Source: CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/24/iraq.christians/index.html
It's a bittersweet Christmas season for Joseph Kassab, who grew up in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime and now lives in Detroit, Michigan. Tempering the season's joy is his concern for fellow Iraqi Christians, who have endured killings, displacement and daily intimidation.
Christians in Iraq face a "bleak future," said Kassab, executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, a nonprofit group that helps Iraqi Christians.
"We are heading for a demise," he said. "It's getting to the point where it might be an ethnic cleansing in the future."
A recent U.S. government report focused on the plight of Iraq's Christian minority. U.S. diplomats and legislators are worried, too.
"I think the Christians are caught in the middle of a horrible situation," said U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat of Assyrian and Armenian ancestry.
She said Iraqi Christians are suffering as a result of "religious cleansing," and she has urged more help for minorities who have fled their homes in Iraq.