Bonnie Erbe writes in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

A new poll of leaders of Iraqi women’s-rights groups finds that women were treated better and their civil rights were more secure under deposed President Saddam Hussein than under the faltering and increasingly sectarian U.S.-installed government.

It’s sacrilege to say that anything was better under Saddam than it is now. Erbe better be careful the rightie Thought Police don’t catch her.

This is doubly troubling. It’s troubling first because the Bush administration used the issue of women to justify its now widely criticized invasion of Iraq in part by promising to improve the situation of women.

It’s troubling second because the administration has issued news releases, held public meetings and tried to gain media attention (as well as U.S. public support) for all the “good” it’s supposedly doing the women of Iraq via this invasion.

Even though their rights are supposed to be protected by the Iraqi constitution, women are finding that the constitution doesn’t mean squat. Sharia law rules. Women are being forced to veil themselves, and “fewer women are working in professional jobs than when Saddam was in power,” writes Erbe.

Last week Reuters reported on this same poll

According to the findings of a recent survey by local rights NGOs, women were treated better during the Saddam Hussein era – and their rights were more respected – than they are now.

“We interviewed women in the country and met with local NGOs dealing with gender issues to develop this survey, which asked questions about the quality of women’s life and respect for their rights,” said Senar Muhammad, president of Baghdad-based NGO Woman Freedom Organisation. “The results show that women are less respected now than they were under the previous regime, while their freedom has been curtailed.”

There have been numerous reports that say Iraqi women generally are more subject to rape and assault now than they were before the invasion; for example, this, this, and this.

And in that other nation we “liberated,” Afghanistan, the New York Times reported in March 2004 that increasing numbers of Afghan women were setting themselves on fire to escape the horror of their lives. Way to go, neocons.