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Today's Stories December 14, 2007 John Ross Iraqi Refugees Return December 13, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out Mike Whitney Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding Ron Jacobs Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy Norman Solomon The USA's Human Rights Daze Peter Morici The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch Sandy Mayes Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia Franklin Lamb The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling? Jacob Hornberger Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It Nadim Rouhana An Interloper in My Own Land Dave Zirin On Pigskin and Petrol Website of the Day Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support! December 12, 2007 Allan Nairn US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones Alan Farago How Sprawl Eats Its Young Ray McGovern Torture, Lies and Videotape Winslow T. Wheeler The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts Evan Jones The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt James Petras An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers Joel Hirschorn The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine Joshua Frank Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention Sherry Wolf Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul Dan Bacher Survey of a Fish Graveyard Website of the Day Men Eating Bugs   December 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn What's Really Happened During the Surge? Diana Johnstone The Next Kosovo War Paul Craig Roberts It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution David Macaray Impasse in Hollywood Ralph Nader Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs Andy Worthington Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result Martha Rosenberg No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers Steve Champion / Anthony Ross Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams Kim Nicolini Tangled Up in Dylan Michael Dickinson Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent Website of the Day A Charming (and Worthy) Pitch December 10, 2007 Uri Avnery How They Stole the Bomb From Us Debbie Nathan The Perils of Journalism and Child Porn JoAnn Wypijewski Is There a Left Here Left? If So, What Can It Do? Steve Kelly Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness Donna J. Volatile Welcome to the Revolution   December 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Coup Against Bush and Cheney Brenda Norrell Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists Saul Landau The Ruins of Empire R. F. Blader A Rape in Every Drink? Ray McGovern Spinning Iran's Centrifuges Allan Nairn Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia Linn Washington, Jr Spotlight on Death Row Paul Craig Roberts When Will Bush Come Clean?   December 7, 2007 Sean Penn Piano Wire Puppeteers Arthur Versluis Mining Water in the Desert M. G. Piety Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence Pam Martens Banksters Gone Wild Alan Farago Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia? Sprawl and the Credit Crisis Allan Nairn It Takes (Out) a Village Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday Alice Slater The Iran Opening Robert Weissman The Story of Stuff Website of the Day Something About Mitt   December 5, 2007 Mike Whitney Why the CFR Hates Putin Sharon Smith The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden and the Dead End Democrats James Petras Venezuela in the Aftermath Ron Jacobs The Iran Charade Dave Zirin Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor John V. Whitbeck Two States or One? Time to Choose Peter Zinn Covered in New Orleans Niranjan Ramakrishnan Impeach Pelosi Instead Alan Farago The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida Heather Gray US Meddling in Australian Politics Website of the Day A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas   December 4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in Ann Arbor Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court Paul Craig Roberts The Lies at the End of the American Dream Ray McGovern No-Nuke Iran Winslow T. Wheeler Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are Too Small Allan Nairn The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just Want Food" Russell Mokhiber The USA v. Al Arian Nikolas Kozloff As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American Left John V. Walsh Peace Movement Paralyzed Ghada Ageel Will Peace Cost Me My Home? Stephen Soldz The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations Website of the Day Hands Off the People of Iran     December 3, 2007 Tariq Ali Venezuela After the Referendum Bill Quigley New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor, Tax Credits for Developers Eric Walberg The Bible and Middle East History Uri Avnery After Annapolis Marjorie Cohn Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed Dave Lindorff Vengeance Isn't Sweet Stephen Fleischman Homeless in Paradise Martha Rosenberg Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile Website of the Day So Just Lead!   December 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift in a Sea of Booze Jeffrey St. Clair The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and the Future of the Rocky Mountain West Mike Whitney "Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir Rosen Shemon Salam A Visit From the FBI Roger Burbach The Battle in Bolivia Benjamin Dangl New Politics in Old Bolivia Brian M. Downing The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to the Surge? Greg Moses Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story Sonja Karkar The "Never-Never" Peace Conference Saul Landau Ethics and Evil in South Boston Margaret Kimberley Black America Left Behind John Ross What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution? Reza Fiyouzat Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran Judith Scherr Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays Lance Olsen Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy Christopher Brauchli Mr. Bush and the Despots Robert Fantina Iraq as U.S. Colony Dan Bacher Fish Triage on Prospect Island Michael Donnelly Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency Website of the Weekend Appalachian Voices   November 30, 2007 Peter Stone Brown The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan Wajahat Ali The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's Former Minister of Information Allan Nairn Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers Alan Farago The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash John Ross The Death of Latin America's First Revolution Corporate Crime Reporter America's Corporate Crime Capitals Lucia Alvarez Diego Gonzalez Argentina's Political Future James Rothenberg The Iraqi Miracle Website of the Day Bio-Bling?   