Sure Is Dark In Here...

Howard “Hee-Haw” Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman and failed candidate for Democratic Party Presidential nominee, must have been tasting shoe-leather when he stated, "It looks like today, and this could change, as of today it looks like women will be worse off in Iraq than they were when Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq," on CBS' "Face the Nation" yesterday.

Guess he didn’t hear that women occupy 31% of the seats on the Transitional National Assembly (TNA), charged with the responsibility of drafting Iraq’s new constitution.

Reckon he hasn’t read that women also lead Iraq’s Ministries of Displacement and Migration, Telecommunications, Municipalities and Public Works, Environment, Science and Technology, as well as Women's Affairs.

I suppose he overlooked that U.S. grants and technical assistance helped improve agricultural methods, and improved employment, resulting in over 465 previously-unemployed women now have jobs and 440 women have increased their family income.

Must have been out when the news ran about USAID working with Women's Mobile Teams to increase rural women's access to information to improve their health and security; combat domestic violence, and administered the tetanus toxoid vaccine to more than 700,000 pregnant women; vaccinated more than three million children against measles, mumps, and rubella; and distributed high-protein biscuits to more than 450,000 children and 200,000 pregnant and nursing mothers.

Reckon he was getting some good ol’ Al Gore party-mentoring when USAID's Accelerated Learning Program began helping 10,000 Iraqi students, including many rural young women, return to school during the 2005-2006 academic year, and when more than 17,000 Iraqi women began teacher training in USAID sponsored programs.

I guess he didn’t see the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women proudly raising their ink-stained fingers after voting in the January 30, 2005 elections.

Or maybe, he just doesn’t understand the significance of that process...