Laura Bush=92s Legacy
By: Julia Friday November 28, 2008
The Bush family have recorded a Story Corps interview about George W.
Bush's presidential legacy, and what they're most proud of. This is
what Mrs. Bush had to say
"Well, it=92s certainly been very rewarding to look at Afghanistan
and both know that the president and the United States military
liberated women there; that women and girls can be in school now; that
women can walk outside their doors without a male escort.
I worry about Afghanistan, but I will always have a special place
in my heart for the women that I=92ve met there, both on my visits to
Afghanistan and then the many women from Afghanistan who=92ve traveled
to the United States on scholar****ps or with the Afghan American
Women=92s Council, or with a lot of other ways that American citizens
have opened their homes to women in Afghanistan so they can be
educated quickly, because they missed their education when they were
children or young women, because they weren=92t allowed to learn
anything."
Well, then. I would have been more charitable, but since Mrs. Bush has
chosen this as her legacy, allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Bush's
legacy
Afghan police have arrested 10 Taliban militants involved in an acid
attack against 15 girls and teachers walking to school in southern
Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Tuesday. "Several" of the
arrested militants have confessed to taking part in the attack earlier
this month, said Kandahar Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi. He declined to say
exactly how many confessed.
High-ranking Taliban fighters paid the militants a total of $2,000 to
carry out the attack, Raufi said. The attackers came from Pakistan but
were Afghan nationals, said Doud Doud, an Interior Ministry official.
The attackers squirted acid from water bottles onto three groups of
students and teachers walking to school in Kandahar city on Nov. 12.
Several girls suffered burns to the face and were hospitalized. One
teenager couldn't open her eyes days after the attack, which sparked
condemnation from around the world...
Kandahar province's schools serve 110,000 students at 232 schools,
Raufi said. But only 10 of the 232 are for girls. Some 26,000 girls go
to school, he said.
Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls' schools and gunmen killed
two students walking outside a girls' school in central Logar province
last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in
Afghanistan in 2007.
And those school-related attacks are mostly aimed at:
Girls schools have suffered a dispro****tionately high number of
attacks in recent years, according to a recent re****t by the United
Nations.
The aid group UNICEF counted 722 violent incidents affecting
education between 2004 and mid-2008. Half of the incidents targeted
girls schools, even though less than 15 per cent of Afghanistan's
schools allow female education.
And how, in an occupied country where the situation was so settled
that we could leave it to go to war with a disarmed Iraq, did the
Taliban gain the ability to attack little girls with impunity?
continued....
http://firedoglake.com/2008/11/28/laura-bushs-legacy/
=93Pictures are worth a zillion words=94
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.royalty/msg/a4b5a5c9af4e20e7
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