Thursday, January 17, 2008

Faith, Freedom and Bling

Maureen Dowd's column in yesterday's New York Times, "Faith, Freedom and Bling in the Middle East," is worth a look. It's from her travels this week with President Bush to that region.

One passage:

Though W. has made the issue of the progress of women in the Middle East a central part of “the freedom agenda” — he had a roundtable over the weekend with Kuwaiti women on democracy and development — he doesn’t seem bothered that 17 years after his father protected the Saudis when Saddam invaded Kuwait, Saudi women still can’t drive or publicly display hair or skin and still get beheaded and lashed because of archaic laws. Neither does the female secretary of state of the United States.


"It’s not allowed for ladies to use the gym,” the Marriott desk clerk told me, an American woman in an American franchise traveling with an American president.

No comments: