The issue is freedom and establishing a democratic government.

Nothing else.

Not WMD? Not the WOT? Not the oil? (what am I thinking-of course it's not the oil)

You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys.

Does anyone know anything about her religious or political background?

I would guess she is Suni, and based on her comments she, or her family, has/had some connecton to the previous regime.

Or maybe she is an American and just playing he role of Tokyo Rose.

At all costs avoid and do everything possible to divert from talking about or acknowledging the multiple rape attacks on a 20 year old girl by the security forces of the Bush Administrations puppet regime in Iraq.

Maybe no one will notice.

Oh, and whatever you do don't talk Maliki's attempts at covering up the rape, or about questions like:

Is Maliki blackmailing Bush with a "If you don't back me, my government falls, and for Bush that's a fate worse than impeachment" threat?, and "is this what we have now reduced ourselves to in Iraq, that we acquiesce in covering-up rape cover-ups perpetrated by our alleged puppets?"

First, her claim is that it was the Iraqi security forces.

It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans?

Now we don't know if they are, or are not. But, we'll assume she is correct.

Don't you think that the proper thing for us to do is to send more troops, provide more training to correct this problem?

Do you want to cut and run and leave situations like this??

We then find this comment:

You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq's first democratic government.

-- under the occupation and new government, she is free to post these critiques - as evidenced from the blog.  With no retribution from the US.

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime

"People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse," Ayad Allawi told The Observer. "It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things."

...he said to me, `We take what we want and what we don't want we kill. That's that.'
...
I look at this woman and I can't feel anything but rage. What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They'll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she's one of us. She's not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren't they? That is gone too.

By conveniently marginalizing Riverbend, the delusional supporters of the destruction of her country reveal themselves as truly unable to connect with humanity in any sophisticated manner. Between the lies and ineptitude that have laid the foundations of this atrocity of a war, it is incomprehensible that any rational human being would question the real time observations of one individual trapped smack in the middle of this h**l's kitchen.

Whatever crimes the regime of Saddam Hussein committed on the people of Iraq were the result of the US first empowering him, then arming him, then, when he resisted us, supporting his opponents, leading to a more repressive regime.
The Gulf War (led by us), sanctions (led by us), the invasion (led by us), and lawless atrocities commited by the puppet government(led by us), have devastated the country, causing slightly more than the 35K deaths that the above delusional supporters trot out like cheap magicians.

Criticism of the American occupation simply won't lead to retaliation from the US.  Period.  

But I think you knew that. There is no one with an IQ above room temperature who could have mistaken that. And, you aren't stupid, just confused and with a deep desire to make continual ad homenim attacks because you have no argument.

As for riverbend, if she is to be taken seriously by anyone outside the left she should drop the rant and become rational.

The young lady she writes about has my deep sympathy, and I if I could explain anything to her it would he how the demonstrations and protests here in the US have extended the war, and what happened to her may not have happened if it weren't for that extension.

You wrote at Dec 17, 2005 at 01:06:59 PM EST

you're stating the obvious, that protest worked. Sorry it helped "the enemy", but no Vietnamese communist fighting Western colonialism ever did a thing to me.

I remember thinking when I read that how self centered it was. How you were completely ignoring those killed when the communist took over, the rapes of the women in the boats.

Provide evidence.

You claim: Not worse.

Provide evidence.

You have to know that is wrong.

There has been so much public information re Saddam's death squads, rape rooms, etc.,....

The international news media is flooded with images of a woman in a pink headscarf recounting a shattering experience of rape by members of the Iraqi National Police. Most of the media coverage has focused on her taboo-breaking decision to speak publicly about the assault, but has missed two crucial points for understanding--and combating--sexual violence by Iraqi police recruits.

As Iraqi women's organizations have documented, sexualized torture is a routine horror in Iraqi jails. While this woman may be the first Iraqi rape survivor to appear on television, she is hardly the first to accuse the Iraqi National Police of sexual assault. At least nine Iraqi organizations as well as Amnesty International, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq and the Brussels Tribunal have documented the sexualized torture of Iraqi women while in police custody. These include Women's Will, Occupation Watch, the Women's Rights Association, the Iraqi League, the Iraqi National Association of Human Rights, the Human Rights' Voice of Freedom, the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi National Media and Culture Organization.

According to Iraqi human rights advocate and writer Haifa Zangana, the first question asked of female detainees in Iraq is, "Are you Sunni or Shia?" The second is, "Are you a virgin?"
...
It's no surprise that we're hearing allegations of rape against the Iraqi National Police, considering who trained them. DynCorp, the private contractor that the Bush Administration hired to prepare Iraq's new police force for duty, has an ugly record of violence against women. The company was contracted by the federal government in the 1990s to train police in the Balkans. Human Rights Watch reports that DynCorp employees were found to have systematically committed sex crimes against women, including "owning" young women as slaves. One DynCorp site supervisor videotaped himself raping two women. Despite evidence, the contractors never faced criminal charges.

Contrary to its rhetoric and its international legal obligations, the Bush Administration has refused to protect women's rights in Iraq. In fact, it has decisively traded women's rights for cooperation from the Islamists it has helped boost to power. Torture of women in detention is one symptom of this broader crisis.