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This weekend, the Washington Post reported on the ever-worsening refugee crisis in Iraq. Through the profile of a once-famous singer from Baghdad, the story of nearly 2 million refugees is told. Saad Ali, who has to disguise his Iraqi accent with a Jordanian dialect while living in Jordan’s shadows, “teeters on the fringes of life.” I have written on this crisis many times before. One of the biggest issues facing Iraqi refugees is the dearth of safe havens. Jordan and Syria have handled a disproportionate amount of this exodus, but after the 2005 bombing in Amman, Jordan essentially shut its borders and increased its surveillance of its Iraqi refugees, hence Sali’s life in the shadows. Right now, the Bush administration only allows 500 Iraqi refugees to enter the country. Yup, just 500. So, really that just leaves Syria. Hence the Post’s narrative:

“On Jan. 13, knots of Iraqis waited to board 14 buses to Syria…Humfash (the travel agent) makes all his passengers sign waiver forms that read: ‘I am traveling on my own responsibility and God is the only one that protects us.'”

As the United Nations tries to determine what can be done, and the United States dutifully ignores the thousands of Iraqis banging down its door, Sali and his fellows Iraqi citizens are left with little hope. The U.S. can hardly get a handle on Iraq’s security. The Bush administration is hoping that Petraeus will be a quick fix or an easy out, at the very least. So, if the administration can’t even put in the effort, time or resources into staving off a potential proxy war or complete chaos in the Middle East (which would really be in its best interest), I highly doubt that it has any intention of saving refugees. Not to mention the political repercussions. Because if you let Iraqi refugees into our country in droves, then you are admitting their country is not safe for them. If their country isn’t safe, then I think it is safe to say, we failed our mission. And this is an even more dire situation for the Shi’ites who face the most persecution in Syria and Jordan, which are both predominantly Sunni and you can be sure they’d be the very last to be granted asylum here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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