Access Denied (HURL TIME!)

Time via Yahoo ^ | Thu Sep 27 | Samantha Power

[PreciousLiberty]

The numbers are so staggering that they are hard to process mentally and impossible to process logistically: each month some 60,000 Iraqis are voting with their feet against the surge of U.S. forces by fleeing their homes. Since the invasion, more than 2.5 million Iraqis have left for neighboring countries, while 2.2 million have been forcibly displaced within Iraq - too poor to escape the country or blocked from transitioning through more peaceful provinces, which in recent months have erected checkpoints to keep them out. To put it in stark historical terms: the war has created the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948.

Here is what it looks like on the ground: in two short years, a million Iraqi refugees have poured into Syria, a country of 19 million. In U.S.-population terms, this would be the equivalent of 15 million Iraqis arriving on our shores. Overwhelmed by the deluge, Syria has said it will begin requiring visas for Iraqis next month, the practical equivalent of shutting its doors, while Jordan, which has admitted 750,000 Iraqis, closed most of its border crossings earlier this year.

...

The brain drain is a legitimate concern, but the welfare of Iraqis fleeing for their lives cannot be held hostage to Bush's romantic dreams for a "free Iraq." The U.S. lost the war in Iraq. At the heart of the debacle in Iraq has been the repeated failure to deliver a more secure life for Iraqis. It is long past time that we stop simply debating the "fate of Iraq" and start addressing the fate of Iraqis.

[PreciousLiberty]

Wow, we "lost the war in Iraq"...I hadn't heard that.

I don't suppose it occurred to this wingnut that those refugees might return once things stabilize. At any rate, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

[weegee]

The werewolves in Germany disliked our presence there after the war too. But then they were f’n nazis so I don’t really care what they thought.

If the insurgents are leaving Iraq for Syria, good.

[darkwing104]

So, when did Time Inc. became an advocate for the insurgents.

[Little Ray]

Or that they’re folks we don’t want in Iraq, like Sunni/Ba’athists?

[shove_it]

Syria could alleviate their refugee problem if they’d get together with their Iranian buddies and close their borders to terrorists infiltrating into Iraq.

[wastedyears]

Yeah we lost, didn’t you hear? Harry Reid said so.

(Do I really need /s?)

[misterrob]

Iraq is losing its best and brightest. WTF wants to live some place like Baghdad if they don’t have to? Same reasons people don’t want to live in South Central LA, Southeast DC and New Orleans.

Until you get some real law and order (AQ defeated, Sadr dead, Iran evicted) then people will continue to leave. The solution is in front of us, not turning and running.

[Red_Devil 232]

Wonder if any of any the numbers in this article are verifiable? Liberals and the DBM like to pick numbers from the air and toss them around as fact.

[SomeReasonableDude]

What the hell are you talking about? Our success in Iraq involves not only pushing out insurgents, but securing Iraq so that it can defend itself when we leave. Allowing normal Iraqis to feel safe in their neighborhoods will make them more amenable to helping us keep insurgents and terrorists out (see: military civilian affairs 101).

This is a timely article (pardon the pun) and sheds some light on a problem that the military must deal with. They can’t be loosing viable partners in the struggle to secure Iraq. If they do, it will be impossible to secure any major area of the country.

Your stance, sir, is defeatism at its most insidious.

[Earthdweller]

Hello...they didn’t rise up in large numbers to fight along side AQ either. Dippy Dems never fail to amaze.

[SouthTexas]

Once you add all those we have supposedly killed, to those that the terrorists HAVE killed, to all those supposedly running away, there should be no one left but our guys.

[Enchante]

"In U.S.-population terms, this would be the equivalent of 15 million Iraqis arriving on our shores"

Gosh, Samantha, that sounds just about like the magnitude of our current invasion of illegals across our southern border, but liberals like you don't think there's anything wrong with that. Didn't you feel just a twinge of hypocrisy writing that sentence???

fwiw, Samantha Power is a Harvard faculty leftist with an axe to grind. Obviously the refugee problems are huge, but she cannot spare any outrage for the real causes: the vicious homicidal Islamist and Ba'athist terrorists who are the ones responsible for the slaughter causing people to flee (and with ample terror support from Syria and Iran to varying groups, depending upon affinities, of course).

US forces and leaders trying to give Iraqis their first breath of freedom in 6,000+ years = BAD

Psychopathological Islamists and their international enablers = who cares what they do?

Yeah, we see who and what you stand for, Samantha.

[Sender]

Hey TIME boneheads; reporting with such disinformation is why we cancelled our subscription.

So Iraqis are leaving the country for fear of violence. Guess what? It's not us that is killing them. Who is killing them? Why, the al Qaeda that you deny is in Iraq is killing them. Killing them and even killing children indiscriminately.

And this indiscriminate killing is somehow our fault? We are giving our lives to protect them. But I guess that doesn't square with your magazine's objectives.

What a pathetic magazine, and an incredible waste of trees, I might add.

[TexanToTheCore]

If I recollect, the large refugee camps set up by the UN were unused. Empty.

Just another lie by the MSM.

[darkwing104]

Who were you replying to?

[techcor]

And the methodology of how the count was done would be.... This is like a Lancett study. Just interview a hundred people and multiply by ten thousand.

[McGruff]

...the welfare of Iraqis fleeing for their lives cannot be held hostage to Bush's romantic dreams for a "free Iraq."...

They call this a news story? Sounds like the crap you see on Dailykos (or Ron Paul forums).

[The Old Hoosier]

Uh, yeah. Actually, a lot of the people leaving are Iraqi Christians who have found it is no longer safe to live there.

[hiredhand]

Time Magazine isn't fit to wipe my ass with. I don't care what they write. If their mouth's are moving, or they're tapping on keyboards, or writing things down, they're lying. It's just the way they are.

[HoosierHawk]

Tuesday, September 11, 2001.