November 29, 2007 R. F. Blader The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran Stephen Soldz War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire Sheldon Richman Iraq 3.0 George Wuerthner Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws Felice Pace Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis? Col. Dan Smith The Meaning of Annapolis Harvey Wasserman Terror Target Nukes Nikolas Kozloff Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08 Paul Krassner Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike! Dave Lindorff News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela? CP News Service The One State Declaration Website of the Day A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter November 28, 2007 James Petras CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela Jeff Halper Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street Pam Martens Crashing Citigroup Peter Morici Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession Mohammed Khatib Separate and Unequal in Palestine Helen Redmond The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America William S. Lind In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm? Ben Tripp We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges Jeff Berg Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran Website of the Day The Lies of Joe Klein   November 27, 2007 Joe DeRaymond On the Road to the Torture School Paul Craig Roberts Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy Marjorie Cohn Remembering Victor Rabinowitz Mike Whitney A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp Ron Jacobs The Myths of Military Progress Col. Dan Smith The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work Ralph Nader Family Learning Karim Makdisi Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut Christopher Ketcham Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop Ronan Bennett Martin Amis Does a Coulter Website of the Day Celebrating the Uncensored Media   November 26, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Heading for Annapolis Paul Craig Roberts The End of All That David Macaray Enter Mediator Sameer Dossani Pakistan's Wounded Dictator Roger Burbach The Final Battle in Bolivia Mark Scaramella Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire Brian McKinlay Howard's End Rick Kuhn The Fall of a Racist Union Buster Binoy Kampmark Ruddslide and Dull Alec Monica Benderman What Do You Know of War? Brenda Norrell Return to Alcatraz Website of the Day Ghostworld by DJ Spooky   November 24 / 25, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD Robert Fisk Darkness Falls on the Middle East Saul Landau Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P. Jeffrey St. Clair Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism Rannie Amiri Beirut's Black Friday Christopher Brauchli Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace Daniel Gross The Gap and Black Friday Mike Whitney "A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions" Marjorie Cohn Iran and the 2008 Elections David Rosen Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans David Michael Green If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom .... Kenneth Rexroth When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan Muhammad Iqbal Trans. Shahid Alam Ghazal Website of the Day Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill November 23, 2007 Gary Leupp Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley Laura Carlsen Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP David Macaray Keeping Labor Unions Out Andy Worthington Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden Clifton Ross Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant Seth Sandronsky Battling Sodexho Dan Bacher Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation William A. Cook The Myth of Middle East Peace Website of the Day Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film   November 22, 2007 Alan Farago Who Lost America's Everglades? Greg Moses A Thanksgiving Basting Dave Lindorff Impeachment is Back on the Table Mike Ely Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving Omar Azfar Gore for President of Pakistan?   November 21, 2007 Vijay Prashad Our Dictator, Their Democracy Martha Rosenberg Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant Manuel Garcia, Jr. Epiphany on the Glacier John Ross The Last Days of Mexican Corn Brian McKenna Cancer Terrorists Unmasked Stephen Soldz Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo Monica Benderman Needing Peace Ben Terrall Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar Website of the Day Mercy for Animals   November 20, 2007 Oren Ben-Dor Why Israel Has No "Right to Exist" as a Jewish State Wajahat Ali An Interview with Norman Finkelstein Alan Farago The Dark Arts and the Bush Dynasty Marjorie Cohn Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool Ralph Nader Green is Gold? Andy Worthington Guantánamo Whistleblower Launches a New Attack on Rigged Tribunals Sara Olson When Going AWOL is the Only Escape Dave Lindorff Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence Paul Krassner The First Amendment, a Dialogue Website of the Day Joanne Mariner on Torture November 19, 2007 