ince the war in Iraq began over four years ago this country has absorbed no more than 500 refugees. The administration really needs to be doing a lot more. We need to protect the most threatened refugees and that usually means those who have worked with us and for us in that broken country. Washington has pledged just $18 million to the United Nations refugee agency, to assist poor countries like Syria and Jordan cope with the ever growing flood of refugees crossing into their country over porous borders. We need to be speaking with Syria and, yes, Iran, about how to lessen the violence which is now taking over 100 lives a day, and to help those who need, urgently, to escape it.
Are things better for the populace? That would depend how you would measure progress.
Two out of every three Iraqis have no regular access to clean water. Children are malnourished and many are dying of curable diseases, if only their health-care system was not in near total collapse.
One out of every seven Iraqi families has been forced to leave their homes.
That's a total of over four million.
The Bush administration has made disastrous errors and they continue to pretend that the problem can and will be contained within the borders of Iraq.
Saudi Arabia is already building a wall to attempt to keep out the Iraqis: Jordan a country with populatin of only 6 million is already housing or coping with more than 750,000 refugees.
Kuwait has completely closed the doors to any refugees from Iraq. A trickle has become a stream and it will soon be a flood ... possibly leading to much more warfare beyond the borders of Iraq.
Bush has promised to do better this year on the refugee issue
- I don't believe him.