Clipmark

This year we should use the holiday to observe and reflect on the suffering of Iraqi women, who have become invisible "collateral damage" in our country's war in this 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.