clipped from: www.opednews.com   

March 8 marks the 99th celebration of International Women's Day, a day to commemorate the political, social, and economic struggles and achievements of women globally.

now defenseless Middle Eastern nation. A good place to start would be by picking up and reading Haifa Zangana's book, "City of Windows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance." Zangana is an Iraqi woman, journalist and activist, who was also a former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's regime. She dedicated her book to A'beer Quassim Hamza al-Janaby.

She was a 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was gang raped and set on fire by five U.S. soldiers in March 2006 (while her family was murdered as well). This is just one extreme case. But while this horrifying crime received some attention in the media, though not nearly enough (think JonBenet Ramsey), there have been countless others which have gone uncovered. Zangana points out in her book there have been 1,053 cases of documented rape between 2003 and 2007.