Winslow T. Wheeler Why Congress Won't Reform China Hand The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan Allan Nairn Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia Uri Avnery How to Get Out? David Macaray The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements Dave Lindorff Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008! Bill Quigley Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal Trials Ron Jacobs Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie Sunsara Taylor Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs? Binoy Kampmark Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead! Heather Gray Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois Website of the Day The Meat Market     November 17 / 18, 2007 P. Sainath Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India David Rosen The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans, Christians and the Politics of Adultery Mike Whitney Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War? George Wuerthner Saving the Big Wild Brenda Norrell The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until Proven Innocent George Ciccariello-Maher Of Submarines and Loose Screws Karim Makdisi Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread Marie Trigona Wal-Mart in Argentina Valerio Volpi The Catholic Church, Incorporated Fred Gardner The Straight-Ahead Runner Robert Fantina The White House Press Office Mike Ferner Thank God for the Senate Republicans! Missy Comley Beattie The Radical Majority Kenneth Couesbouc Circles of Power Patrick O'Hayer A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet Poets' Basement Davies, Buknatski and Ford   November 16, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy, Intransigence and War Dave Zirin The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System Gary D. Barnett A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent Alan Farago Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption Dave Lindorff Two Brothers and Two Scandals Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?" Robert Ovetz Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite of the Sea Brenda Norrell "Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous People on the Border David Swanson Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate Peter Letheby Outside the Box on the Great Plains Website of the Day Why Activism Fails   November 15, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair Hillary Clinton in Arkansas Adolfo Gilly The Spirit of Revolt Peter Bohmer 10 Days That Shook Olympia Andy Worthington The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier Gray / Derks Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay Groups Liaquat Ali Khan Liberating Pakistan Dave Lindorff Where's the Party? Christopher Brauchli Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip Anthony Papa Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences Martha Rosenberg Merck's Big Write Off Ben Terrall Thank You, Ehren Watada Website of the Day On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies November 14, 2007 Cockburn / St. Clair The Making of Hillary Clinton James Petras Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets Al Giordano Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50 Paul Craig Roberts The Lobby Andy Worthington Innocents and Foot Soldiers Stephen Lendman Torturing Palestinian Detainees Fatima Bhutto Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy Martin Smith Norman Mailer and the "Good War" Jeff Leys Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding Website of the Day Why the Writers are Striking November 13, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill Can Fix It Jeffrey St. Clair Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter Robert Bryce The Pakistan Fuel Connection David Macaray The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike Mike Whitney Bulletins from the Titanic Ralph Nader Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers Nikolas Kozloff Chavez Blasts the Spanish King Jordan Flaherty Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana B. R. Gowani Dear Mrs. Bhutto Website of the Day Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"   November 12, 2007 Vicente Navarro Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed Ben Brown Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father Omar K. A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency Sadia Abbas The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and a Kleptocratic Military Farzana Versey Mailer's Miasma Richard W. Behan The Political Crimes of Complicity Paul Krassner Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert! Cindy Sheehan Faith and War Peter Stone Brown The Return of Levon Helm Dave Lindorff Dennis, You are Not Alone Website of the Day Police Attack in Olympia   November 10 / 11, 2007 Alain Gresh Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard Mike Whitney For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street Ron Jacobs A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq Jeffrey St. Clair The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story Alan Farago Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism Binoy Kampmark When Language Drowns: Torture in America Robert Fantina Legitimizing Torture Fred Gardner Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values Ayesha Ijaz Khan The General in His Labyrinth Nicola Nasser NATO's Southward Drift Philip Rizk The Blame Game in Gaza Michael Dickinson Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins Joel S. Hirschhorn The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties Paul Krassner Flunking Out of the Electoral College Wadner Pierre / Joe Emersberger The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti           Subscribe Online

