Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 118 (Monday, July 23, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 118 (Monday, July 23, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9768-S9771]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

REFUGEE CRISIS IN IRAQ ACT

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, yesterday's Washington Post included
details from a memo by our Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, in which
he makes a strong case that we need to do more to make it possible for
Iraqis employed by our government to come to the United States.
Ambasador Crocker emphasizes the growing danger facing these Iraqis,
who as he states ``work under extremely difficult conditions, and are
targets for violence including murder and kidnapping.'' According to
the article, Ambassador Crocker has called for establishment of an
immigrant visa program for these Iraqi employees.
In fact, Senators Smith, Biden, Hagel, Lieberman, Leahy, Levin, and I
have introduced legislation which establishes a program to do precisely
what Ambassador Crocker calls for.
Our legislation establishes an immigrant visa program for Iraqis who
have worked for or directly with the United States government for at
least 1 year. Our Government now provides such special immigrant visas
but only for Iraqi and Afghan translators and interpreters. Our bill
expands it to include Iraqis in other professions who have been
employed by us or who have worked directly with us.
In addition, our legislation creates additional options for Iraqis
who are under threat because of their close association with the United
States to apply to our refugee resettlement program.
The Senate is obviously divided on the best overall policy to pursue
on the war. I thought it was a mistake from the beginning. That is no
secret. Some of our colleagues are convinced that continuing the use of
military force in Iraq is necessary to protect our national security.
But our divisions on that issue should not obscure the fact that all
of

[[Page S9769]]

us on both sides of the aisle agree that America owes an immense debt
of gratitude to these Iraqis, and we have a special responsibility to
help them. They have supported our effort, saved American lives, and
are clearly at great risk because of it.
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, recognized
this obligation and called for action in a June 12 article in ``The
Hill.'' He recalled a Vietnamese friend who did not make it out of
Vietnam when the U.S. left, and said, ``There are in Iraq today untold
numbers of people like my Vietnamese friend who rushed to our aid when
we arrived and have worked with us since. If we abandon them, they may
not be so lucky.''
Similarly, in a June 24 op-ed in the Washington Post, Julia Taft
called for swift action to assist Iraqis whose lives are in danger
because of their work with our government. Ms. Taft served as director
of the Interagency Task Force for Indochinese Refugee Resettlement in
the Ford Administration and was later Assistant Secretary of State for
Population, Refugees and Migration. She wrote about an Iraqi couple
working for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad who had been kidnapped and
executed.
She said:

They are among the most recent of thousands of cases in
which Iraqis affiliated with the United States have been
forced into hiding, tortured or, often, killed . . . I found
myself thinking of this husband and wife last week . . . and
struggling with a terrible contradiction. The United States
is the world's most generous contributor to refugee relief,
and we have always taken the lead on resettling refugees. Yet
our country has done the bare minimum to help these Iraqis
facing death and exile.

In her call for action, Taft said, ``The administration and Congress
cannot waste any more time. Their lack of political will has cost too
many people their lives. . . .''
In a July 19 op-ed in USA Today, Michael Medved, a conservative
Republican who supports the ongoing war effort, and Lanny J. Davis, a
liberal Democrat who supports the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,
called for swift and bold action to help Iraqi refugees.
They wrote:

One issue should bring together all factions of the ongoing
debate, and that is America's moral obligation to open our
doors--immediately--to Iraqis who face danger and death
because of their assistance to our forces.

They specifically called for action on our legislation, saying:

Many Iraqis have been working with our Armed Forces, our diplomatic
mission, and our reconstruction teams in Iraq and have performed
valiantly, and their lives are at risk. Many have lost their lives and
many more have lost their homes, their property, and their livelihood.
For some, it will be too dangerous to ever return home.
America has a special obligation to keep faith with the Iraqis who
now have a bulls-eye on their back because of their association with
our Government.
Our bipartisan legislation will establish the kind of process that
Ambassador Crocker, David Keene, Julia Taft, Roy Medved, Lanny Davis,
and many others have called for to help these Iraqis who have
sacrificed so much for the United States. I ask unanimous consent that
the Washington Post article and other articles I have mentioned be
printed in the Record.
I urge my colleagues to support our legislation, S. 1651, to keep the
faith with the many brave Iraqis whose lives are in great danger
because they have the courage to work with the United States.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Washington Post, July 22, 2007]

Envoy Urges Visas For Iraqis Aiding U.S.

