From CNN:
The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children — for as little as $8 a day…
A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.
“I don’t have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother,” she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.
This isn’t the human degradation part, though. In fact, anyone who’d see these women as somehow shamed really should be punched in the face. Here’s the human degradation part, from Cunning Realist:
Wondering about those on the other side of this situation? Here’s something called the “International Sex Guide.” It features reports from men who have visited prostitutes in various countries. Yes, there’s an “Iraq” section. The most recent post, from today, links to the above report and asks “Can someone give us a trip report? thanks!”
Cunning Realist then cites some past posts about Iraq from this site, which are, horrifyingly enough, exactly what you’d expect.
But even that isn’t the deepest human degradation involved here. The deepest human degradation is that the State Department briefings from just before the war, using Iraqi women for our propaganda in the most vile way imaginable, are still online. And so’s this:
LAURA BUSH: I want the women of Iraq to know how much American women stand with them.