Health Care Part II

We are being warned that if we get universal healthcare our own care will begin to suck like Mark Foley at a Fire Island hot tub party.

Say what?

My daughter needs a physical for summer camp a month from now. I can't get her in to see her doctor until sometime in September, several weeks after camp is over. (I admit that I should have scheduled this sooner, but who knew?)

A few years ago I was having some problems my general practitioner couldn't diagnose. I had to schedule an appointment with a neurologist. That wait was 3 months.

I never see an OB-GYN; to get to see one of those at my clinic would mean making an appointment ONE YEAR in advance. I'm supposed to see a physician's assistant for my annual exam, so in truth it's not even possible for me to go to a doctor.

The nurse at the pediatrician's office just called me and suggested one of those quick clinics at Walgreens or Wal Mart. Earlier, I called a free clinic and offered to trade time or a nice donation for my daughter to get a physical. The clinic said they weren't able to do that kind of exam.

A few years ago when I had very comprehensive and expensive health insurance I used to go to Planned Parenthood for my exams. I shudder when the conservatives fight to close those clinics just because they believe that crazy notion that parenthood should be planned. Crazy kooks.

Sorry folks. This is what we've gotten for the most dollars ever thrown at healthcare in all the world. I simply do not believe it will get worse.

Now I've got to find a Costa Rican directory so that I can schedule some dental work.....

The Palin Wardrobe

Okay, it's been discussed to death. But have you considered that $150,000 worth of clothes is $2000 every day for the two months that Governor Palin will have been on the campaign trail?

And they are going to solve our fiscal problems? Lady, here's a suggestion: Wear something twice.

A Turn For the Worse Is Still Change

A group of anarchist protesters at the RNC convention in St. Paul
were sitting down to eat dinner and watch a movie when police conducted a no-knock raid, breaking down doors and entering the space with guns drawn. There were children there.

Police claimed that they were searching for bomb-making materials. Later the charge was a fire code violation.

Outrageous. Where is the media that kept an eagle eye on the Chinese waiting for a juicy story of governmental abuse of power?

In other news, Blackwater has put out a call for mercenaries, preferably cops with semi-automatic weapons-not revolver only-to report to the Gulf. Evacuees are being bar-coded and recorded so that authorities will know where they are going and what they are doing.

Suffer the children of Fallujah

From the Inter Press service:

IRAQ:
'Special Weapons' Have a Fallout on Babies

by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*

FALLUJAH, Jun 12 (IPS) - Babies born in Fallujah are showing illnesses and deformities on a scale never seen before, doctors and residents say.

The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after "special weaponry" was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.

After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.

In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.

"We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles," Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. "I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.

"The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations."

"I had two children who had brain damage from birth," 28-year-old Hayfa' Shukur told IPS. "My husband has been detained by the Americans since November 2004 and so I had to take the children around by myself to hospitals and private clinics. They died. I spent all our savings and borrowed a considerable amount of money."

Shukur said doctors told her that it was use of the restricted weapons that caused her children's brain damage and subsequent deaths, "but none of them had the courage to give me a written report."

"Many babies were born with major congenital malformations," a paediatric doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "These infants include many with heart defects, cleft lip or palate, Down's syndrome, and limb defects."

The doctor added, "I can say all kinds of problems related to toxic pollution took place in Fallujah after the November 2004 massacre."

Many doctors speak of similar cases and a similar pattern. The indications remain anecdotal, in the absence of either a study, or any available official records.

The Fallujah General Hospital administration was unwilling to give any statistics on deformed babies, but one doctor volunteered to speak on condition of anonymity -- for fear of reprisals if seen to be critical of the administration.

"Maternal exposure to toxins and radioactive material can lead to miscarriage and frequent abortions, still birth, and congenital malformation," the doctor told IPS. There have been many such cases, and the government "did not move to contain the damage, or present any assistance to the hospital whatsoever.

"These cases need intensive international efforts that provide the highest and most recent technologies that we will not have here in a hundred years," he added.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern Mar. 31 about the lack of medical supplies in hospitals in Baghdad and Basra.

"Hospitals have used up stocks of vital medical items, and require further supplies to cope with the influx of wounded patients. Access to water remains a matter of concern in certain areas," the ICRC said in a statement.

A senior Iraqi health ministry official was quoted as saying Feb. 26 that the health sector is under "great pressure", with scores of doctors killed, an exodus of medical personnel, poor medical infrastructure, and shortage of medicines.

