I have always wondered if stories about "rape rooms" were in the same category as Iraqi soldiers tossing premature Kuwaiti babies on the flloor so as to steal their electronic equipment: war propaganda, in other words. More clearly a fabrication was the claim that Saddam Hussein's two sons regularly kidnapped virgin brides from Islamic wedding ceremonies and raped them. Such a crime in a traditional society could turn an entire tribe into active opponents of the regime. Even Stalin's henchman Beria had to keep his kidnappings and rapes secret. My only doubts came from the moving testimony, broadcast time and again on federal radio, of Jumana Hanna. Now it turns out she's a fake. And while we're on that topic, Thomas Boyle, MD, thinks it might not have been dioxin that gave the US candidate in Ukraine so much trouble.
