Lettting Down Iraqis

Add another thing to the long list of things the Bush Administration is doing badly in Iraq: helping Iraqis who have helped our troops and now need our help. This article appeared in yesterday's Post. It is about an Iraqi interpreter who had to flee Iraq. Here's the opening of the article:

Days after fleeing Baghdad, and after his relatives had been gunned down and burned in their cars for collaborating with U.S. forces or their allies, Khalid Abood al-Khafajee reached Amman, Jordan, in December. There the Iraqi translator and his family joined thousands of refugees hoping for passage to Western Europe or the United States.

His odds weren't good. About 2 million refugees have poured out of Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, yet only a trickle have managed to make it out of the Middle East. And the 60-year-old Abood was also seeking a way out for his wife, Batool, 59, and their two daughters, Nadia, 29, and Shaimaa, 23.

One soldier, Capt. Zachary Iscol, decided to do something about it. He made it his mission to get Abood and his family safely to America. My hat's off to Capt. Iscol for doing this. Iscol relates how most of the men he commanded survived because of the actions of Abood.

The State Department is running a program to help relocate those people who have helped the Americans and whose lives have been put in jeopardy. They were supposed to resettle 7, 000 by the beginning of September but lowered that figure to 2,00 but so far only 700 have reached the US. The person running this program is Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.

Sauerbrey was recently on a 60 Minutes broadcast (actually I believe it was a repeat from earlier this year). She said the reason it is taking so long to bring these people in is that is necessary to run a security clearance on them and that takes time. She said (and I am paraphrasing here) we have to make sure a terrorist doesn't get into the country. I'm sorry wouldn't a security check of some kind have been done earlier. Done say in Iraq, when these people for instance in Mr. Abood's case signed on to be an interpreter.

Captain Iscol did everything possible to help out Mr. Abood. He ended up testifying to Congress. A few more quotes form the story:

As Iscol testified, lawmakers noted that it had taken a Senate hearing to rescue a single Iraqi and his family.

As Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) quipped, maybe "1.7 million hearings would bring 1.7 million people out."

And isn't this a very sad statement on our government. Here are Iraqis who have put there lives and the lives of their families at risk to help our soldiers. The very least we can do when that risk becomes a reality is help them. But we can't even seem do that.