(By Spencer S. Hsu)

The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has
asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of
granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S.
government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will
quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual
safe passage to the United States.
Crocker's request comes as the administration is struggling
to respond to the flood of Iraqis who have sought refuge in
neighboring countries since sectarian fighting escalated
early last year. The United States has admitted 133 Iraqi
refugees since October, despite predicting that it would
process 7,000 by the end of September. ``Our [Iraqi staff
members] work under extremely difficult conditions, and are
targets for violence including murder and kidnapping,''
Crocker wrote Undersecretary of State Henrietta H. Fore.
``Unless they know that there is some hope of an [immigrant
visa] in the future, many will continue to seek asylum,
leaving our Mission lacking in one of our most valuable
assets.''
Crocker's two-page cable dramatizes how Iraq's instability
and a rapidly increasing refugee population are stoking new
pressures to help those who are threatened or displaced. As
public sentiment grows for a partial or full American
withdrawal, U.S. Embassy officials are facing demands from
their own employees to secure a reliable exit route, and the
administration as a whole is facing pressure from aid groups,
lawmakers and diplomats to do more for those upended by the
war.
With Iraqi immigration to the United States stuck at a
trickle, however, it appears that humanitarian concerns have
been trumped so far by fears that terrorists may infiltrate
through refugee channels. Bureaucratic delays at the
departments of State and Homeland Security have also bogged
down the processing of immigration requests by Iraqis fleeing
violence.
Skeptics contend another reason the administration has been
slow to resettle Iraqis in large numbers is that doing so
could be seen as admitting that its efforts to secure Iraq
have failed. The intense pressure for visas ``reflects the
fact that the situation is pretty dire,'' said Roberta Cohen,
principal adviser to the U.N. secretary general's
representative on internally displaced persons.
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says
that about 2 million Iraqis have been displaced inside the
country so far, and that an estimated 2.2 million others have
fled to Syria, Jordan and other neighbors, where they
threaten to overwhelm schools and housing, destabilize host
governments and provide a recruiting ground for radical
unrest. Each month, an additional 60,000 Iraqis flee their
homes, the U.N. agency said.
Overall estimates of the number of Iraqis who may be
targeted as collaborators because of their work for U.S.,
coalition or foreign reconstruction groups are as high as
110,000. The U.N. refugee agency has estimated that 20,000
Iraqi refugees need permanent resettlement.
In the cable he sent July 9, Crocker highlighted the plight
of Iraqis who have assumed great risk by helping the United
States. Since June 2004, at least nine U.S. Embassy employees
have been killed--including a married couple last month. But
Iraqi employees other than interpreters and translators
generally cannot obtain U.S. immigrant visas, and until a
recent expansion that took the annual quota to 500 from 50,
interpreter-translator applicants faced a nine-year backlog.
As a result, Crocker said, the embassy is referring two
workers per week to a U.S. asylum program. Outside analysts
and former officials say the number of Iraqi staffers at the
embassy has fallen by about half from 200 last year, while
rough estimates place the number of Iraqi employees of the
U.S. government in the low thousands.
A 43-year-old former engineer for the U.S. Embassy who gave
his name as Abu Ali said Iraqis working with Americans at any
level must trust no one, use fake names, conceal their travel
and telephone use, and withhold their employment even from
family members. Despite such extreme precautions, he said
they are viewed as traitors by some countrymen and are still
mistrusted by the U.S. government.
``We have no good end or finish for us,'' said Ali, who
quit the embassy in June and moved to Dubai with his four
children.
Kirk W. Johnson, who served as regional reconstruction
coordinator in Fallujah in 2005 for the U.S. Agency for
International Development, said the damage to the United
States' standing in the Muslim world will be long-lasting
if the country's immigration officials are unable to tell
friend from foe in Iraq--between terrorists and those who
have sacrificed the most to work and fight alongside
Americans.
``If we screw this group of people, we're never going to
make another friend in the Middle East as long as I'm
alive,'' said Johnson, who is advocating the resettlement of
Iraqis who have worked for coalition forces. ``The people in
the Middle East are watching what happens to this group.''
The State Department declined to comment on Friday about
Crocker's proposals or his cable, a copy of which was
obtained by The Washington Post. But Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff said last week that he would like
Iraqis who worked for the United States or who have been
vouched for by American authorities to be processed ``as
quickly as we can, because I think we have a responsibility
there.''
Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International, who
has urged broader U.S. resettlement efforts, said that ``the
U.S. does

