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Opinion Journal (Wednesday) – Women’s Lib: Saddam wasn’t a feminist. BY A. YASMINE RASSAM

A recent report by “Global Exchange” and “Code Pink” entitled “Iraqi Women Under Siege” concluded that “the occupation of Iraq has not resulted in greater equality and freedom for women” than they had under Saddam Hussein. Published by two radical feminist anti-war groups whose primary activities include protesting military recruiting stations, organizing anti-WTO protests and sympathizing with the regimes in North Korea and Cuba, this report echoes a long line of blatant pronouncements. Hillary Clinton who once said that after liberation there were “pullbacks in the rights that [women] were given under Saddam Hussein” and Howard Dean’s infamous remark that “Iraqi women were better off under Saddam Hussein.”

It makes you feel like you need a shower, doesn’t it? Especially Code Pink, and especially after its little hijacking-of-Iranian-women-protesting-bravely-despite-the-dangers-for-their-own-anti-Iranian-women-purposes incident. But I digress.

Much of the anti-war propagandists’ defense of Saddam as a champion of women’s rights rests on his willingness to allow women to vote (for him), drive cars, own property, get an education and work. What they choose to ignore, however, is the systematic rapes, torture, beheadings, honor killings, forced fertility programs, and declining literacy rates that also characterized Saddam’s regime. A few examples can only begin to illustrate the cruelty and suffering endured by thousands of Iraqi women.

One torture technique favored by Saddam’s henchman and his sons involved raping a detainee’s mother or sister in front of him until he talked. In Saddam’s torture chambers women, when not tortured and raped, spent years in dark jails. If lucky, their suckling children were allowed to be with them. In most cases, however, these children were considered a nuisance to be disposed of; mass graves currently being uncovered contain many corpses of children buried alive with their mothers.

During Saddam’s war with Iran, nearly an entire generation of Iraqi men were killed, injured or captured, leaving a dearth of men of military age in Iraqi society. As a result, Saddam launched “fertility campaigns” that forcibly administered fertility drugs to school girls as young as 10 in an effort to drive up the population rate.

After the Gulf War–particularly after crushing the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings of 1991–Saddam reverted to tribal and “Islamic” traditions as a means to consolidate power. Iraqi women paid the heaviest price for his new-found piety. Many women were removed from government jobs and were not allowed to travel without the permission of a male relative. Men were exempted from punishment for “honor” killings–killings carried out on female relatives who had supposedly “shamed” their family. An estimated 4,000 women died from honor killings in the ensuing years. By 2000, Iraqi women, once considered the most highly educated in the Middle East, had literacy levels of only 23%.

Under the pretext of fighting prostitution in 2000, Saddam’s Fedayeen forces beheaded 200 women “dissidents” and dumped their head on their families doorsteps for public display. These women obviously lost whatever “rights” granted to them once they got in Saddam’s way.

Ms Rassam “is director of international policy for the Independent Women’s Forum.”