do not conform with the treatment of women in most of the Islamic world, where women make important contributions in their societies. Only the terrorists and the Taliban forbid education to women. Only the terrorists and the Taliban threaten to pull out women's fingernails for wearing nail polish. The plight of women and children in Afghanistan is a matter of deliberate human cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intimidate and control.

Change "Taliban" to "Da'wa Party," and sadly, it matches up. Do you think there's any pillow talk in Crawford about that? Or was she just another prop in the PR offensive?