Drugged, gang raped and locked in a shipping container by KBR contractors, Jamie Leigh Jones still hasn’t had her day in court, and when 30 Republican Senators voted against an amendment proposed by Sen. Al Franken that would hold the defense contractors accountable for their employees rapes, the GOP became the pro-rape party.
Ms Jones was working in Iraq during Iraqi Operation Freedom for KRB when she was brutally sexually assaulted. When she reported the gang rape, she was held imprisoned in a shipping container by two armed KBR guards until she could call the Embassy to reach her father, after which she was rescued.
You can hear Ms Jones describe her ordeal in her own words:
Due to a clause in her contract with government contractor KBR (now Halliburton), she is unable to sue over this criminal assault; Instead she has to go to binding arbitration. Apparently, this is a common clause that government contractors use to protect themselves from being sued. Outraged over this, Sen. Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR, “If they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday,
Franken said:
The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/07/kbr-rape-franken-amendment/
30 Republican Senators voted AGAINST Franken’s amendment. 30 Republicans Senators voted to protect rapists working for Halliburton and other government contractors. Here’s the list of pro-rape Republicans: Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)
Being outraged by this is something all Americans share. These are our sisters, daughters, wives, mothers who are serving their country. How can we stand by silently as they are raped, kidnapped, etc — and then told that they can’t sue over such criminal activity.
And then they run a woman and expect all of us women to fall over ourselves voting for her, as if we are so stupid that we don’t know that she doesn’t stand for equal rights or women’s rights in any way; that in fact, she takes women back to a time when they had to pander to men in order to be accepted at work. She is a patriarchal Barbie. To add insult to injury, they then dressed her up like she was a piece of meat, and overly-sexualized her in every way they could, all the while crying “sexism” if anyone asked her what she read. All of this sets women back many years.
And they were shocked that we didn’t vote for her.
I’m sure they’re also shocked that Michael Steal (of campaign finance fraud investigations, aka: Steele) didn’t get the black vote for them, and yet they say blacks voted for Obama because of his color.
Ms Jones needed reconstructive surgery due to the brutal nature of her attack. Reconstructive surgery! And the assailants claim it was “consensual”. Her breasts were misshapen and torn from the wall of her chest, among other painful injuries she sustained.
Republicans insult us all almost every time they open their mouths, and they wonder why no one wants to associate with their party anymore.
Included being so badly bruatlized that her breasts were effectively ripped away from her chest wall, requriing reconstructive surgery to reattach her pectoral muscles. I won’t repeat the details of the comparable injuries to her lower torso.
It should be noted that the senators voting FOR this legislation included a few Republicans, including female senators Snowe and Collins, and a couple of independent Senators., Sanders and Lieberman.
Democratic Senators, well, SORT OF, who abstained were Byrd of West Virginia and Spector of Pennsylvania.
The Bush administration’s Department of Justice should come in for blame along with IBR. They could have prosecuted. The statute of limitations on rape is 5 years, so it has not so far ‘run’ out. It will remain to be seen if the DoJ under the Obama administration acts, in spite of the obstruction of justice by KBR in conveniently losing the rape kit completed by the army doctor who eventually treated Jamie Leigh Jones. When it was recovered two years later, key information was missing from the time it was in the custody of KBR (and WHY did KBR have it anyway???????).
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Very detailed and great info. The fact that this happened and was treated the way it was by our government (DoJ reference a very important point by you — Bush’s DoJ was a travesty of justice in so many ways) and govt employees and now legislators is an outrage.
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[...] just as a reminder, here are more details on what Jones endured, which led to the Franken amendment… Ms Jones was working [...]
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[...] By Protecting Defense Contractors the GOP Has Become the Pro-Rape Party http://www.politicususa.com/en/GOP-Pro-Rape – view page – cached Drugged, gang raped and locked in a shipping container by KBR contractors, Jamie Leigh Jones still hasn’t had her day in court, and when 30 Republican Senators voted against an amendment proposed… (Read more)Drugged, gang raped and locked in a shipping container by KBR contractors, Jamie Leigh Jones still hasn’t had her day in court, and when 30 Republican Senators voted against an amendment proposed by Sen. Al Franken that would hold the defense contractors accountable for their employees rapes, the (Read less) — From the page [...]
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JFK raped the military out of much of the pension they were promised. The plan had been is place since 1870 and in 1962 it was changed so even those long retired lost thousands each year. These men and women were encouraged to stay in the military by this plan, then after fighting WWII and Korea and in some cases also WWI they found that they would not get what they were promised.
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Yea that is pretty much like voting so those whom actually rape a women go unpunished, wait no it’s not. it’s nothing like thatt all jackass.
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that guy’s defense of rape was astonishingly bad.
Is there no depth they won’t sink to to justify their sold-out souls and patriarchal policies protecting the good old boy’s network of wealth and power?
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