[[Page S9770]]

have an obligation to be fair to the people who have served
it, whether in Iraq or elsewhere. That's what Ryan Crocker
wants to be able to promise.'' Bacon was among several
refugee experts who said that Iraqi employees seeking
immigrant visas have already shown their trustworthiness by
exposing themselves to brutal attacks over their work in the
Green Zone and elsewhere.
But such Iraqis are only a small part of a broader refugee
problem that Washington confronts as a result of the war. In
recent months, the U.N. refugee agency has referred 8,000
Iraqi refugee applications to the U.S. government. About
1,500 of them have been interviewed, and about 1,000
``conditionally approved'' pending security checks and travel
arrangements, a DHS official said. The State Department
expects 4,000 more interviews to be completed by October.
But State and DHS are unlikely to admit more than 2,000
Iraqi refugees by October, U.S. officials said. Since 2003,
the year of the U.S. invasion, the United States has admitted
825 Iraqi refugees, many of them backlogged applicants from
the time when Saddam Hussein was in power. By comparison, the
United States has accepted 3,498 Iranians in the past nine
months.
Smaller countries have also done more. Sweden received
9,065 Iraqi asylum applications in 2006, approving them at a
rate of 80 percent, although it recently announced tighter
restrictions.
By past standards, the U.S. response also has been meager.
Washington admitted nearly 140,000 Vietnamese refugees in
eight months in 1975, although only after the U.S. defeat in
South Vietnam became clear.
A DHS official blamed the State Department for paperwork
delays. Assistant Secretary of State Ellen R. Sauerbrey said
officials are speeding up processing and anticipate ``a
significantly larger number'' of admissions. ``The people who
are in the pipeline will be admitted by next year or,
hopefully, the end of the calendar year,'' she said.
But DHS has opposed boosting the U.S. intake of Iraqis. In
a June 26 memo to Congress, the department opposed a
legislative proposal to allow applications by Christians and
other Iraqi religious minorities, saying it would ``vastly
increase'' the number of refugees. ``No vetting process is
perfect, and even a strong vetting process can be strained by
rapid growth or high volumes,'' the memo stated.
U.S. officials declined to discuss details about security
checks for Iraqis, but said that, under special rules,
applicants are subjected to interviews, fingerprinting and
examination of their family histories. The information is
checked against military, FBI, State and Homeland Security
databases.
But DHS rules sometimes pose problems peculiar to the Iraqi
conflict: Those who pay ransom to free relatives kidnapped by
insurgents, for example, are sometimes viewed as providing
material support to terrorists.
Homeland Security officials say they have worked hard to
adjust their policies, but Chertoff said in the interview
that Washington will not compromise on screening quality.
``What we can't afford to do and what would be devastating
for the program would be if we were to start to allow people
in who actually were a threat,'' he said.
Years ago, Chertoff added, Europe had more relaxed asylum
standards, and it ``wound up admitting a bunch of people who
are now the radical extremists who are fomenting homegrown
terrorism.''
Congress is nonetheless stepping up pressure on the
administration to do more, with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.)
and Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Gordon Smith (R-
Ore.) introducing separate legislation to expand U.S. refugee
and immigrant visa programs for Iraqis, including for those
threatened because they helped coalition or reconstruction
efforts.
``The Administration has ignored this crisis for far too
long, and its response is inadequate,'' Kennedy said in a
written statement. ``We can't solve this problem alone, but
America has an obligation to provide leadership and resettle
greater numbers of Iraqis who are targeted by the assassin's
bullet because they assisted us in the war.''
____

