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Women were better off under bad Saddam, one-time U.S. ally.
According to Houzan Mahmoud from the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, "Under the previous dictator regime, the basic rights for women were enshrined in the constitution. Women could go out to work, university, and get married or divorced in civil courts. But at the moment women have lost almost all their rights and are being pushed back into the corner of their house."
Islamists are imposing the traditional Islamic dress code on women, and the general climate of lawlessness causes many women to adopt it for self-protection. "Dalal Jabbar, 19, a resident of Sadr City, a poor Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad, said Iraqi women are more afraid today than ever before. 'There is no law to rule the country,' she said. 'I see the scarves as the best way to protect ourselves in Iraq now. When I walk in the street, I know I'll have no trouble, because men prefer to look at others without a scarf, more than me.'"
Intellectuals were better off under bad Saddam, one-time U.S. ally. The Times Higher Education Supplement noted in September 2004 "a widespread feeling among the Iraqi academics that they are witnessing a deliberate attempt to destroy intellectual life in Iraq." According to the Monitoring Net for Human Rights in Iraq, over 1,000 Iraqi academics and scientists had been shot to death between the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion and late 2005.
People in general were better off under bad Saddam, one-time U.S. ally.
According to John Pace, former director of the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, "Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less OK. But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone." Under Saddam the scale of abuse was "daunting," but now, "It extends over a much wider section of the population than it did under Saddam."http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp03312006.html
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