"Iraqis' highway from hell"

[FourScore]

"Daily, more than 1,000 Iraqis risk being kidnapped or murdered by militias to cross into Syria as refugees.

By Ulrike Putz

March 28, 2007 | TANF, Iraq-Syria Border -- She has a few more yards to go, but Adrar Salamah is already happy. "I'm so glad to see Syria," the young mother says. Her exhausted smile betrays the anxiety that her arrival in this bleak stretch of desert is finally letting go -- it's an unease that must have developed over years. "Finally I can feel free again," she says..."

SNIP

"...There, Shiite militias lie in wait to ambush Sunni refugees; kidnappings or hostage takings are a frequent occurrence, say those waiting at the border. The route to Tanf leads through the Sunni province of Anbar, and most of the new arrivals are Sunnis. Shiites tend to opt for the safer Kurdistan route, or they head for Kuwait. All of them, though, have to be wary of the Americans. "When they're traveling on the highway, they shoot at everything that moves," taxi drivers familiar with the route report.

The stories of the refugees highlight what many of the travelers call "hell." One man comes limping over on crutches. He is missing fingers on one hand and his extremities have been badly burned. "This is what Iraq has done to me," he says bitterly. He was a car mechanic, he says, until a car bomb at the beginning of the war left him mutilated. Last year he was driving when the Americans attacked his car. His mother and daughter were shot dead, he says..."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/28/spiegel/

[lonestarnot]

1. Syria.

Poor people. I ache for them and our own men and women there.

[Alcibiades]

3. Actually, Syria is not bad

Keep your nose clean and you will enjoy the hospitality of the Syrian people. It is safer than washington D.C., but totalitarian dictatorships are like that, at least the good ones (the bad ones manage to be oppressive and dangerous). Compared to Iraq, it looks like Disneyland.

The Bush administration: making Iraqis long for asylum in Syria since 2003.

[lonestarnot]

5. They would probably evacuate to hell about now, but there is a temporary blockaide as we are playing

wargames en route.

[Alcibiades]

2. The promise: Iraq would foster democracy

The reality: The Bush administration has misruled Iraq so badly that Syria looks like an oasis to most Iraqis. They are voting with their feet.

At least the streets are safe there--of course, the streets have always been safe there.

[Jcrowley]

4. 40,000

Iraqi refugees per month.

Imagine that. Multiply that by 15 and that is what America would experience.

[FourScore]

6. Or multiply 4(40,000 x 12)

1,920,000 -- If the numbers have been relatively consistent, that's how many have fled to Syria (not including the other nations) since the war began.

[annabanana]

7. I wish a few of THESE stories would show up in Network News.

(Tell Laura it'll be a relief from those "one bomb a day" stories that she frets about.)