[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20008-20011]
[From the U.S. 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 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

[[Page 20009]]

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:

       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. . . . days, even hours, could 
     mean the difference between life and death for people who did 
     nothing wrong other than help Americans.

  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 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

[[Page 20010]]

     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 
     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

[[Page 20011]]

     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 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.

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