Sunday, April 23, 2006

So to hell with the protestors. Let'em carp and cry and crow. We were right, they were wrong. As much magnanimity as we show Iraq is the measure of scorn we should show the idiots who opposed the war. Not out of payback or revenge or mean-spiritedness, but because they still scorn us, the Coalition armies, and the leadership which brought us to this place. This better place.

Come to think of it, I'm feeling better than I was just 600 words ago. Lots better. Let freedom ring, and let's party.

"Democracy, whiskey, sexy," baby.

The man on the phone with the 14-year-old Iraqi girl called himself Sa'ad. He was calling long distance from Dubai and telling her wonderful things about the place. He was also about to buy her. Safah, the teenager, was well aware of the impending transaction. In the weeks after she was kidnapped and imprisoned in a dark house in Baghdad's middle-class Karada district, Safah heard her captors haggling with Sa'ad over her price. It was finally settled at $10,000. Staring at a floor strewn with empty whiskey bottles, the orphan listened as Sa'ad described the life awaiting her: a beautiful home, expensive clothes, parties with pop stars. Why, she'd be joining two other very happy teenage Iraqi girls living with Sa'ad in his harem. Safah knew that she was running out of time. A fake passport with her photo and assumed name had already been forged for her. But even if she escaped, she had no family who would take her in. She was even likely to end up in prison. What was she to do? Safah is part of a seldom-discussed aspect of the epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq: sex trafficking. No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.