Amman, August 5, 2008 -- The journey to Jordan is long and arduous enough when you set out from the United States: traveling robs you of an entire day, and you forgo the creature comforts of life during 12 hours spent on a plane. But it would be exponentially longer and infinitely more perilous if you were to set out to cover the much shorter distance from neighboring Iraq, fleeing a devastating war and leaving behind a lifetime that has been stolen from you by violence. I'm on the first day of a rapid-fire visit to Jordan, the kingdom in the Middle East which has provided a safe haven for an estimated 750,000 refugees from Iraq who have traveled the shorter but more dangerous route to get here. I'm traveling with a small delegation from the newly founded Iraq Veterans' Refugee Aid Association (IVRAA) -- co-founders of the organization, Luis Montalvan, a former US Army captain, and former US Marine captain Tyler Boudreau, plus photographer Paul Park -- on a mission to try to assess the situation faced by Iraqi refugees, and the burden that hosting those refugees has placed on the Hashemite kingdom. We also hope to work out what, if anything, we can do to help provide relief to either or both. That may seem a tall order for three or four people, but in the first 12 hours of the trip we've achieved far more than any of us would probably have dared to imagine six weeks ago when IVRAA germinated. Tuesday was our first full day in Jord ...
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