By Jennifer Marino
McCarthy voiced her concern about the current state of the U.S. government as embodied by the recent and controversial vote to change Medicare. Things have changed since she first became a representative; for one, things are more partisan in Congress, she said. The American Association for Retired People (AARP) supported the bill, but McCarthy noted that $20 million went to AARP with the bill. Democrats fought hard against the bill, which they felt would hurt senior citizens.
It's like we don't even exist, said McCarthy, of her fellow Democrats.
Audience members were equally concerned about the bill, one man urged retired people to cancel their AARP memberships and instead join the Alliance for Retired Americans.
Where are we as a nation? McCarthy questioned, and in peril was the answer she gave to her own question. McCarthy is worried that the Republicans are trying to dismantle Medicare and that next on their agenda is Social Security.
The other hot topic for the evening was her Congressional trip to Iraq. Women, both Democrats and Republicans, had been shut out from previous trips so they arranged their own. The goal of the trip was to see how U.S. soldiers were doing and to meet with the women of Iraq.
What McCarthy found out was that 73 percent of the women in Iraq are illiterate, and what the people want most is education. The U.S. soldiers are very proud of their service and are doing a great job in McCarthy's words.
The former nurse, visited hospitals and talked with staff. The staff didn't want new hospitals; they wanted courses on the developments in medicine. For now a telecommunications outreach program is being worked on with Cornell University with the hope that there might eventually be an exchange of doctors between the U.S. and Iraq to teach and learn.
Another problem at the hospitals was that nurses have to leave at 2 p.m. for both safety and cultural reasons.
Many of the women that McCarthy and her fellow Congressional travelers met in Baghdad had been educated overseas, but in the countryside the women had almost no education. The Iraqi women wanted to be a part of writing their new constitution, she said.
The members of Congress had a chance to meet 18 women who had become members of the Iraqi police force. The women, however, looked very scared, McCarthy said. Through an interpreter it was discovered that they had been fired the day before. The police were running out of money and the women were the first to go.
McCarthy had a close call while in Iraq, she was in a hotel the night before it was bombed. Once the possibility of a threat was known the congresswoman and her fellow travelers were whisked away on Black Hawk helicopters.
One audience member, who identified himself as Sammy, said he came to the U.S. from Iraq in 1959 and that many of the problems in Iraq stem from the first Gulf War. He said the U.S. poisoned the Iraqi air and soil with its bombs, pointing to sick American soldiers as evidence. He also claimed that the U.S. invited Saddam Hussein to attack Kuwait at the time. His was the last question of the night and he was invited to call McCarthy to continue the discussion.
Now that we're there, we have to succeed, she said, of the Iraq situation. It will take a long time, according to McCarthy, a constitution has to be written and an infrastructure that was held together with rubber bands has to repaired.
