In May of 2005 Laura Bush made a high profile speech at the World Economic Forum and challenged the Middle East region to allow women into the political process and workplace, saying equal rights are essential for democratic progress in the Middle East. She also said that new freedoms granted to the women in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Morocco prove equal rights are compatible with Islam and Arab culture.

Thank God we have Laura Bush to fight for women in the Middle East, eh?

Laura stated, "Freedom, especially freedom for women, is more than the absence of oppression. It's the right to speak and vote and worship freely. Human rights require the rights of women. And human rights are empty promises without human liberty."

Ah yes...empty promises. Now that's something that the Bush family should be familiar with. Let's check out these freedoms that were granted to the women in the Middle East are doing....

VIOLATIONS OF 'ISLAMIC TEACHINGS' TAKE DEADLY TOLL ON IRAQI WOMEN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.

Police chief Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf holds a book cataloging the dead.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."

Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The women who have been killed have been strangled, beheaded, their hands and legs chopped off. Police chief Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf said when he came to Basra a year ago, "two women were killed in front fo their kids. Their blood was flowing in front of their kids, they were crying. Another woman was killed in front of her 6 year old son, another in front of her 11 year old child, two others were pregnant.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Sawsan says, the situation was "the best." But now, she says, it's "the worst."

"We thought there would be freedom and democracy and women would have their rights. But all the things we were promised have not come true. There is only fear and horror."

So much for all that freedom Bush has given Iraqi women. Let's continue...

NEW EXTREMIST GROUPS FORM IN IRAQ

February 7, 2008--Ayatollah Sheikh Mohammed Al Yaaqubi of Fadhila (Virtue) Party held Iraq politicians the responsibility of emergence of extremist groups in certain cities of the South due to their failed performance. After violent clashes that have erupted more than three weeks ago in Basra and Nassiriya between security forces and gunmen belonging to Al Yamani Group, a new religious extremist group came to light known by “Ansar Al Imam Al Rabbani” group in Khales District, affiliated to Diyala Province. The group is leaded by Fadel Al Marsoumi and advocates extremist religious views that call for violence.
Sources from Diyala police have announced the arrest of 11 members from Al Marsoumi group which brings the number of detainees belonging to this group to 28. Officials have compared between the groups of “Ansar Al Rabbani”, Ansar “Al Yamani” and “Ansar Jund Al Samaa’’ who have carried out violent fights in Zirka near Najaf city in 2007 and concluded that these groups advocate similar extremist views.
Shiite religious authorities are examining reasons behind such groups in a bid to explain their emergence. Iraqi Government holds a number of regional countries and intelligence apparatus responsibility for supporting these groups while some observers say that social, political and economic reasons ease circumstances for these groups to come about advocating such peculiar thoughts that drag naïve people. They consider as well that using over power to eradicate these groups might contribute to their expansion.

Of course, I'm sure we can rely on Bush's best friends in Saudi Arabia to keep this stuff under control, just like they kept our oil prices under control, right? Well, maybe not....

RELIGIOUS POLICE IN SAUDI ARABIA ARREST MOTHER FOR SITTING WITH A MAN

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police.

[snip]

Her ordeal began with a routine visit to the new Riyadh offices of her finance company, where she is a managing partner.

The electricity temporarily cut out, so Yara and her colleagues — who are all men — went to a nearby Starbucks to use its wireless internet.

She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café's “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.

For Yara, it was a matter of convenience. But in Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.

“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

Yara, whose parents are Jordanian and grew up in Salt Lake City, once believed that life in Saudi Arabia was becoming more liberal. But on Monday the religious police took her mobile phone, pushed her into a cab and drove her to Malaz prison in Riyadh. She was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime”.

“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.

“He said 'You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell'. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.

Yara's husband, Hatim, used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her whereabouts. He was able to secure her release.

“I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don't have the connections I did,” she said. Her story has received rare coverage in Saudi Arabia, where the press has been sharply critical of the police.

Yara was visited yesterday by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.

An embassy official told The Times that it was being treated as “an internal Saudi matter” and refused to comment on her case.

Tough justice:

— Saudi Arabia’s Mutaween has 10,000 members in almost 500 offices

— Ahmad al-Bluwi, 50, died in custody in 2007 in the city of Tabuk after he invited a woman outside his immediate family into his car

— In 2007 the victim of a gang rape was sentenced to 200 lashes and six years in jail for having been in an unrelated man’s car at the time. She was pardoned by King Abdullah, although he maintained the sentence had been fair

HECKUVA JOB, PICKLES!