"We are experiencing a big shortage of everything," said the official, "We don't have enough specialist doctors and medicines, and most of the medical equipment is outdated.

"We used to get many spinal and head injures, but were unable to do anything as we didn't have enough specialists and medicines," he added. "Intravenous fluid, which is a simple thing, is not available all the time." He said no new hospitals had been built since 1986.

Iraqi Health Minister Salih al-Hassnawi highlighted the shortage of medicines at a press conference in Arbil in the Kurdistan region in the north Feb. 22. "The Iraqi Health Ministry is suffering from an acute shortage of medicines...We have decided to import medicines immediately to meet the needs."

He said the 2008 health budget meant that total expenditure on medicines, medical equipment and ambulances would amount to an average of 22 dollars per citizen.

But this is too late for the unknown number of babies and their families who bore the consequences of the earlier devastation. And it is too little to cover the special needs of babies who survived with deformations.

There's something wrong with the Spitzer investigation

Let me say up front that I despise Eliot Spitzer's hypocrisy the same way that I despise that of the myriad republicans caught in their torrid sex scandals. I would also like to add that the behavior of republicans at this point outshines Spitzer's own hypocrisy by several degrees. The pearl clutchers at National Review Online are aghast at the sheer numbers of democratic governors who have been caught in these sex scandals, pretending that they are piling up like cordwood behind the barn. Of course they are referring to Spitzer and to New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, whose scandal is now approaching four years old, for a grand total of two. They fail to mention David Vitter. Or Larry Craig. Or Mark Foley. Or even the DC Madame. They've failed to call for the resignation of Vitter. But I digress.

There is something that doesn't add up about this investigation. Look up at my title bar. You are at a blog called "I was just wondering" because I have more questions than I have answers and this is definately one of those times. If you have any answers, by all means post them in comments.

Let's start with this statement:

"Gov. Eliot Spitzer's role in a prostitution scandal grew out of a public corruption inquiry triggered by his movement of large amounts of cash from several bank accounts to one that operated by a call-girl ring, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Spitzer was the initial target of the investigation and was tracked using court-ordered wiretaps that appear to have recorded him arranging for a prostitute to meet him at a Washington hotel in mid-February, the official said.

But that doesn't jibe with these reports:

"When discussing how the payments would be arranged, Client 9 told Lewis: "Yup, same as in the past, no question about it" —- suggesting Client 9 had done this before.

And how did the Governor pay in the past, 'same as before'? Cash.

Here's the report:

"On February 11, 2008, at approximately 10:53 p.m., Temeka Rachelle Lewis, a/k/a the defendant, sent a text message to Cecil Suwal, a/k/a the defendant. ... In the text message, Lewis wrote: 'Pls let me know if (Client-9's) 'package' (believed to be a reference to a deposit of money sent by mail) arrives 2mrw. Appt wd b on Wed." (Call 3728C). Suwal sent a text message back to Lewis, stating: 'K.'"

The following day, Lewis called a prostitute whom Emperors Club marketed as "Kristen." The women then discussed the time Kristen would take the train from New York to Washington. Lewis confirmed Client-9 would be paying for everything — train tickets, cab fare from the hotel and back, minibar or room service, travel time, and hotel. Lewis also wasn't sure if the man's deposit had arrived because Client-9 would not do traditional wire transferring. In a subsequent text message that night, Lewis wrote to Kristen: "If D.C. appt. happens u will need 2 leaveNYC at 4:45pm. Is that possible?"

Kristen wrote back: "Yes."

Certainly I must be off-base. I mean, the federal government would never wire-tap its enemies. At least not without probable cause.

The Cheerleaders are always with us

From John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley"

While I was still in Texas late in 1960 , the incident most reported and pictured in the newspapers was the matriculation of a couple of tiny Negro children in a New Orleans school. Behind these small dark mites were the law's majesty and the law's power to enforce--both the scales and the sword were allied with the infants--while against them were three hundred years of fear and anger and terror of change in a changing world. I had seen photographs in the papers every day and motion pictures on the television screen. What made the newsmen love the story was a group of stout middle-aged women who, by some curious definition of the word "mother," gathered every day to scream invectives at children. Further, a small group of them had become so expert that they were known as the Cheerleaders, and a crowd gathered every day to enjoy and to applaud their performance.

Last week I mentioned that I heard a brief snippet on Bill O'Reilly's radio program of a frightened woman asking O'Reilly if it were true that Barack Obama is a muslim who insisted on being sworn into the senate on a Koran.

