GOP ally sentences rape victims to lashes

Every human is born endowed with certain rights. You don't need a government to give you these rights, because you already have them. This isn't just my view as an American. This is an accepted international standard. Countries in every region of the world have recognized this truth.

Denial of these basic rights hurts. It can kill your soul. While people worldwide aspire to enjoy their human rights, fanatical regimes will try to pulverize these rights.

That's the unfortunate state of affairs in Saudi Arabia - a country long allied with Republican leaders in America. While Republican administrations started wars in which they claimed to liberate other nations from cruel regimes, they've allied themselves with Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist theocracy, which is one of the very cruelest regimes in the world today. The country is ruled by right-wing totalitarians.

We say so, because as humans we're allowed to stand for human rights. I don't think there's too many other countries in that region of the world or anywhere else that come close to being that oppressive. It has nothing to do with it not being a Western country, for almost all countries in any part of the world are human rights giants by comparison.

But the Bush crime family loves Saudi Arabia's despotic government and will do anything for it. A few years ago, Bush hosted some Saudi government official, who demanded that on his flight to America none of the air traffic controllers at American airports could be women. Bush happily complied with this demand and ordered women air traffic controllers who would have been involved with that flight to be laid off.

Now it's been reported that a court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a young woman to 200 lashes plus jail time after being the victim of a gang rape. (The perpetrators did get some jail but certainly no lashes.) The victim's punishment was increased from 90 lashes all because her lawyer dared to appeal the original harsh sentence. The court accused the lawyer of using the media to influence the outcome of the trial.

The official charge for the rape victim was being in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack. She got lashes just for that.

Later reports revealed that the attack against the young woman also had a male victim. He too received 200 lashes and prison time.

If America wanted to take a stand for human rights, the perfect thing to do would be to condemn this shocking outrage. But the Bush regime refused to do so - even though Bush claims liberation of women is a key element of his foreign policy. Bush lies. If he was so interested in human rights, he would have condemned Saudi Arabia's punishment of the rape victims immediately. A spokesman for Bush's State Department sniffed that the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia are none of America's business.

Everything every other nation does is, so why not? If some country legalizes marijuana, the U.S. and A. tries to "decertify" it (whatever that entails). If the Bush regime sticks its mitts into some other country for protecting and emboldening the liberty of its citizens, why can't it condemn a regime that abuses its citizens? Canada condemned the sentence, so why not the U.S.?

The Saudi government continues to stand by its own human rights violations. And conservatives who comment on other websites have actually defended the brutal sentence imposed on the female victim of the rape, saying she deserved it for being in an unrelated man's car.

As if that wasn't enough, the young woman's lawyer has lost his law license for daring to speak to the media.

Conservatives will come up with excuses for the Saudi government's actions. They'll say we shouldn't be concerned with another country, because it's their society, not mine. But the fact that a country has these human rights abuses proves that many of the country's people have been denied a voice in shaping their country. Apologists for the Bush order have told me that oppression is what made Saudi Arabia one of the world's wealthier nations. They've never explained how this is so.

What's most amazing about all this is the hypocrisy of Bushists claiming to be the world's liberators while supporting this tyranny.

(Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/15/134745/05;
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/19/16242/477;
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-11-20-saudi-rape_N.htm;
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/19/saudi.rape.victim)