[From the American Conservative Union, June 12, 2007]

Returning the Favor

(By David A. Keene)

I had a Vietnamese friend who didn't make it out when we
abandoned his country more than 30 years ago. I wondered for
years what happened to him amid reports of the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who had worked with and
trusted us to stand by them in their fight against the
communists.
One can only imagine the sense of abandonment he and his
friends must have felt as they watched the last of our
helicopters, with desperate and panicked Vietnamese clinging
to their skids, lift off from the abandoned U.S. Embassy in
Saigon. The footage of that scene remains burned into the
consciousness of many of those who watched it from the
comfort of their homes back then, but many more of us simply
changed the channel and chose to forget what happened to
those left behind.
It turned out that my friend was one of the ``lucky'' ones.
He wasn't executed, but was sentenced to three years in one
of Ho's camps, which he somehow managed to survive. Once he
got out, he rounded up his family and fled, eventually making
it to this country, where he lives to this day.
There are in Iraq today untold numbers of people like my
Vietnamese friend who rushed to our aid when we arrived and
have worked with us since. If we abandon them, they may not
be so lucky.
My daughter is in the Army and recently returned from a
year in and around Baghdad, where she and fellow members of
her unit worked closely with an interpreter they came to know
as ``Timmy.''
When she told me about what might await Timmy if we leave
his country, I was reminded of my Vietnamese friend.
In many ways, Timmy is much like thousands of other Iraqis
who threw in with us in the fight against tyranny and
terrorism after our troops arrived in his country. At age 21,
Saddam Hussein's goons arrested him as an enemy of the regime
and sentenced him to four years in prison, where he was
tortured and witnessed the deaths of thousands of his fellow
prisoners.
After the arrival of U.S. forces and the fall of Saddam
Hussein, he joined the New Iraqi Army's Special Forces. In
the next couple of years his unit suffered heavy casualties
and he won numerous medals.
By 2005, Timmy had been promoted, but after being
reprimanded on several occasions by superiors who caught him
saluting ``infidel occupiers,'' he left the army and signed
on as a contract interpreter, or ``terp,'' as our troops call
people like him.
Offered a choice of assignments, Timmy picked the most
dangerous forward operations base in Baghdad because, as he
put it, ``It's where I can do the most good.'' That's where
he met my daughter and those who served with her.
``Terps'' aren't armed, but Timmy put his own life at risk
on a daily basis, saved the lives of many of our people and,
as a result of just one such incident, was nominated by Gen.
George Casey for the secretary of defense's ``Medal for
Valor.''
Timmy was married at the time he decided to work with us
and his wife was expecting, but when her father learned what
he was up to, he had her kidnapped and the marriage annulled.
Timmy has never seen his child and is now so well-known in
Baghdad that those who work with him say he will be killed
within days if we leave.
My daughter called me before she left Baghdad to tell me
she and those who served with her want Timmy out. ``If we
leave him,'' she said, ``we will be sentencing him to death
and we can't do that because he's one of us and we owe him
our lives.'' Then she put Timmy on the phone, introduced us
and before she hung up said, ``I wanted you to say hello to
him so that you'll remember that he's a person and not just a
name on a piece of paper.''
Sadly, we have allowed very, very few Timmies into this
country. He and thousands like him have risked everything in
a common struggle for which many here and in Iraq have no
stomach. But we have allowed fewer than 800 of them into the
U.S. since 2003.
Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Republican
Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut want to expand that
number. H.R. 2265, which they introduced, would help us
deliver on Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky's promise
that ``we are committed to those Iraqis who have provided
assistance to the U.S. military and embassy.''
It's the least we can do for Timmy and those like him who
have risked everything to help us.
____

Fleeing Our Responsibility: The U.S. Owes Succor to Iraqi Refugees

(By Julia Taft)