The very next day I received an e-mail from a woman who is the wife of one of my husband's high school friends. I'll post the entire e-mail in comments. I'm guessing that it was the radio woman's source for her Obama misinformation, since it not only contains the Koran/swearing in nugget, but claims that Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance and turns his back to the flag and slouches when it is being said in his presence.

It ends like this

"The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!
----Remember he only move [sic] to this country three years ago. It is scary. Who is funding his campaign? Who is pushing to get him in!!
How did he rise so high in 3 years?"

I was really angry after I read the entire e-mail. I thought of about eight different ways to respond to the e-mail. The first three started with 'fuck you, moron'. Instead, I put it away for a few days. Yesterday I wrote my answer. Here it is:

Snopes.com has a decent rebuttal of the claims made in this e-mail. You can read it here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

Without even going to Snopes for clarification, I should think a few glaring errors would have shown this e-mail to be highly flawed, such as the declaration that Obama has only been in the US for only 3 years, or that a United States' senator would refuse to say the pledge of allegiance.

I am saddened that this piece of bigoted misinformation is making the rounds. I respect anyone's right to make an informed choice about candidates-preferably based on their stand on the issues. But this hatchet piece reeks of the same kind of religious hatred used against John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The tenor of anti-muslim hatred in this country is fast approaching the German hatred for the Jews in the 1930s. I would like to think that if I were a German living then I'd have spoken up per the words of Reverend Neimoller who said
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." Well, as an American in the new millenium, I will speak up for the muslims. This e-mail is just wrong.

I would like to point out that much of the misinformation printed here came from a piece in the Washington Times - owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, just so you know your sources.

In the mean time, Mike Huckabee was hosted yesterday by a southern baptist minister who wrote the following:

"I'm going to submit to you that as believers in Christ Jesus, we are not even of America," Wilton said. "We march according to a different drumbeat. Ours is not the Constitution of America; ours is the constitution of the Almighty God."

http://www.biblicalrecorder.org/content/news/2006/06_14_2006/ne140606sc.shtml

That frightens me a whole lot more than a Harvard Law graduate community activist member of the United Church of Christ (Obama) running the country. That is a christian saying that christians are above the constitution. I imagine that if those words were uttered by a muslim you'd realize how frightening they are to those of us who aren't christian.

I tried to send my e-mail to everyone this woman had sent it to, but my e-mail editor doesn't allow me to do a batch mailing unless I set it up putting everyone in my address book. I would do it, but you can't change idiots with such complicated devices as the facts. I'm afraid I would be wasting my time.

If you get this e-mail and you would like to reply, feel free to use mine. And thank you internet lords for Snopes.

A Platform for Protest

Then:


Now:

It seems that bridge players everywhere are clutching their pearls over this outrageous act of defiance by the US team as it accepted the Venice Cup Women's championship award in Shanghai last month.

These women may receive sanctions that will keep them from playing bridge professionally for a year.

According to the NY Times: '

The proposed sanctions would hurt the team’s playing members financially. “I earn my living from bridge, and a substantial part of that from being hired to compete in high-level competitions,” Debbie Rosenberg, a team member, said. “So being barred would directly affect much of my ability to earn a living.”'

Qwinky Dink, Dr. Dictionary?

Do you think there is anything behind the selection of today's Word of the Day?

Just wondering.

Chimpy the jokester.

Yeah. That about sums it up.

Could it have been me?

A few years ago I was flying Midwest Airlines from Madison to Milwaukee where I was to get a connecting flight to Phoenix. For some dumb reason, entirely my fault, I thought my flight time was a half hour later than it actually was. When I got to the airport there was a very long line at the ticket desk. Our airport was in the middle of being extensively remodeled so I was hoping to check in at the gate or find a ticket check-in kiosk but nothing was where it used to be. I had two choices: stand at the back of the line and wait for an hour to ask directions of the sole Midwest worker inside the terminal or go to the desk and politely wait to ask the sole Midwest worker where I might find a kiosk or how to get to the gate. When the Midwest worker was through with one customer and was about to help the next I said "excuse me, I really need to catch my flight.."

"Get to the back of the line" she shouted at me.

"Well, I was just wondering if you could tell me--"

"I cannot help you. Get to the back of the line and wait your turn"

"My flight to Milwaukee is about to leave. Is there somewhere else I can check in?"

