Work on the Defense Authorization Bill has been brought once again before the House of Representatives. The second vote was similar to the first one, and it passed 369-to-46. As with the first vote, I supported many features of this bill, but I had to vote "No" again. The Defense Authorization Bill still contains a provision to relocate thousands of Iraqi refugees into the United States.
According to the bill, refugees from Iraq would be moved to the second highest priority level for being granted admission to the United States. They would get a higher priority for admission to the U. S. if they are identified as members of a persecuted minority community within Iraq or are children or the spouse of such a person. The Iraqi refugees will be included in a category that falls outside the normal annual quota on refugees to be admitted. 5,000 refugees from Iraqi will be admitted each year for five years, making a total of 25,000 in this category and in addition to those allowed in the normal refugee category, which currently has an annual cap of 70,000. Once they get here, the Iraqis will become eligible for two types of programs: Refugee resettlement assistance, which includes social services; and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), food stamps, Medicaid, and Temporary assistance for Needy Families for upto seven years provided that they meet the income and eligibility requirements for each of those programs. States have discretion to extend eligibility beyond the seven-year period.
Alright... so it's no secret that BadVirgil hates brown people - especially if they are Muslims... But this is plain ridiculous. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have stood shoulder to shoulder with Americans as policeman, informants, interpreters and in other critical, life-saving jobs. Each one of these heroes has risked not only their own lives, but the well-being and safety of their entire families.
Each of these titantically brave men and women could just as easily have joined Al Qaeda, the Mahdi Army or any number of sectarian militias. If they had done so, life for American troops in Iraq would be doubly perilous because we would have lost their bravery, skills and honor and the insurgency would be that much stronger.
Many thousands of Iraqis that made the right choice reaped a gruesome reward.
These are Rueters reports from one day - yesterday, Valentines Day, 2008:
BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead nine members of an Iraqi family after storming their house in the village of Awja, north of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Armed men hanged a three year-old boy during an attack on a school in Zaafaraniya district of southern Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.
BASRA - Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in the southern city of Basra, 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.
I can't say for certain why the specific three year old boy was ripped out of his school and hung... I don't know with any kind of specificity why nine people were shot dead in their own home... Hell, I can't even tell you why the soldiers were blown up...
But I can tell you this...
There are 4 MILLION Iraqi refugees... Virtually the entire educated and professional class has left the only home they knew for their entire lives because it has descended into chaos and they wanted to be safe with their families. They've left their homes, their possessions, their friends - everything they cherished - because Iraq has become a ruinous wasteland of broken lives.
I can tell you this...
Before this war, Saddam Hussein suppressed Islamic radicalism. The Ba'ath Party passed a Constitution that granted women equal rights. Women were allowed to go to school... to work as doctors and scientists and in the government... Today?
They came for Dr Khaula al-Tallal in a white Opel car after she took a taxi home to the middle class district of Qadissiya in Iraq's holy city of Najaf. She worked for the medical committee that examined patients to assess them for welfare benefit. Crucially, however, she was a woman in a country where being a female professional increasingly invites a death sentence.As al-Tallal, 50, walked towards her house, one of three men in the Opel stepped out and raked her with bullets.
...
While attacks on women have long been the dirty secret of Iraq's war, the sheer levels of the violence is now pushing it into the open. Last week in Samawah, 246 kilometres (153 miles) south of Baghdad, three women and a toddler were killed when gunmen stormed their home in an unexplained mass murder. Like Dr al-Tallal in Najaf, they were Shia Muslims in a Shia city. The three women were shot. The 18-month-old baby had her throat slit.
In the north, too, last week the killing of women became more visible, with the al-Jazeera network reporting that attacks on women in the city of Mosul had led to an unprecedented rise in the number of women's bodies being found. Among them was Zuheira, a young housewife, found shot dead in the suburb of Gogaly. Salim Zaho, a neighbour, quoted by the television station, said: 'They couldn't kill her husband, a police officer, so they came for his wife instead.'
...
And so in Salman Pak, on the Tigris 15 miles south of Baghdad, The Observer is told, the Karaa Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior rounds up some Sunni men. Later some of the police return to the men's houses and promise their worried women to help find the missing men in exchange for sex.
So when Bad Virgil sends out a newsletter bragging about his vote to deny Iraqis - people that never asked for their lives to be upended - a path to opportunity and peace, don't you have to wonder what kind of man this is?
Bad Virgil professes to be of the Christian faith, but this kind of vote kinda makes me wonder if he has even the slightest acquaintance with what it means to love your neighbor...
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