Last month an Iraqi couple working for the U.S. Embassy in
Baghdad were kidnapped and executed. Their deaths were not
acknowledged by the State Department, and the media made
little mention of the murders. They are among the most recent
of thousands of cases in which Iraqis affiliated with the
United States have been forced into hiding, tortured or,
often, killed.
I found myself thinking of this husband and wife last week,
as World Refugee Day passed, and struggling with a terrible
contradiction. The United States is the world's most generous
contributor to refugee relief, and we have always taken the
lead on resettling refugees. Yet our country has done the
bare minimum to help these Iraqis facing death and exile.
Instead of clearing the way for their resettlement, we have
blocked their path to safety with bureaucratic barriers and
political hurdles.
President Bush should look to another Republican president,
Gerald Ford, as an example of executive leadership in
addressing refugee crises. In 1975 President Ford asked me to
direct an interagency task force charged with resettling
Indochinese refugees in the United States. Between May 1 and
Dec. 20, 1975, we evacuated and resettled more than 131,000
Vietnamese who were at risk of persecution.
We rescued these people in the face of fierce political
opposition. Initially, for example, California Gov. Jerry
Brown announced that he wanted no refugees in his state. We
overcame his reluctance and all other obstacles because the
president had committed to doing everything possible to save
the lives of the Vietnamese who had stood beside us. Ford
persuaded Republicans and Democrats in Congress to
appropriate emergency funds, and he visited refugees awaiting
resettlement at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. American families,
churches and synagogues responded to the president's

[[Page S9771]]

leadership with offers to sponsor refugees in need. At
staging grounds in the South Pacific, our immigration
officers worked 14-hour days.
Why is there no similar sense of urgency for the 4.2
million Iraqis displaced and in danger? President Bush
himself has yet to speak of the crisis. Although members of
his administration claim to have made Iraqi refugees a top
priority, admission numbers tell a different story. Only one
Iraqi refugee made it through our process to safety in the
United States in May, and only one made it the month before.
The United States has committed to reviewing 7,000 cases and
admitting 3,000 refugees by the end of this fiscal year, in
September. That is as many as our team processed in a single
day back in 1975.
What has happened to our leadership on this issue?
The administration and Congress cannot waste any more time.
Their lack of political will has cost too many people their
lives. A bill introduced last week by Sens. Edward Kennedy
(D-Mass.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), the Refugee Crisis in
Iraq Act, would begin this process by swiftly providing
increased resettlement options and visas for those at risk
because of their association with the United States. The
president also should direct that 20,000 unallocated refugee
visas from this year be used for Iraqis. Finally, we must
increase aid to countries in the Middle East that combined
are hosting 2 million Iraqis; this would help ensure that the
refugees can stay and that the host countries remain willing
to keep their doors open.
Administration officials say that the best solution to the
Iraqi refugee crisis is a stable homeland to which refugees
can return. No one wants that solution more than the refugees
themselves, but conditions in Iraq are not heading in that
direction. The humanitarian crisis must not become a pawn in
political pronouncements about the state of our efforts in
Iraq. This was true with respect to our rescue of Vietnamese
refugees, and it is true now. No matter your view of the war,
welcoming the persecuted and standing by our friends is the
right thing to do.
____

[From the USA Today, July 19, 2007]

One Iraq Issue That Should Unite Us All

(By Lanny J. Davis and Michael Medved)

Iraqis who have aided the U.S.-led mission are already
targets. Once the American troops pull back--and they
inevitably will--entire families will be left to fend for
themselves. We still live with the haunting images from the
Vietnam War. This country must not let history repeat itself
in Iraq.
The war in Iraq has inspired bitter divisions--over whether
America should have intervened, how we conducted the
conflict, and how we should get out. But one issue should
bring together all factions of the ongoing debate, and that
is America's moral obligation to open our doors--
immediately--to Iraqis who face danger and death because of
their assistance to our forces.
Anna Husarska, a senior policy adviser at the International
Rescue Committee, recently offered a chilling report of two
Iraqis--a husband and wife team--who worked for the U.S.
Embassy in Baghdad and were killed. As Husarska wrote, ``A
statement on the Internet made clear why: `The swords of the
security personnel of the Islamic State in Iraq . . . are
with God's grace slitting the throats of crusaders and their
aides and lackeys.' ''
Another young Iraqi was more fortunate. Several weeks ago,
he lost his job as a contractor on a U.S. Army base. Security
rules forced him to leave the base immediately. Driven from
the safety of an American enclave within hours, he faced the
likelihood that his association with coalition forces would
lead almost immediately to his murder--if not by the anti-
American insurgents then by his own family, who believed he
had dishonored them.
On the other side of the world, a group of U.S. lawyers
working pro bono for this young man (including Lanny J.
Davis, the co-author of this commentary) learned of his
dilemma and interrupted a sunny spring afternoon to try to
save his life. SOS calls to congressional VIPs, including
staffers of Sens. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., Edward Kennedy, D-
Mass., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., produced a surprisingly
quick response. Graham interrupted his weekend and called a
senior government attorney in Iraq (late in the evening Iraq
time) who had legal authority on this type of situation. A
Washington lawyer close to U.S. Army senior officials reached
top brass. The result: This Iraqi was placed in another job
and allowed to stay on the base.

