Thank You For Your Sacrifice

"But stay the hell off my lawn!"

Considering how little Team Bush values the lives of our soldiers, it's not that surprising to hear they value the lives of their Iraqi friends and allies even less:

Millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing violence and sectarian cleansing after the U.S.-led invasion four years ago are finding it nearly impossible to get safe harbor in America, including those who risked their lives helping President George W. Bush's war effort...

About 3.7 million of Iraq's 24 million people have either fled the country for Syria, Jordan and other nations or left their homes for safer havens within Iraq, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Around 50,000 Iraqis flee their homes every month.

"This is the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world," Refugees International President Kenneth Bacon told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 16.

In 2006, the United States accepted 202 Iraqis out of its 70,000 refugee slots worldwide. In contrast, Australia said it granted about 2,000 such visas to Iraqis last year...

...domestic security steps taken in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States made it difficult to accept Iraqi refugees. Tough screening procedures in turn discouraged the UNHCR from making referrals.

Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch, said Iraqis working for American forces go through extensive security checks before being hired: "If you were a smart terrorist, you could find easier ways to get to the United States."

Frelick said two factors contributed to the Bush administration's near moratorium on accepting Iraqi refugees.

Bureaucrats, Frelick said, don't want to take chances on Iraqis. "It generally is easier to say no than to say yes."

Politics also plays a role, he said.

"The very people the U.S. is relying on for the enterprise of building a stable democracy in Iraq are the very people who are fleeing the country. To admit those people are fleeing would be to recognize the enterprise is not succeeding," Frelick said.

In 1939, the S.S. St. Louis with about 1,000 German Jewish refugees was refused entry to the United States and sailed back to Europe, where many ultimately were killed in the Holocaust.

Two who made it to the United States recounted nightmarish escapes from Iraq in testimony to Congress.

Testifying behind a screen and using the pseudonym "Sami Al-Obiedy" to conceal his identity and that of his family still in Iraq, the 27-year-old Sunni Arab from Mosul said he worked as a translator for the U.S. military, sometimes accompanying American convoys through hostile territories.

"Iraqi citizens, including translators, have been shot in the head or beheaded, but only after terrorists forced these people to 'confess' that they were spies and agents of the United States," Al-Obiedy said.

His name, along with others, was posted at several mosques with notes urging they be murdered. In late 2005, Al-Obiedy was injured in a car bombing. Soon after, he fled to the United States and was the first to get U.S. asylum under a new law for translators...

Another witness, a 48-year-old calling himself John, was severely beaten twice for delivering water to American soldiers and was told to either leave Iraq or be killed. He took his tormentors' advice, saying he reached the United States after traveling through five countries and four continents.

And you know, I'll bet Shrub would throw the biggest hissy fit ever seen if someone so much as told him he couldn't take his dogs on Air Force One.