Freedom on the march!

Iraq's Beauty Queen Resigns After Four Days

Pageant Winner Cites Threats by Religious Extremists

Iraq's newly crowned beauty queen, Tamar Goregian, has decided to step down -- just four days after her election, making this the shortest reign in the pageant's 60-year history.

On April 9, the 23-year-old, who was the first Armenian Iraqi to win the Miss Iraq pageant, announced her resignation after receiving threats by a group of religious extremists who referred to her as "the queen of infidels" for participating in the contest....

Pageant organizers had hoped to pass the crown to the runner-up, or "Maiden of Beauty," Mona Hilmi, an Iraqi Sunni Muslim. One of the organizers said she was "equally intelligent and beautiful."

However, the second and third runners-up also withdrew from the competition for security concerns. They had not received specific threats.

Miss Teen Iraq, Silva Shahakian, a Christian, accepted the title....

Interesting that the pageant has been held for sixty years. I know that at least one right-winger (you know who you are) is going to jump on me for saying this, but this is just a reminder that Iraq before the war was Cuba, not Darfur -- a repressive regime that was unspeakably brutal to certain people, but not hell on earth.