U.S. DOES LITTLE TO AID PLIGHT OF IRAQI REFUGEES

It's about time that Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, has complained about the dire treatment of Iraqi refugees by the United States government. Crocker has penned a State Department cable complaining about the slowness of processing refugees for entry into the Untied States, Spencer S. Hsu and Robin Wright report today in The Washington Post. More than two million Iraqis have left their homes and fled Iraq mostly to Jordan and Syria. Shamefully the U.S. has accepted only a handful.

Bush, Cheney and Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, think that Iraqi refugees pose a danger of terrorism if allowed into the U.S. And why do they think that? They know the dimensions of the public relations disaster they have caused by their unjustified war and invasion, and they believe the man in the street in Iraq blames them for the destruction of Iraqi society.

We don't hear Bush's question any more whether Iraq is better off now without Saddam, do we? Iraq is so much worse off, when you count the million or so Iraqis killed since the start of the war in 2003, the number of families displaced, the humanitarian refugee crisis, the lack of social and political order, the destruction of a functioning health and welfare systems.

Write Hsu and Wright:

"About 2 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, and an estimated 2.2 million more have fled to Syria, Jordan and other neighboring countries, where they are straining local resources and threatening to destabilize host communities, the United Nations has reported. With 60,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes each month, Jordan largely closed its borders to Iraqis earlier this year, and Syria said yesterday that it will begin requiring visas for Iraqis at the conclusion of Ramadan next month, essentially closing off exit routes from the country."

Yet the U.S. has committed to take in only 7,000 refugees for 2007, and the actual number will be about 2,000. Last year, the U.S. took in only about 700.

Destroy a country with bombs and tanks. Tell the world you were "liberators." Then walk away from the carnage. Let the injured population fend for itself in the resulting social chaos and disorder. Show no mercy to would-be refugees.