"Your flight has been cancelled. All of these people were on that flight and I have to rebook them. Now GET TO THE BACK OF THE LINE" She was literally screaming at me. Nobody in line was irritated with my questions. Our flight had been cancelled they weren't going anywhere. They were rolling their eyes at her.

So, I went to the back of the line. I waited. And waited. More waiting. Meantime, since the Milwaukee airport is only about 1 hour and 15 minutes by car from the Madison airport, I thought that my best bet to make my connecting flight would be to drive to Milwaukee. However, if you miss the first leg of your flight, the second leg is usually cancelled. Watching my precious time slipping away while standing in line behind people who were going to wait out the next flight I decided to try to ask if I could cancel the Madison leg of the trip and pick it up in Milwaukee.

Back to the front of the line. "Ma'am, I just have a quick question I need to ask...."

"GET TO THE BACK OF THE LINE!!!!" veins were popping on her temples.

So I went to the back of the line. I was steamed. But I decided to just accept that my flight was gone. Any hope of making my connecting in Milwaukee was shot in the ass thanks to the hour I spent in line waiting to ask a question. I had non-cell phone people in Phoenix waiting for me at the airport, and I was beginning to see that my flight would get me to town well after the wedding rehearsal dinner I was supposed to attend would be over. Oh well.

So when I approached the desk and handed her my flight information I was silent. Better to say nothing, than to let her have it, I thought. Suddenly she started: "I don't even have to let you get on this flight. You got here less than twenty minutes before the flight was to have left, so I have every right to cancel your flight."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You got here late. I will reschedule your flight but I just want you to know that I don't have to."

"Go right ahead and cancel my flight," I said. "But I expect a full refund".

"No refund. You were late."

"Lady, I'll keep my flight, then. But I'd just like you to know that I think you'd do better working in a morgue or a funeral home, because you really suck at working with living people".

She stapled my ticket, threw it at me and marched over to the security gate. I saw her talking to a security guard and pointing at me. When I approached security I was asked to step away from the regular area for the thorough "I'll just run my hands up down and around your boobies-oh, nice undies" search.

What a surprise.

This last weekend a woman missed her flight at Phoenix' Skyway Airport. We don't know what was said at the check-in desk, but Carole Ann Gotbaum ran off. Security grabbed her, threw her to the ground and handcuffed her. She was screaming "I'm not a terrorist. I'm a sick mom! Help me!" She was led away in handcuffs and locked in a secure room, alone. When security checked on her she was dead. It is believed she strangled herself trying to bring her hands, cuffed in the back, to the front.

When little, tiny-minded, mean people are given extraordinary amounts of power over their fellow citizens, bad things are going to happen. We saw that in the tasering of a university student whose crime was that his question was a little long winded. A woman ran through an airport (*gasp!* Isn't that what OJ was primarily famous for-prior to killing his ex?). Who hasn't run through an airport? Now that woman is dead. A few years ago a man was thought to have uttered something about a bomb, was chased off a jet and shot dead on the tarmac at Miami. He had no bomb. He had no weapon.

I feel afraid for us.

Would you like to talk about outrage?

You know, over at Zaius Nation there is a post about outrage overload. We all seem to be struck with it.

On the one hand, we wait for things to get worse before we take to the streets with our pitchforks, and on the other, we say 'if we didn't rise up before, why should we start now?'

Perhaps I am only speaking for myself. And it is not an accusation of apathy. Mostly it is a question of effectiveness.

Where is the tipping point?

Some days I am so angry I don't know how to channel it. And I go outside and I take my kids to the pool or to preschool or usher the world around in typically suburban mom ways. It all makes sense to me, it follows an order - something pre-ordained in the American spirit of well-being.

Who the fuck am I to kvetch when I have it so good? Is my life better than it was seven years ago? Hellz yes. My life is.

But then I remember that my life is much better only because in the last seven years I married a wonderful man and started a family. These were extra-governmental incidents. What if one of us, any of us but particularly my husband, got sick? Wouldn't that end it all for us? And how happy can we be knowing that our perch here in the middle of the American Idyll is but a pebble balanced on a rock and we can be knocked from our foundation by the slightest of breezes?

I walk around my neighborhood thinking these exact thoughts. I can ruin a damn fine blue sky sunny day by wondering by what right have I to take it for granted. All of it. And I what I don't know - and can't know, thanks to the slow, steady erosion of our rights - is how much of our America is gone already. I also think a lot about what little German hausfraus of the early 1930's thought to themselves, too. What comforts did they use to assuage their unease? How different are we women, them from me? How much am I willing to overlook to assure myself that all is well for my family, hence all is well for the world?

