Karen, I don't claim to know everything, but please explain your logic for supporting someone who routinely rapes women and beheads them? I am quite serious about understanding your logic.
Only Hussein's Removal Can Free Women
By Katrin Michael
Katrin Michael is a member of Women for a Free Iraq, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.
March 13, 2003
As an Iraqi woman who wages peace and has fought in war, I am compelled to support a U.S.-led action to remove Saddam Hussein. After 26 years of resistance against Hussein, I have come to the conclusion that only forces from outside Iraq can bring an end to the nightmare of his rule.
The stories of Hussein's brutality are all true. Ethnic cleansing, summary imprisonment and execution, torture and rape are all part of the nightmare. I know this from personal experience.
My father founded an Iraqi peace movement, a crime for which he was murdered. At the age of 14, I was arrested by the regime merely because I joined the Iraqi Women's League. I was not the only young girl arrested for such a trivial offense.
Later, I joined the Kurdish resistance, even though I was, in their eyes, a mere woman and a Christian. I traveled in disguise to Baghdad and around the country to organize the opposition to Hussein. But when I was injured in one of his chemical bombardments against hundreds of Kurdish villages in 1987 and 1988, I was forced to flee to a refugee camp in Southern Turkey, where I stayed until I recovered and finally reached freedom in the United States in 1997. I continue to suffer to this day from lung, nerve and eye damage caused by these weapons.
No one in Iraq is immune from Hussein's brutality - not even the closest members of his family. He even executed two of his own sons-in-law in 1996. But women are especially targeted as part of his broader policies of intimidation.
A commonly used form of torture is to bring in a detainee's female relative, preferably his wife, daughter or mother, and gang rape her in front of him.
Members of the Iraqi opposition in exile receive videotapes of their female relatives in Iraq being raped. Women who criticize or merely offend Hussein are accused of being prostitutes and regularly beheaded in public.
His son, Uday, often leads these beheadings. They occur in Baghdad, as well as in smaller villages throughout Iraq. The heads of the executed women are hung on the doors of their houses for all to see.
I am saddened when I see people who sincerely care for the fate of the Iraqi people resist the American-led effort to remove Hussein and restore hope for the Iraqis. We cannot do it alone.
Iraqis had their closest brush with freedom in 1991, during Operation Desert Storm. I regret, as do most Iraqis, that the United States and its allies allowed Hussein to quash this resistance and remain in power. Those who care about peace and justice for the Iraqis should not make the same mistake again.
Hussein will never leave power willingly. He will never give up his weapons or allow the Iraqi people to live in freedom.
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