The Rape Of Iraq

A Turkish man says his father delivered a huge car bomb that devastated the Turkish headquarters of HSBC bank last month, killing a dozen people and wounding scores more. He says his father was enraged by Turkish media reports of US soldiers raping Iraqi women.

Last October an Islamic journal, Yeni Safak, published a front-page report quoting "4000 cases on record". A second article in December said 54 Iraqis wwere killed in the city of Samarra were shot while rioting over the kidnap and rape of 30 girls by US soldiers.

The first article quoted a US sex therapist, Dr Susan Block, as the main source of the information. Ms Block says here article, "The Rape Of Iraq" was wildly mis-quoted.

But it is certainly fair to assume that a number of rapes have occured. The Bush administration doesn't see fit to keep a body count of the Iraqi dead, so we can assume there is no record of rapes either.

While the US administrators of Iraq are struggling to define a handover to the Iraqs, one certainty is that the incoming Iraqi puppet government will have to absolutely excuse all US soldiers for all actions that have been committed since the invasion, including rape.