Update Jan. 24th:  Airlift idea spreads across the pond, article uses almost the same language as the proposal reported below.

You heard that right!    John Podesta’s hard left Center for American Progress is proposing we airlift up to 100,000 Iraqis who have worked for the US in virtually any capacity (day laborers?) to a location outside the US just until they can be processed (quickly) to live in your town.

Honestly, I don’t know if I can write this post without swearing!

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have served with the U.S. military and other organizations during the past five and a half years as translators, drivers, construction workers, engineers, and office workers. A disturbing trend has emerged: extremists and militia groups are targeting the estimated 30,000 to 100,000 U.S.-affiliated Iraqis as traitors for working with Americans. In many cases, the lives of these Iraqis and their families are in imminent danger. Many have become refugees or internally displaced persons within Iraq. These Iraqis urgently need and deserve America’s help, and the Obama administration should act quickly to remove them from harm’s way.

The Obama administration should initiate an immediate airlift—Operation Safe Haven Iraq 2009—of U.S.-affiliated Iraqis in need of protection as the best course of action for urgently addressing this problem.

IRAQ IS MUCH SAFER NOW!   WE WILL BE THERE FOR QUITE SOME TIME YET!   THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT WANTS ITS PEOPLE TO STAY AND REBUILD IRAQ!    WE HAVE A REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT PROCESS THAT IS BRINGING IRAQIS HERE RIGHT NOW!   AN AIRLIFT!   HAVE WE GONE MAD?

I guess so.   These radical leftwingers who will now be in control of our government cite previous airlifts as models:

Examples of previous United States airlifts and expedited refugee processing provide a model for action, including those for Kosovar Albanians in 1999, Iraqi Kurds in 1996, and South Vietnamese in 1975.

Vietnam was differant, we abandoned Vietnam.   As for the Kurds, don’t we have Kurdish gangs in cities like Nashville?  Wasn’t an Albanian refugee a member of the Ft. Dix Six?  I am not saying all the Iraqis who would be airlifted could be terrorists, but some will be very bad people.   

Oh, and admitting there could be a safety issue for America, these bright bulbs are proposing the tens of thousands be airlifted to Kuwait or Guam first to “keep the American public safe.”

The airlift model will greatly accelerate processing time, while keeping the American public safe by conducting processing in outside of the United States mainland.

Then what?  What if some are found to have terrorist ties and we already have them in Guam?  Are we just going to put them back on the plane and drop them off in Iraq?  We surely wouldn’t take them to Gitmo!

And don’t these radicals read the papers, don’t they know we have thousands of  recently arrived Iraqis right now who are very unhappy with their lives in America—they can’t find work and are living in lousy housing.   Will the airlifters tell the Iraqis the truth about their prospects here?  Here is just one of 15 locations we have identified where Iraqi refugees are unhappy with their lives in America, and want to go HOME!  We brought just over 13,000 Iraqis to the US in FY08 and can’t find employment for most of those.

I’m having a hard time going on with this, it is so insane.    But, one last thing before you read the whole hair-brained proposal.   Once here they suggest these Iraqis could be used in “Arabic language critical jobs” and eventually return to Iraq when they felt safe enough.

U.S.-affiliated Iraqis should be flown to the United States, where some can be funneled into Arabic language-critical jobs. Once the situation in Iraq has improved and U.S.-affiliated Iraqis feel confident about their safety, the expectation is that some of them will return to Iraq.

Why not keep Muslims (there is no mention of Christians in the proposal)  in the Middle East now and support them there until they return to Iraq, it would be much cheaper for the US taxpayer, not to mention safer.

P.S.  Podesta is Obama’s transition team head honcho, so this scheme has a good chance of coming true.  Learn more about the Soros-backed Center for American Progress at Discover the Networks here.