Rice doesn't stand up for Saudi women

Defend Womens rights are you mad, this liar that sent us into war in Iraq, to kill innocent women and children.

BONNIE ERBE SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Wednesday, June 29, 2005

That tough-talkin', spike-heeled, Bush-buddy, veiled personality of a secretary of state of ours is a study in contrasts.

On the one hand, Condoleezza Rice isn't afraid to display herself in a very public forum donned in disco-diva black-leather boots and militarylike regalia. She'll also take on the most rigid of autocratic country leaders when it comes to "spreading the word" about democracy or criticizing their domestic policies. But she's an absolute wimp when it comes to standing up for some of the most democracy-deprived citizens of Planet Earth -- to wit, the women of Saudi Arabia.

The most powerful woman in U.S. government went on a whirlwind Middle East tour last week and made clear that "she is not about to become (the United States') most outspoken supporter of women's rights."

How odd. Odd, because just days earlier, Rice intervened with the very top command in Pakistan, obtaining a personal pledge from that government that gang-rape victim Mukhtaran Mai will be allowed to visit the United States.

Then she had her State Department public-relations staff pump the media on Rice's personal intervention in the now-infamous case. This, after The New York Times reported the Pakistani government would not release

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/230424_erbe29.html