WN: U.S. Astonished by Saudi Rape Sentence - AP

[WorthyNewsBot]

The State Department expressed astonishment Tuesday about a Saudi court's sentence of six months in jail and 200 lashes for a woman who was gang raped.

http://www.worthynews.com/news/ap-google-c...JiXCwD8T1MMEG0/

[jacob]

The State Department expressed astonishment Tuesday about a Saudi court's sentence of six months in jail and 200 lashes for a woman who was gang raped.

http://www.worthynews.com/news/ap-google-c...JiXCwD8T1MMEG0/

Another reason why Ive been confused about going into Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia, the hijackers were mostly saudis right? Even if people say we went to war for oil, why take the 2nd or 3rd largest amount, go for the largest oil supply, Saudi Arabia. To me they are the poster child of islamo-fashist.

[mrs]

Just astonishment? What about outrage, condemnation, or something that actually does something for the poor women who have suffered this under the evil of Islam for ages?

[nebula]

I just heard an interesting comment about this situation.

Has anyone heard a statement or protest or anything from the National Organization of Women?

[georgesbluegirl]

I just heard an interesting comment about this situation.

Has anyone heard a statement or protest or anything from the National Organization of Women?

OH absolutely. The story has been everywhere, on every feminist website and in the news. You can bet every feminist around - regardless of race, creed, age, or gender - is up in arms about this. There have already been protests all around the word. Start talking about this IMMEDIATELY to get people up in arms and force the administration to pressure the Saudi government. As I'm sure most of you know, the US - sorry for being blunt, but especially the Bush administration - has a history of turning a blind eye to all that goes on in Saudi Arabia because nominally they are our partners/allies. That's not to say that atrocities - including judicial horrors like this one - happen on a much lesser scale, but we like to pretend that they don't. Plus the general sentiment of the population is anti-US, but the wealthy families are tied to the government so here we are.

By the way, her sentence was upped on her appeal . In other words, when she tried to fight back in the court system for her basic rights as a person, she was whacked down some more. Fortunately, she has a husband who's speaking out to international media for her and advocating - that's a pretty rare thing in cases like this, so thank God for that.

Also, under the Saudi legal system, the judge doesn't even address women in court, and women aren't allowed to speak (so she wasn't allowed to testify on her own behalf). All speaking is done back and forth with her male chaperon - her husband or father.

We still have a huge problem prosecuting rape cases in this country - only 1 in 20 cases turns up a conviction. There's a lot of institutionalized sexism around the issue. But at least something like this is met by most Americans as it should be - with outrage, sympathy, and compassion.

[georgesbluegirl]

Update: The Saudi government has attempted to say that the woman "confessed to having an affair." Which a) still leaves the little matter of the rape, b) shouldn't justify an awful sentence anyway, and c) is entirely suspect, given that the court system often pushes trials through without lawyers, women aren't allowed to speak, and who knows under what situation the woman would have "confessed" to having an affair anyway. If she said anything of the sort at all. The fact that her husband is willing to talk to the press says it all for me...

[O'Dannyboy]

The U.S. Government is "in bed" with the Saudi government. We are dependent on their oil and so our government will whine and moan but we wouldn't want to upset them.

What many people are unaware of is that we, the U.S. have a wealth of oil in our own soil. Sean Hannity talks about it often. Apparently, there are billions of barrels of oil in Alaska waiting to be tapped. One of the members of these boards has mentioned before that they worked for a company that went around the U.S. tapping and capping wells and meanwhile we continue to watch oil prices rise. I even heard someone call in to a radio show who claimed that all of our oil from Alaska was being sold to Japan rather than to us. Whats even more interesting is that despite the news about Brazils amazing find that now places them as having the second largest oil supply, the prices continue to go up. I have also heard that the U.S. is already planning on building another refinery to reinforce/secure our infrastructure. They talk about the Government "building" reserves of oil when in truth it's always been here. I have always suspected that the U.S. government was avoiding using our own oil so when the rest of the world has run out , our government, would wield more power and influence than any government has ever had. While it makes no sense that we aren't taking full advantage of our own resources, the logic behind using as little of it as possible is still sound.

[georgesbluegirl]

The U.S. Government is "in bed" with the Saudi government. We are dependent on their oil and so our government will whine and moan but we wouldn't want to upset them.

