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Refugees From Iraq

Comment by Larry Ross, May 29, 2007

The continuous destruction and killing of Iraqis (655,000 so far) by the Americans both openly and covertly through their militias is yet more evidence of the scale of the war crimes being committed by the Bush Administration and their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003. All the excuses and lies of the Bush Administration to justify this illegal behaviour have been exposed again and again. There is no reason whatsoever for the Bush Administration to continue to impose this genocide on the Iraqi people. But Instead of leaving, Bush is spinning endless new lies to justify continuing his butchery of the innocents. Bush's new twist is blaming the Iraqis for this misery, blaming Iran, blaming al-Qaeda (there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the Americans invaded). Bush never blames his own Administration for starting the illegal war in the first place with no justification other than the lies his Administration invented. He blames Iraqis for their lack of gratefulness for Bush's 'gift' of the American version of 'freedom and democracy'. Also Bush is still shipping in far more American troops than promised to Congress when selling his escalation of the war as a 'surge' tactic. And seeing as the war is so unpopular with the American people he has assembled a huge nuclear-armed naval Armada off the Iranian coast and may start a new war. It is truly amazing that Bush seems able to get away with this colossal outrage. Bush is just slowly thumbing his nose at Americans as he commits crime after crime, based on lie after lie.

Why do Americans allow a criminal regime to control their country and endanger their future? Why is the US Congress so meek and timid and unwilling to excise their Constitutional duty to impeach members of the Bush Administration?

On top of all this are the forgotten crimes - 2 million refugees who have fled the country and another 2 million displaced from their homes in Iraq. (See NYT article below) It's one long record of continually increasing war crimes, financed by a Democratic Congress that obeys whatever Bush wants. Leading Democrats even support a war with Iran, without any justification other than a litany of new Bush lies invented for that purpose. The whole nation seems infected with Bush's war madness and dares not oppose this insanity.  

Will Americans reclaim American values and Constitutional heritage? Or will they meekly accept the imposition of Bush's fascist military state and his doctrines of endless wars, and the growing threat to humanities' future?

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Operation Freedom From Iraqis

by Frank Rich, May 27, 2007

When all else fails, those pious Americans who conceived and directed the Iraq war fall back on moral self-congratulation: at least we brought liberty and democracy to an oppressed people. But that last-ditch rationalization has now become America's sorriest self-delusion in this tragedy.

However wholeheartedly we disposed of their horrific dictator, the Iraqis were always pawns on the geopolitical chessboard rather than actual people in the administration's reckless bet to "transform" the Middle East. From "Stuff happens!" on, nearly every aspect of Washington policy in Iraq exuded contempt for the beneficiaries of our supposed munificence. Now this animus is completely out of the closet. Without Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to kick around anymore, the war's dead-enders are pinning the fiasco on the Iraqis themselves. Our government abhors them almost as much as the Lou Dobbs spear carriers loathe those swarming "aliens" from Mexico.

Iraqis are clamoring to get out of Iraq. Two million have fled so far and nearly two million more have been displaced within the country. (That's a total of some 15 percent of the population.) Save the Children reported this month that Iraq's child-survival rate is falling faster than any other nation's. One Iraqi in eight is killed by illness or violence by the age of 5. Yet for all the words President Bush has lavished on Darfur and AIDS in Africa, there has been a deadly silence from him about what's happening in the country he gave "God's gift of freedom."

It's easy to see why. To admit that Iraqis are voting with their feet is to concede that American policy is in ruins. A "secure" Iraq is a mirage, and, worse, those who can afford to leave are the very professionals who might have helped build one. Thus the president says nothing about Iraq's humanitarian crisis, the worst in the Middle East since 1948, much as he tried to hide the American death toll in Iraq by keeping the troops' coffins off-camera and staying away from military funerals.

But his silence about Iraq's mass exodus is not merely another instance of deceptive White House P.R.; it's part of a policy with a huge human cost. The easiest way to keep the Iraqi plight out of sight, after all, is to prevent Iraqis from coming to America. And so we do, except for stray Shiites needed to remind us of purple fingers at State of the Union time or to frame the president in Rose Garden photo ops.

Since the 2003 invasion, America has given only 466 Iraqis asylum. Sweden, which was not in the coalition of the willing, plans to admit 25,000 Iraqis this year alone. Our State Department, goaded by January hearings conducted by Ted Kennedy, says it will raise the number for this year to 7,000 (a figure that, small as it is, may be more administration propaganda). A bill passed by Congress this month will add another piddling 500, all interpreters.

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