Thanks to Always on Watch who caught this AP story by our old friend Matthew Lee. I didn’t even have to read the whole article by Lee to know it was his writing. He says the same things every month, except this time he can report that the rush is on—Iraqis are arriving in the US in droves. But, the numbers are never high enough to satisfy Senator Ted Kennedy and his NGO friends. Kennedy is proposing a special White House ambassador to deal exclusively with Iraqi displaced persons.
Here are three things Lee says every month:
The 12,000 target is still far lower than the number admitted by other countries and only a small slice of the some 2 million Iraqis who have fled to neighboring countries since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
He reaffirms we are a bad bad country because we don’t admit enough refugees, but never mentions that many of Iraq’s displaced people have been displaced for many years (before our arrival in Iraq) due to Saddam’s reign of terror. Lee:
Sweden, for example, has granted asylum to about 40,000 since 2003.
Lee never tells you that Sweden has begun deporting Iraqi Muslims and is trying very hard to stop the flow. Lee:
Advocacy groups and lawmakers have criticized the U.S. for its poor performance on admitting Iraqi refugees.
And, finally, Associated Press reporter Lee never never gets a comment from anyone who is concerned about security issues. It’s all about reaching this arbitrary magic number of 12,000 Iraqis from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, etc. admitted to the US in FY08—to live in your hometown.
If you are interested in seeing how AP controls the news on this topic, check out our archive on Matthew Lee’s reporting here.