Iraqi Police Women

What Angie Dickinson did for the US in 1974, Rabab Adood is now set to do for Iraq. Only she is doing it in real life, not on TV:

Rabab Adood never had much experience with guns before she entered the Baghdad Police Academy. But now she's at the top of her class … and she's on a mission.

Adoos and her sister, Intsar, are two of 39 women who are now enrolled out of the academy, along with about 2,500 men.

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And as far as these women have come, they still aren't allowed to patrol on the street next to the men. When they graduate, they'll be in office jobs or working security checkpoints inside buildings.

But many of these women say that will change one day — and when it does, they'll be ready.

This doesn't quite come under the heading of babe theory, but there is some sense to the maxim that a country is judged by how it treats its women. We cannot expect to see a free Middle-Eastern society spring full-grown from the head of George W. Bush, but there are signs that the birth pangs are going to be less severe than even the optimists among us had predicted.