A Constant Risk

This loyal young man continues working at the U.S. facility
in Iraq, but he can't leave or he'll be killed. That is
because under current immigration policies, despite his
service to our country, he can't find refuge in the land of
the free.
Regardless of one's views on the Iraq war, all people of
goodwill must recognize that we owe a debt to those Iraqis
who risked everything to assist the U.S. dream of a pro-
Western democracy in the heart of the Middle East. Recently,
the assistant secretary of the State Department's refugees
bureau, Ellen Sauerbrey, announced spots for up to 25,000
Iraqis who can qualify for refugee status, but most of those
slots remain unfilled.
According to Husarska, 11 were admitted to the USA in
February, eight in March, one in April and one in May.
Considering the direct peril to some of our closest
associates among Iraqis, we need to improve on this pathetic
record.
In 1975, we shared the revulsion of nearly all Americans at
the awful scenes of Vietnamese civilians hanging on to the
last U.S. helicopters, literally by their finger tips, as
they took off from the rooftops of U.S. buildings in Saigon.
We remember the images of women left behind, holding
babies, crying hysterically, their hands reaching into the
air as their American protectors abruptly departed.
British historian Paul Johnson aptly observed that this
moment symbolized ``the most shameful defeat in the whole
of American history. . . . But it was the helpless people
of the region who had to pay the real price.''
In response to that shame, President Ford authorized the
admission to the USA of more than 131,000 South Vietnamese
refugees. So why not show comparable commitment to Iraqis who
have worked closely with our troops and civilian personnel
and face dire risks because of their association with the
American cause?
Even if the Bush administration succeeds in its determined
efforts to stabilize the current Iraqi government, an
American departure could still put at risk some of the
individuals most closely associated with our long-term role
in the country. And even if a greatly reduced contingent of
U.S. troops remains in Iraq on a semipermanent basis to
battle al-Qaeda (as even the anti-war Senate Democratic
resolution stipulated), those soldiers will have their hands
full with other assignments without diverting attention to
the protection of Iraqi families whose pro-American roles
placed them at risk. These people deserve our support,
regardless of our differing positions on ongoing disputes
about the war and its execution.

Opening Our Gates

Last month, a bipartisan group of senators, including
Kennedy, who is anti-war, and Lieberman, who supports the
war, introduced legislation that would provide special
refugee status for Iraqis who are in danger because of their
association with the United States or its contractors. This
legislation, or something like it, needs strong support from
the administration as well as from citizens across
ideological and partisan lines. As the experience with the
young Iraqi described above proves, days, even hours, could
mean the difference between life and death for people who did
nothing wrong other than help Americans.
No one--not even the most fervent critics of the Iraq war--
expects that an end to that struggle will bring an overall
conclusion to the larger war with Islamo-Nazi terrorists. In
the continued battle against jihadist fanatics, the admission
to our country of Iraqi Arabs who courageously proved their
support of the American cause can only enrich our resources
for challenges to come. The language skills and cultural
perspective of moderate Iraqis won't damage our society and
could play an important role in helping to defend it.
Finally, we must consider our moral obligation here,
especially for those who support an immediate or definite
timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces. To deny that
obligation, or worse, to ignore it, would tragically stain
the legacy of another generation of Americans--whether pro-
or anti-war--as did our passivity and indifference to the
plight of Vietnamese allies left behind to suffer and die.

____________________