The refugee crisis in Iraq is growing worse by the day.

Iraq is emerging as one of the fastest-growing refugee crises in the world, with an estimated 1.7 million Iraqis displaced from their homes and up to 100,000 fleeing the country to Jordan, Syria and other nations amid intensifying sectarian violence, U.S. officials and experts testified yesterday.

That’s an estimated 1.7 million refugees inside the country. People who have been torn from destroyed or ethnically cleaned neighborhoods and are relatively rootless, living a day-to-day existence with no hope of improvement. More than that number have managed to escape the country and take up a perilous residence in neighboring lands.

As many as 2 million Iraqis have fled the country in recent years and before the war, including about 700,000 to Jordan and 600,000 to Syria, nations that have taken the bulk of the exodus, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Many of the refugees have been "left with minimal resources and are living on the margins," Sauerbrey said, with children lacking access to school and adequate health care.

Today’s WaPo reports that almost a third of Iraqis are in desperate need of emergency assistance in both health needs and basic survival necessities.

BAGHDAD, July 30 -- Living conditions in Iraq have deteriorated significantly since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, leaving nearly one-third of the population in need of emergency aid, a consortium of relief organizations said in a report released Monday.

The numbers in the report offer a contrast to the picture of steadily improving conditions painted by the Iraqi government and the U.S. military over the past several months. Seventy percent of Iraqi residents lack adequate water supplies, compared with 50 percent in 2003, while more than 4 million people have been displaced during that time. Yet funding for humanitarian assistance in Iraq has declined precipitously, from $453 million in 2005 to $95 million in 2006.

"Iraq's civilians are suffering from a denial of fundamental human rights in the form of chronic poverty, malnutrition, illness, lack of access to basic services, and destruction of homes, vital facilities, and infrastructure, as well as injury and death," researchers from the British-based humanitarian group Oxfam International and a coalition of nongovernmental organizations working in Iraq said in the 40-page report. "Basic indicators of humanitarian need in Iraq show that the slide into poverty and deprivation since the coalition forces entered the country in 2003 has been dramatic, and a deep trauma for the Iraqi people."

Apologists for this appalling situation, including war masturbaters like Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, will continue to insist the situation is improving and “sustainable security” is just around the corner, in much the same way as President Hoover insisted the economy was strong and recovery was just around that same corner even as office buildings on Wall Street couldn’t keep glass in the panes.

Syria is apparently caring for 1.5 million Iraq refugees.

I’m not going to cut & paste one heart-rending description after another.

Here’s your assignment. Go here and read. Then go here.

Don’t think these problems only exist in the South, where Shia and Sunni are pitted in a three-way battle for supremacy with US occupation forces. The problem also exists in the Kurdish north.

If you’ve finished your reading assignments it’s time to take the test. Go look in a mirror.

We've killed close to one million Iraqis in the last four and one half years. What have we done to these survivors?