I really don’t get it.  Why are people like Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform and David Keene of the American Conservative Union so hot to support Ted Kennedy’s bill to bring more Iraqis here now?  Here is Keene yesterday at Frontpage Magazine.    No doubt there are some sad cases and some possible screw ups regarding helping interpretors who helped us in Iraq, and we surely aren’t doing enough for the Christian Iraqis,  but for so-called conservatives to criticize Homeland Security for being too careful about terrorism is mind-boggling!

And, for a man who is supposed to be one of Washington’s smart people to throw out this tired comparison to the Vietnam war is troubling.  Does he think we are idiots?

[Promotors of bringing more Iraqis now] have seen film footage of the U.S. evacuation of our embassy in Saigon at the end of the war we fought there while those who helped us were left to the tender mercies of our communist enemy.

I’m just going to repeat over and over again, this is not Vietnam.  We have not abandoned Iraq.  And, we did ultimately bring more than 100,000 Vietnamese  refugees here but we didn’t have to worry whether Islamic terrorists were interspersed among the women and children.

As for the sad case Mr. Keene lays out, he and his powerful friends could make sure “Timmy” gets to America, we don’t need Ted Kennedy’s bill to do that.   (Mr. Norquist could call Mr. Rove who could call the President who in turn could call Madame Secretary and Mr. Chertoff and voila Timmy could be here in the blink of an eye.)  And, surely Mr. Keene would let him live at his house saving the taxpayers the expense of putting him up.

This [the Kennedy bill] would seem to solve Timmy’s problem, but the good folks at the Department of Homeland Security, apparently operating on the theory that if they don’t let any Iraqis at all into this country they can’t be blamed if a terrorist makes it in, are proposing new hurdles that will make it even more difficult for people like Timmy to make it over here.

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DHS, which hasn’t been able to do much to keep anyone who wants to sneak across our southern border from doing so, seems willing to go to any length to make sure that those willing to fight and die beside our troops will be forever barred.

Honest to goodness this sounds like a leftwinger has written this!   I think if you asked most Americans they would be applauding Homeland Security for erring on the side of protecting us from terrorism.

We first wrote about this back in August.  See our story here.  See our discussion of the Kennedy (bring’em to Hyannisport, not!) bill here.   We have written 65 posts on the Iraqi refugee issue, if you are new to RRW, check out the Iraqi refugee category here.