What many people are unaware of is that we, the U.S. have a wealth of oil in our own soil. Sean Hannity talks about it often. Apparently, there are billions of barrels of oil in Alaska waiting to be tapped. One of the members of these boards has mentioned before that they worked for a company that went around the U.S. tapping and capping wells and meanwhile we continue to watch oil prices rise. I even heard someone call in to a radio show who claimed that all of our oil from Alaska was being sold to Japan rather than to us. Whats even more interesting is that despite the news about Brazils amazing find that now places them as having the second largest oil supply, the prices continue to go up. I have also heard that the U.S. is already planning on building another refinery to reinforce/secure our infrastructure. They talk about the Government "building" reserves of oil when in truth it's always been here. I have always suspected that the U.S. government was avoiding using our own oil so when the rest of the world has run out , our government, would wield more power and influence than any government has ever had. While it makes no sense that we aren't taking full advantage of our own resources, the logic behind using as little of it as possible is still sound.

The "wealth" of oil you refer to isn't really a wealth. Tapping into places like ANWR would literally make a difference of one or three percent in terms of our foreign oil consumption. Domestic drilling will never be the answer. Coal treatment may be, in the short term. But if we open up Alaska, it won't do much AND we'll lose one of our last untouched (or, realistically, barely-touched) landscapes. How about we do the smart thing and start thinking about alternatives?

I do agree that us being "in bed" with the Saudis leads to our lack of response to morally reprehensible situations like this one. Ugh.

[forrestkc]

The "wealth" of oil you refer to isn't really a wealth. Tapping into places like ANWR would literally make a difference of one or three percent in terms of our foreign oil consumption. Domestic drilling will never be the answer. Coal treatment may be, in the short term. But if we open up Alaska, it won't do much AND we'll lose one of our last untouched (or, realistically, barely-touched) landscapes. How about we do the smart thing and start thinking about alternatives?

I do agree that us being "in bed" with the Saudis leads to our lack of response to morally reprehensible situations like this one. Ugh.

Anyone that believes the myth of "clean oil" needs only to drive by all the refineries on the Houston Ship Channel. I think a lot of people also don't realize that ANWR represents the last 5% of the Alaskan North Slope that is not already open to oil exploration.

[O'Dannyboy]

I agree that domestic drilling isn't the answer since it's already too late to make wise use of what we have. You can bet that our government has gone to great lengths to keep the actual numbers, regarding how much oil there is on U.S. soil, under wraps. Do you think that if they were "hoarding oil" that they would be volunteering that information? As I said, I have heard from one oil worker that all he does is go from site to site drilling and capping wells. I have no reason to believe this person lied but our government on the other hand all but exhales lies. This is NOT where they store oil but where it has been found and remains unused. The same thing goes for the gulf coast. There are SOME oil rigs out there but we are nowhere near our full potential as far as pumping it out. I understand the ecological risks in trying to tap these resources but we are at equal risk when we end up cow-towing to states like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the other oil rich nations. As oil prices rise so do economic tensions and the risk for war over the resources becomes an even greater threat to the world. So the RISK of harming the environment in a sparsely populated part of the world doesn't seem so bad by comparison. The bad thing here is that our government strives to keep us in the dark about such things and feeds us misinformation. You can't deny this when portions of our government conspire to pass controversial bills without public knowledge, as was the case in the last "immigration reform" bill or when they tried selling our sea ports to foreign governments. They give us no reason to trust them and all the while the liberals are vying to hand even more control over to the government. They want to repeal the right to bear arms, work to socialize health care while they pass other bills REQUIRING states to provide health care to pregnant illegals. All to make us even more dependent on the government ,all without giving the people a chance to vote. Have you noticed that the few votes we get these days are for the people who will "represent" us and not on any of the issues they themselves can't come to an agreement on?

That being said, I think we are paying for the greed of our leaders. They have been turning a blind eye to the automotive industry and allowing them to produce larger and larger "utility" vehicles and NOT holding them to the same fuel standards as passenger vehicles. So our consumption, as a country, has only risen despite having the technology to do something about it. I look back at my fathers 1980 Volkswagon Jetta with the diesel engine. That car got 30+ miles to the gallon. Granted, it probably was not the most environmentally friendly car but the economy was better close to 30 years ago. Why no improvement since then?