Recently, the Council on Foreign Relations, a political think-tank, interviewed The List Project’s Founder, Kirk Johnson. Click here to hear the podcast of the interview. In the interview, Johnson mentions the ever growing names on his list and relates how calls for help spike when an Iraqi working for the US is killed as torture to obtain the names of other Iraqi allies is frequently induced by the militants.
Furthermore, Max Boot had this to say in Commentary Magazine’s blog:
Helping Iraqis who have helped us should not be a partisan issue. Senator Ted Kennedy, an opponent of the war, has sponsored legislation to increase the number of visas available and to expedite their processing in Baghdad. That’s a good start, but the prime imperative now is for President Bush to get off its keister and do more to help our allies. The administration’s foot-dragging in this regard is as inexplicable as it as counter-productive. We need some high level intervention to break through the bureaucratic logjam. If this requires personal attention from the commander-in-chief, so be it. We owe the Iraqis nothing less.
Boot’s observation of the non-partisan nature of this issue is completely correct. He notes that Kennedy is against the Iraq War and the co-sponsors of that legislation that he so forcefully promoted and got enacted, speaks volumes about the true nature of the issue. Republican senators Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, Gordon Smith, Olympia Snowe, George Voinovich, and hawkish independent Joe Lieberman all co-sponsored the Kennedy legislation. Indeed, resettling Iraqi allies is not in the narrow domain of any ideology or political party but transcends them thereby finding advocates from all avenues of our multifacted society.