The Oil Drum

The issue of Ms. Magazine that just hit the newsstands has a cover story called "Crude Awakening: How US war policies sell out women in favor of Big Oil". The main thrust of the article is that in order to gain control of the oil supplies in many Middle Eastern countries, the United States is willing to overlook how these countries consistently violate women's rights. The article isn't online, but here are some snippets to give you an idea.

Whether or not this blood-for-oil scenario is the whole story, the new Iraqi constitution and laws already passed there contain far stronger guarantees for major U.S. oil interests than they do for the women of Iraq. Women's rights deteriorated rapidly after the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein sold them out to religious fundamentalists in order to consolidate power. The U.S. had the opportunity to restore much of what was lost after the 2003 invasion. But in the period leading up to the election of the National Assembly, our government ignored demands by Iraqi women's organizations to create a women's ministry, appoint women to the drafting committee of Iraq's interim constitution, pass laws codifying women's rights and criminalizing domestic violence, and uphold U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325-- which mandates that women be included at all levels of decision-making in situations of peacemaking and postwar reconstruction.