I mean, I put my personal well-being chit on a place that is marked with my own economic stability. But why should that matter? Though he's not succeeding, in anyone's esteem but his own and those few oil and mercenary exec's who are making out well, what if George W. Bush were able to run a decent economy? What if we were all getting richer instead of sliding backwards as we really are? What outrage could we summon then? I believe the history books will place a date sometime previous to today as the point at which America ceased to be a superpower. Certainly there are liberals who have always felt an unease with that mantle. I never have. One can use power wisely, and for good. Though far far too much on the side of the corporatists, I do believe that Bill Clinton understood and used American power with beneficent aims. So if we were still a superpower today, would that make the senseless slaughter of Iraqis okay? Could we summon the outrage then? But it's true we are no longer a super power, and I feel that very soon our economy will slide into an abyss. Will that bring back the dead Iraqis? What I mean is - if we remained an economic and political power house, would that give us the right to destroy millions of human beings?

Ask the Cambodians, I guess.

I am beginning to feel a shame that I never would have believed possible. Whenever republicans are in control of the country, their minions cry out the mantra: "America, love it or leave it". This was always a taunt. But why would I ever leave? Though now I think about what it will take me to go. Why did my ancestors leave Germany and come here? Why does anyone leave anything they love to go somewhere else. What, again, is the tipping point?

My ancestors left Germany/Prussia in the years just after the American Civil War. They were liberal. It is in my genes. But it has been said that the mass exodus of liberal Germans in the late 19th century made possible the heinous crimes of the archly conservative Germany of the 20th century. What if liberals all left America today?

I am an alarmist. My husband doesn't see things the way I do. He is a 'trees' person, and I am a 'forest'. He believes the forest-fire burning in the east will be put out long before it reaches us. I like to believe we should live outside the threat of fires.

The book "The Tipping Point" has as its jacket illustration an unlit match. So right for us. Is our own forest going to catch fire and burn so badly we'll evacuate? Is the responsible thing for us to leave early?

I don't know.

I don't know.

We're Kicking Ass!

George W. Bush reported to the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia yesterday that "we are kicking ass" in Iraq.

I imagine there are some who wish he'd have put it a little more delicately. Or aside from that, at least told the truth.

Some six hundred thousand people. Or their loved ones.

Why am I not surprised?

From ABC News:

The Bush administration opposes a Democratic effort to restore full educational benefits for returning veterans, according to an official's comments last week.

Senate Democrats, led by Virginia's Jim Webb, want the government to pay every penny of veterans' educational costs, from tuition at a public university to books, housing and a monthly stipend.

Such a benefit was a major feature of the historic 1944 G.I. Bill, which put more than eight million U.S. soldiers through college and is now credited by historians as fueling the expansion of America's middle class in the post-war era.

I would argue that the GI Bill was one of the greatest pieces of legislation of the last century, and that had more impact on American's lives than almost any other.

Many of today's conservatives believe their parents pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to land themselves in the heart of the middle class. What they forget is that those were GI boots paid for by the government of the United States of America. Yes, I mean asshats like you Cal Thomas. Now that the middle class is again slipping away, I think the men and women who are fighting this war ought to at least have a promise of some security when they get home. On any given day in America there are more homeless veterans than there are veterans serving in the Gulf. (About 200,000 per day. As many as 400,000 at some point in a year).

The Administration is arguing that the cost of fully funding education for Afghan/Iraq war vets would be an additional $5.4 billion dollars.

This from the same people who sent $9 billion to Iraq --in cash --on pallets only to have it go missing. And they haven't even bothered to look for it.

Question: How Many Dead Americans is Saddam Worth?

Answer: Not Many.

According to Dick Cheney in 1994. Watch this video. You may not recognize the man being interviewed. He discusses Iraq with clarity and shows an understanding of the factional tensions that would make undertaking regime change there a folly.




What changed between 1994 and 2003 for Mr. Cheney?

In 1995 he became CEO of Halliburton.

In 1997 he helped to found the Project for a New American Century.

In 2001 he became vice president of the United States.

Which led to this:

Senate to George Bush: Yes, you have been kicking us in the nuts. We have just voted that you should kick us in the nuts harder

The needle is on 'flight' on the fight or flight meter today.

I feel despair.

Senate passes Bush-backed spy bill

Who was in charge at State?

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has just released a matrix on foreign contributions that were accepted or denied in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Using FOIA requests, they were able to put together thousands of documents to create a unified look at the world's response to the disaster. They also collected e-mails from officials around the globe.

According to CREW

The matrix includes all international offers, whether they were rejected or accepted and the reasons why, if available. The documents reveal a number of disturbing responses to offers from 145 countries and 12 international organizations from around the world.

For example, an email from Jeffrey Goldstein, a U.S. Embassy official in Estonia, to several DOS officials, states:

It is getting downright embarrassing here not to have a response to the Estonians on flood relief. And now I see from the staff meeting notes that the task force may disband soon. We know that what the Estonians can offer is small potatoes and everyone at FEMA is swamped, but at this point even “thanks but no thanks” is better than deafening silence.

Another email responding to an offer from Argentina to DOS officials reads “All, The (sic) word here is that doctors of any kind are in the 'forget about it' category. Human assistance of any kind is not on our priorities list....It’s all about goods, not people, at this point.”

Another email describes how the transport of Israeli relief supplies loaded on a C-130 aircraft was delayed for over 48 hours on the tarmac while Israeli officials waited for clearance from the U.S. government. The unidentified author states: “I’ve been on the phone with the [Israeli] attache every couple of hours since noon . . . they’re patient, but not amused by our delay, obviously.” The documents do not reveal if or how the issue was resolved.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director said today, “A review of the State Department documents reveals distressing ineptitude. Countries were trying to donate desperately needed goods and services, but as a result of bureaucratic bungling and indifference, those most in need of these generous offers of aid never received it.”

The State Department as you may recall, has been headed by Condoleeza Rice since the beginning of Bush's second term. Condoleeza Rice left for vacation on Wednesday, August 31, 2005. Get that? On the first two days of the hurricane crisis, Condi was on the job. But on Wednesday morning she woke up, said to herself 'all's well at the office' and flew to New York to buy some shoes and take in a Broadway show.

Further Outrage

IRAQ: Um Muhammad al-Daraj, Iraq, “I had to forget my honour to save my husband’s life”

BAGHDAD, 2 August 2007 (IRIN) - Mother of three Um Muhammad al-Daraj, 35, recently went through a traumatic ordeal to try to save her husband’s life.

She told IRIN her husband was kidnapped by militants who had accused him of supporting the insurgents. After two days without news of her husband, Ahmed, two people came to her home and ordered her to follow them to meet her husband, who was reportedly being interrogated.

“I didn’t think twice and left my children with my neighbour. I was desperate for any news of Ahmed and they drove me to a distant neighbourhood where my husband was supposedly being held.

“After half an hour’s drive we reached [predominantly Shia] Sadr City and my legs were trembling because I know how dangerous the area is and the guys with me didn’t speak a word.

“They asked me to enter a disgusting-looking house and told me to wait. A rude man came into the room and bluntly told me that I had two choices: have sex with him and get my husband released or return to my home and never see Ahmed again.

“I was shocked and started to cry. I fell to the ground trying to kiss his feet and begged him to release my husband and not to treat me badly.

“The man told me that he would be back in 15 minutes and by that time would want to know my decision. In those minutes I hated my beauty and myself. I know that if I had been an ugly woman this wouldn’t have happened to me, but the life of my husband was in my hands.

“After 15 minutes - I was crying the whole time - the man came back and repeated the question and I didn’t have any option than to accept, in order to save Ahmed’s life, even knowing that after that they might kill us both.

“I had to forget my honour to save my husband’s life. It was the most terrible 20 minutes of my life. I just felt pain and wanted to vomit all the time. In the beginning I tried to refuse but was hit in the face and had to cry in silence, while asking God’s forgiveness.

“After that he told me to put my clothes on and the same two men drove me home, with tears streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t look at my children because I felt dirty. I didn’t even know if my husband was going to return.

“Later that evening Ahmed appeared on the doorstep with signs of having been hit in the face, and when I went to kiss him he told me that I was dirty and that he was going to divorce me as he had been forced to watch the whole scene and preferred to be killed than see his wife sleeping with another man, even if it was to save his life.

“Two days later he left home and went to his parents’ house and said that soon I would get the divorce papers. Even now I cannot believe that losing my honour to save his life was taken by him as a betrayal.

“Now I’m alone, without a job or husband, with three children to look after. Sometimes death is the best way to end suffering.”