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Points well taken. I do know that the situation is serious. I know General Georges Sada personally, and other Iraqi Christians. I am concerned. But I also know their incredible resilience. Beyond prayer, what practical steps do you advise for us "rich, well-fed American Christians" to take in aid of our Iraqi brethren?

Well...

If (as they, themselves say), "Today, the situation is the worst we have ever lived in Iraq"; and...
If "They... tell us we bring this on our head because we are Christians and collaborate with the Christian Americans"; then...

I would suggest we start pulling American troops out of Iraq immediately. The accusation that a Christian is a "Collaborator with the Foreign Occupation" holds at least a bit less water if... there isn't any Foreign Occupation.

While our own US Government has never been able to prove that Salman Pak was used to train the 9/11 hijackers, the theory (which is at least plausible) has never been disproven, either. Suffice it to say there are conflicting claims; and while I don't really care much about UN resolutions, Saddam needed to terminate all ties to terrorism as of 9/11 to comply with the "with us or against us" doctrine. Turning over Abu Nidal on September 12, 2001 would have been a good start, for example.

So, assuming that saving a few tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars by secretly overturning Executive Order 12333 and assassinating Saddam & Sons would not have worked, let's say (for the sake of argument) we had "Just War" cause for a full-scale military invasion.

Personally, I'm not sold on that -- "Just War" is to be a last resort; even Assassination is morally-prefereable to full-scale War, and EO 12333 takes it out of our bag of tricks -- but let's go with it for discussion.

OKAY, so we went after Saddam Hussein. Invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1, 2003, and captured Hussein on December 14, 2003.

That was over two years ago, now.

So, then, the question is: Of the factions vying for power in post-Saddam Iraq, whom do we support?

The Sunni Kurds want to persecute the Christians of Iraq.
The Shi'ites want to persecute the Christians, and the women of Iraq.
The Sunni Arabs want to persecute.... well, everybody, really.

Or, to put it another way.... Given the above Choices, how does the US occupation AVOID supporting "the Bad Guys" (considering that they're ALL "the Bad Guys")??

No matter which faction we support, they'll be targeted as "collaborators" by the others; and the Christians will be targeted as "collaborators" by all of them.

Once the US troop presence is removed from the equation, the Iraqi Christians make less obvious scapegoats -- the Christians aren't in contention for dominance of post-war Iraq, and don't want to be; so, if you can't get propaganda value from tying them to the American Occupation, there's not as much tactical or PR "value" in killing weak little Christians when other, powerful enemy Islamic factions are vying for power. So, let the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites fight it out amongst themselves... ideally, of course, I'd prefer they not kill anybody; but if they're going to kill somebody (and, being Muslim, they are), I'd prefer it to be eachother rather than the local Assyrian Presbyterian pastor.

Beyond that, US Churches can send Prayers and Money to the Assyrian Churches; but that's a job for the Church, not the State. I think that US Troops did about the best job they could as of December 14, 2003 -- and two-and-a-half years later we are now, militarily, hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousand of lives way, way, way past the point of diminishing returns.

IMHO.

Best, OP