The Independent Women's Forum (IWF), that's who! The IWF is the gals' auxiliary to wingnuttery. They are famous for defending the Promise Keepers' message in public fora, for fighting feminists on university campuses and for standing firmly in opposition of Title IX, the civil rights legislation that guarantees gender equality in education.
I know what you're thinking, but no, they are not planning to take up arms against the terrorists. That would not be what IWF stands for. In fact, one of their members is a famous author whose main message is that women don't belong in the military forces. No, what they are going to do in Iraq is hard work: to tell Iraqi women how to take advantage of democracy! Or that's my interpretation of the grant they have just received from the Bush administration:
The U.S. Department of State has awarded a major grant to the Independent Women's Forum to promote women's political and economic participation in Iraq. Yet the organization, whose board emerita includes Lynne Cheney, the spouse of the vice president, is devoted to countering "the dangerous influence of radical feminism in the courts" and combating "corrosive feminist ideology" on college campuses, among other things, according to its Web site.
The IWF could easily become an addiction for someone like me; they provide so much fun material. And it is funny to think that the Bush administration is so scared of feminism that they are sending the advance anti-feminist forces to Iraq at this very early stage!
But it's also funny to think of these women in Iraq, sorry.
If you are interested in learning more about the IWF, you can Google them. This is the sort of thing you might find:
In addition to Lynne Cheney, its board of directors emeritae includes neoconservative author and columnist Midge Decter, who wrote a book in 1972 called "The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women's Liberation." In a collection of her writing published under the title, "Always Right," she accuses feminism of radicalizing and marginalizing women who choose the roles of mother and homemaker.
Another member, Wendy Lee Gramm, was a board member of Enron before its infamous collapse in 2001, and served on its audit and compliance committee where she helped approve financial statements and acted as a liaison to auditors Arthur Andersen, according to The Washington Post. She is the wife of former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, and was named "Villain of the Month" in January of 2002 by the nonprofit Clean Air Trust for her work with a think-tank at George Mason University that opposes many existing federal environmental regulations.