Humanitarian Crisis In Iraq Grows

The war in Iraq has prompted a humanitarian crisis for millions of Iraqis who've fled their homes or lack access to food and water, groups including the U.K.'s Oxfam charity said in a report.

Four million Iraqis are in ``dire need'' of food, said Oxfam and a panel of non-governmental organizations working in Iraq. More than 2 million have been displaced inside Iraq, some before the fall of Saddam Hussein, and another 2 million have fled to neighboring countries, creating the world's ``fastest-growing refugee crisis,'' the groups said.

``The terrible violence in Iraq has masked the ongoing humanitarian crisis,'' Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, said today in a statement on Oxfam's Web site. Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq jointly published their report today on their Web sites.

I often hear people say that the Iraqi people do not show any gratitude for freeing them from Saddam Hussein. The fact is that a vast majority of Iraqis were better off under Saddam Hussein.

Four million people are in dire need of food. That is nearly 17% of the pre-war population. In order to completely understand the severity of that number you need only think of it in terms of the population of the United States. It would be the equivalent of 51 million people in the United States being desperately hungry.

Two million people displaced within the country and two million have fled would be the same as the entire population of the state of NY having no place to live or the entire state of NY having fled to Canada or Mexico. Can you understand now why they hate us so much?