YEAH, I KNOW, I promised a followup on the Iraqi Oil Trust idea. Unfortunately, I neglected to file the massive quantities of email that I got on that idea separately, and now the stuff is buried. If you sent me thoughts on that, will you resend them with “Iraqi Oil Trust” as the subject line? Sorry about that.

In the meantime, this post by Jeff Jarvis asks why charities aren’t lining up to help Iraqis. Telford Work, along with some others (read the comments to Jeff’s post) says that quite a few Christian charities are in high gear. Howard Owens, meanwhile, offers a charitable effort that he personally vouches for.

Several people have emailed me to say that the usual NGOs are basically boycotting Iraq as part of an ongoing war with the U.S. government. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I have to say, though, that the internationalistas of the NGOs don’t seem to do all that much good. In fact, they seem rather, well, colonialist, really. I suspect a lot of people agree, and would like to see a better alternative.

UPDATE: And in a sort-of-related note, Tacitus has some thoughts on the Iraqi political scene. He says we’re demonstrating way too much forbearance toward fundamentalist Muslim clerics. The Turks, meanwhile, seem a bit nervous.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Eric McErlain emails:

I’ve been exchanging email with a friend of mine currently working out of Amman as part of a Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART. A number of these teams were dispatched by the U.S. Government to the region (Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia , Jordan) in anticipation of the flood of refugees that never came. She’s mentioned in a number of emails that the NGOs are refusing to work with anyone or anything attached to the governments of any of the countries in the coalition that invaded Iraq.

Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff I’m hearing, though I haven’t seen much news coverage on it. There’s a good story for someone in this if it’s true: “NGO’s put politics before people,” etc. McErlain goes on:

One other note — she also mentioned that the only folks she encountered fleeing Iraq were something she called “third-country nationals” — which I’m guessing means citizens of countries not directly involved in the conflict. You have to wonder if those folks are simply non-Iraqi terrorists just getting out of Dodge through Jordan.

I suspect that quite a few people were keeping an eye on those folks.