December 14, 2007 One More Cruel Hoax Iraqi Refugees Return By JOHN ROSS With the first presidential primaries on the U.S. doorstep January 3rd, the usual unholy alliance of Bushites, Democrats, and Big Media are doing their damndest to skam a skeptical electorate into swallowing the lie that the surge has worked, the drawdown has begun, and the war in Iraq is just about over. Security is so improved in Baghdad thanks to the Bush-Petraeus putsch that New York Times reporters can walk certain streets without armed escort. Even the refugees, driven off by unspeakable violence, are returning to Baghdad in droves. This myth is being perpetrated by the likes of Fox News and CNN. A four-column full-color photo on the front page of the New York Times November 20th of a gala Baghdad wedding party was accompanied inside by a shot of smiling adolescents playing fussball and a banner headline "BAGHDAD EXHALES AS SECURITY IMPROVES." The U.S. military affirms that insurgent activity is at its lowest level since the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarrah that set off sectarian bloodshed. Yet more U.S. troops have lost their lives in 2007 than in any other year of this brutal war precisely because of Bush's surge. All this happy talk gets Bush and the Republicans off the hook for an overwhelmingly unpopular war just in time for the U.S. presidential election season. It also means that the Democrats won't have to defend their half-hearted call for withdrawal and risk being tarred as traitors on the 24 House news cycle. Indeed, the purported calm that has returned to the streets of Baghdad is mostly a photo op touted by Bush's Big Media collaborators that defuses the war as a campaign issue. The truth of the matter is that the much-hyped success of the surge and the return of the refugees is as big a bosh as Bush's WMDs. The streets of Baghdad and Mosul remain deadly killing grounds and the refugees are being manipulated like pawns in a political bunko game to get a U.S. president elected. Moreover, the myth of their return is a cruel hoax that could shred them of the legitimacy of sanctuary. The campaign to foist these lies on the U.S. electorate began congruently enough just a few hours into this past November election day. On November 7th, the Washington Post reported on a Baghdad press conference by the U.S.-Iraqi Joint Pacification Command at which General Quassin al-Moussawi insisted the city had grown so safe that over 46,000 refugees had returned in October. Moussawi was seconded by his U.S. counterpart Major General Joseph Fils: "there is no question that families are returning to Baghdad." The next day, New York Times correspondent Damien Cave met with General Fils over egg rolls in the Green Zone and later wrote "by all accounts, Iraq families who fled their homes in the past two yeas are returning to Baghdad." Then on November 12th, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced that 7000 families had already returned to Baghdad thanks to the good offices of Bush's surge and invited the millions of Iraqis still displaced by the carnage to come home. A spokesperson for the Displacement Ministry backed up the Prime Minister, estimating that 1600 families a day had returned from internal and external exile during October, many of them on free buses the Iraqi puppet government had sent to Damascus to transport refugees home. Days later, even Cave had to concede the numbers were bogus. General Moussawi's 46,000 seems to represent all Iraqi citizens crossing the borders from Syria and Jordan during October 2007 and included returning vacationers, business travelers, religious pilgrims, and exiles temporarily returning to retrieve money or for medical care or to bury a relative - in addition to a few refugees going home for good. Even foreign fighters and three insurgents who had fled to Syria and were arrested in Baqouba days later are thought to be in the mix. The 1600 families who had reportedly returned daily during October were more like 50, a representative of the bus line chartered by the Maliki government to bring them home, told Cave. Once more, thousands were still fleeing Baghdad - more than were returning according to a bulletin issued by the Iraqi Red Crescent. Those on the run were mostly being forced into internal displacement - traffic between Baghdad and Damascus has been greatly diminished because the Syrian government is no longer issuing temporary visas to Iraqis seeking sanctuary. In fact, some of the would-be refugees being turned back at the border may have been counted into Moussawi's numbers. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) counts 4.2 million displaced Iraqis, 2.2 million internally displaced and the rest dispersed in neighboring countries, the largest forced displacement in the Arab world since the Palestinian exodus of 1948. The Middle East now accounts for half the world's refugees - according to the Swiss-based International Organization on Migration (IOM), the Iraqi diaspora has been responsible for a 14% spike in the number of refugees worldwide. Yet the world has been slow to recognize the crisis and the Iraqi displacement doesn't have the visibility that the Darfur Crusade, bankrolled by Hollywood moguls, has had. The internally displaced are the most vulnerable. Herded into ragtag desert camps where violence and disease are epidemic, they face a harsh winter with little resource - UNHCR calculates that half the refugees are children. Some, having been refused residency by 11 out of Iraq's 18 provincial governments, have taken up Maliki's offer of a million dinars ($800 USD) and are returning to Baghdad but nowhere in the numbers that Maliki claims. According to the displacement ministry, only 4300 families, 25,000 Iraqis, have availed themselves of the stipend. UNHCR tallies indicate that 28,000 Iraqis, 3000 more than returned, left Baghdad in October. A third of the returnees return to find someone else living in their homes, Dana Ladek of the IOM told the Times. Because many Sunna have lost their homes to Shiia families, the housing of returnees has the potential for amping up sectarian confrontation. Ominously, the Maliki government has charged former CIA asset and convicted embezzler Ahmad Chalabi, a wily veteran of Iraqi's bruising political wars (U.S. troops once stormed his mansion) with resolving the returnees' housing