This is fucked up.
Ted Poe is a Republican Member of Congress from these parts. He's a former district judge, and he used to be a fan of "creative" sentences, like making people wear signs in front of the stores they stole from and having abusers apologize to their wives on the steps of City Hall. He also triedo get video cameras into the deliberations of a capital murder trial, but that didn't fly. He's the colorful sort of Texan everyone loves, and if it weren't for his Republicanism, and the attendant misguided notions that go with that affliction, I'd be a bigger fan than I already am.* Alas, no one is perfect.
Anyhow, seems like being a Republican member of Congress isn't good enough when taking on the State Department in Iraq. A constituent's daughter had the misfortune of being gang raped by her coworkers. When she went to her employer, KBR, about it, they told her to keep her trap shut, threatened her job if she sought medical treatment, and to show they meant business, they locked he in a shipping container without food or water, under armed guard, for over 24 hours. Someone took pity on her and got her a cell phone. She called dad. Dad called Representative Poe, and after he made some calls, she had to be rescued by agents from the US Embassy in Baghdad. She had to be rescued from the custody of a US company.
Two years later, no criminal charges have been filed, and the news article above says they can't find anyone that's actually investigating the case. It's pretty clear, similar to the Blackwater situation, that there AREN'T going to be charges filed. DOJ and State aren't talking to Poe about it.
In the meantime, she's suing the shit out of Haliburton, which owned KBR at the time. Haliburton says me no Alamo, and the whole thing is just frustrating as fucking hell.
An American woman was raped by her coworkers, threatened with retaliation by her American employer, and then held in custody, and somehow or another there's nothing criminal about it.
Pisses me off. Especially because there's now nothing in the world preventing assholes like those who work at KBR from doing that shit again. Hell, this sort of thing encourages them.
*I suppose that's Republicans felt similarly about Charlie Wilson. I note that I, of course, was a fan of Charlie Wilson long before the book came out. Then again, I hated Bush well before the 2000 election. Call me the Cassandra of Texas politicians.
