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Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.
There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking asylum in the UK because it has become impossible for them to live safely in their own country.
The American response to this crisis? Well, when a 14 year old boy was executed under suspicion of being gay, Army sources said they had "other priorities."
Democrats and Republicans lobbied for this war. They lied about the motivation for it, they voted for it, they funded it, they staffed it, they apologized for its failures, they attacked the patriotism and sanity of those who opposed it, and they supported the incompetence of those who planned it. Both Democratic leaders and George Bush pledge to "stay until our task is finished." The Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates of the Democratic opposition voted for the war just as surely as Bush and Cheney supported it.
Let's hope, for the sake of our gay brothers and sisters in Iraq, that the ill-defined "job" is finished before they are all exterminated by people elevated by the US Army and weapons supplied by the US arsenal.
And let us also commit to working hard not only to help our gay colleagues abroad with our strong support for a genuine and compassionate asylum policy (as well as loud condemnation of those who would murder them) -- but also to electing Libertarians who will put an end to the global Democratic-Republican war games which put them in such grave peril in the first place.