crisis. An estimated 2,000,000 Iraqis have escaped across the country's borders since the war began in March 2003 - 1.2 to 1.5 million to Syria; 750,000 to Jordan; and several hundred thousand more to the Gulf states and Arab capitals like Cairo and Beirut - although the threat of renewed civil war is reportedly driving Lebanese into the refugee flow, further impacting the refugee crisis in the Middle East. 20,000 Iraqi Christians have been granted sanctuary in Sweden but a jittery Europe is reluctant to admit more Muslims. The U.S., with 65,000 Iraqi collaborators in harm's way, has been notoriously lackadaisical about admitting refugees - only 466 were granted residency through fiscal 2005-6 with another 1608 added in fiscal 2006-7. Although 12,000 visas are supposed to be issued in the current fiscal year, the October quota was only 450, less than half of the projected monthly goal. Washington blames Syria for the delay because it has refused to allow Homeland Security to screen applicants in Damascus. For 2,000,000 Iraqis in external exile, life is uneasy. Their presence puts pressures on the cities and countries where they seek sanctuary, exacerbating already debilitated infrastructure and precious resources like water, driving up housing prices and driving down wages, and their welcome has often been a hostile one. In Jordan, where the authorities fret that terrorist acts like the 2005 bombings at three luxury hotels that took 57 lives could spread across the border, the refugees are regarded with suspicion. Iraqi children were not allowed to enroll in school until this year. Work permits are virtually impossible to obtain and Iraqi workers are unscrupulously exploited in the underground job market. Deportation is an incessant threat. Much like undocumented Mexican workers in the U.S., the refugees live in the shadows fearing that they will be swept up and sent home. Like Mexican workers in the U.S., deportations often split families and women are left alone to raise children in a strange land. Given the difficulties and disappointments of exile, some refugees have packed up and gone back - but they are driven by desperation rather than the false promises of improved security in Baghdad, one Iraqi activist in Amman affirms. An UNHCR survey of 110 Iraqis returning from Syria in October found that most were on the bus because they had run out of money or the stress of making a living had grown too onerous or simply because their visas had expired. "This is not the time to promote, organize, or encourage return," UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Paconis told a Damascus press conference. "There is no sign of large scale repatriation as the security situation remains volatile in many parts of Iraq." The stories that Sasha Crow and Mary Madsen, the founders of the Pacific Northwest-based Collateral Repair Project, have been hearing as they trudge the sewage-strewn back streets of Amman, are heartbreaking. But despite the hardships they face, few families will be going home soon. Some are longtime refugees driven from their homeland by Saddam and the U.S.-U.N. sanctions - there were already a million refugees when the war began. Some are double refugees like the Palestinians expelled from Iraq and now camped out at al-Rahwead on the Jordanian border. Most are more recent arrivals who fled Iraq after the Golden Dome bombing triggered sectarian slaughter in 2006. Many still tremble when they recount the terror they lived - Bush's shock & awe show that still causes refugee children to scream when they hear an airplane, the headless bodies in the streets of Baghdad, the murder of a parent or spouse. Many seem to suffer post-traumatic stress but there are few doctors to diagnosis it. Some have thought it was safe to go back and met with tragedy. Um Saif's husband, an employee of the Iraqi foreign ministry forced to flee after Bremmer's De-Baathization order, returned to Baghdad to treat his ailing heart and was shot dead by political enemies, his body tossed out near the city morgue. "Saleena" (not her real name), a refugee activist, reports that a teenager, one of the first returnees, was found stabbed 16 time. The rumor of the Baghdad killing of 11 members of refugee journalist Diha al-Kawaz's family electrified Iraqi exiles in Amman even if the rumor proved untrue. The November 23rd bombing at the al-Ghazzi pet market in Baghdad, a showcase for the new security in that ravaged city, put the lie to Maliki's promises and is not a good sign for the return business. "I want only to go to my home," Meha, the 14 year-old daughter of an Iraqi agrarian engineer who now sells pickles on the streets of Amman to make ends meet (thanks to a Collateral Repair micro-loan) told Sasha and Mary. When asked what she would like to say to U.S. teenagers, Meha was candid: America must leave her country. Then she can go home. All refugees everywhere dream of going home. Return is an unshakeable obsession that permeates every waking moment and is dreamt about every night. But above all, Iraqis want to go home to a country and a city that is safe like Baghdad was before the U.S. invasion and occupation, before the car bombings and kidnappings and sectarian bloodletting, when there was no ten hour wait for gasoline and you could drink the water and there was electricity all day and the wedding parties erupted joyously on the downtown streets every Thursday at dusk. One morning near Farduz Square, I watched the owner of a nearby candy shop singing happily to himself as he stacked his shelves with sweets for the coming holidays. Chattering birds were in the trees and the tea wagons were doing a brisk business. Men and women in pairs strolled the streets in safety and peace. That was in March 2003, ten days before Bush launched his genocidal war on the Iraqi people and forced millions of refugees into exile. Read Sasha and Mary's reports from Amman at www.collateralrepairproject.org. John Ross is looking at Mexico through his fake eye. If you have further information write johnross@igc.org Your Ad Here

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