..for which we're sacrificing the blood of our children! For what purpose? To preserve this, where men can murder their daughters and wives then go on blithely about their business w/o fear of arrest let alone conviction?!! No more! Bring the troops home now!!

This is the kind of blogging/reporting I'd like to see more of in Broadsheet. When I read this post and see immediately below it the "Straight men like boobs!" post, I can't help but feel that the important content of this blog is in danger of being trivialized by random, pointless fluff.

Please keep up the signal and cut back on the noise.

...and one of the eternal blots on Islamic culture: that men think that they can kill their female children without fear of sanctions. Now, a mother was murdered because she refused to sleep with the man, her husband, who killed his own daughter, the daughter of his wife.

People have reported over the years that one of the great untold stories, a great irony, is that Iraqi women have actually lost more freedoms and rights under this regime than the one under Saddam Hussein. Who would have thought such?

Strange fruit...strange fruit in the desert's sun...

The saddest thing is that prior to the U.S. invasion, this kind of thing would have been unthinkable. Even Saddam's Iraq embraced a veneer of secular, middle class values. What has Bush wrought in the world?

so much for the much bandied about theory that this was a one-off by a crazed abuser, not much different than something that could plausibly happen in the West.

Hint: In the West when a woman tries to leave her abuser the populance doen't come out into the streets to shoot her dead for it.

It really is the religion, and it really is the culture. So the relativist bulshitters can just shut up already.

nobody takes second place to me in hating Bush's regime, but quit blaming Bush. Saddam's secular veneer was just that, a veneer. Bush didn't mandate that women go back under the burqa. It is the religion and its followers that says this must be so. The minute the religious leaders can grab any sort of power, even that of disorder and chaos, they will start doing this to women. It's at the core of their version of Muslim doctrine. Bush isn't to blame for that.

imposing our colonialist warmongering zionism on those peaceful peaceloving people of peace of Iraq. I bet Obama will talk to them and straighten it all out.

... a great irony, is that Iraqi women have actually lost more freedoms and rights under this regime than the one under Saddam Hussein. Who would have thought such?

Amazing, isn't it? Yes, who would have thought that? If anyone did, surely they would have voiced their view that mass destruction and an aimless, open-ended American occupation would render quality of life in Iraq worse than anything under Saddam.

But of course, nobody said those things during the invasion, not to mention beforehand. Nobody could have predicted it. At all. Nope.

Islam is sick, the culture is sick. and our children and dying for it. Go figure.

It's this kind of post that really hits home in describing the horror of Iraq. You can read all the statistics about how many people are killed or displaced, but when the statistics become personal... it's just really shocking.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to write an article that is a short biography of Leila Hussein's life? I'd be interested to view the last 20 years of Iraq's history through her eyes.

There is so much that pretends to be about news that is celebrity gossip or articles about boobs or whatever, that I feel I must write and thank you for real journalism and real reportage. When you first posted this article about the young lady I was heartbroken. I also felt the mother was in grave danger. See what the father's limited thinking has wrought... such terrible misery and death. If you have any ideas about how we can help change this consciousness to one of a more generous and loving humanity- I would love to hear about that as well. My heartfelt thank you for caring and writing. In the meantime I send prayers to everyone who was part of those events.

By rights, I should have posted this to the original posting, and someone's probably made the point already, but all this defense of so-called honor killings always makes me think of Charles Napier's response, back in the bad old days of the pre-Raj British India. To paraphrase, "You say that burning widows on their husbands' pyres is your cultural custom? Well, hanging men who burn women to death is ours. You follow your practice and we will follow ours."

appreciate how clever Electro Robot can be.

I appreciate the article, but gosh, how helpless it makes me feel! What can the rest of the world do to stop this nonsense? When we do try to help, the volunteers get shot along with the women they try to protect! It seems like change has to come from the religious/cultural leaders inside the society…but how to make them see the light? Can it even be done?

Just a sad, sad situation. As a woman, I am so thankful not to have been born into that kind of society.

Great quote. Thanks.

TOTALLY.

But what is the OTHER answer?

It seems most women SEEK OUT the approval and protection from their men. Men are selected BASED on such criteria as their ability to and desire to WANT to go to war arbitrarily to defend their women.

It seems the other extreme is a westernized society with sheepish hollow men who do not want nor do they desire to defend ANYONE, much less their women because they are too beaten down and too PCified (sounds like 'pussified', don't it?) to want to bother.

I WISH there were a decent middle, with neither men NOR women being beaten down by society, but societies seem to either lean to one or to the other side, with no middle ground to speak of. Correct me if I am wrong and show me a society that is truly balanced.

Arab society thrived for eons with this attitude towards women because the women there tacitly accept this situation, even if there are a FEW female objectors to it. So, either women lack the guts or they largely accept their lot as a fair way to be treated in society in exchange for the benefits they gain from society.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying it is fair or decent how the women are treated there. I am saying the men in the WEST seem to be in the Arab women's shoes, largely accepting of the way they are socially and fiscally brutalized by American society-- thru the divorce courts, thru the negative attitudes toward us men, thru the cons women put us men through that go unpunished.