George Packer of The New Yorker, is skeptical that the US will admit the 12,000 Iraqi refugees in the fiscal year that it has promised:
Two months ago, I mentioned the State Department’s latest promise to resettle twelve thousand Iraqis in the United States in the coming fiscal year. Since then, the monthly totals have dropped from 450 in October to 362 in November and 245 last month. At this rate, the government will have to admit almost eleven thousand Iraqi refugees in the next nine months—more than twelve hundred a month—in order to achieve its own goal: doubtful.
In the same blog post, Packer comments on the departure of the lead State Department official on refugees, Ellen Sauerbrey, as well as his latest proposal to shame President Bush into resettling more Iraqi allies in the US.