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AMMAN (AFP) - Almost eight million Iraqis are in need of immediate emergency aid with children the hardest hit by worsening conditions, according to a report released Monday by Oxfam and a coalition of Iraqi NGOs.

The figure includes four million people who are "food-insecure and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance," more than two million who are displaced within the country, and more than two million refugees, said the report, released in Amman.

Most of the two million refugees have fled to neighbouring Jordan and Syria in what the report called the "fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world."

The influx of refugees has placed a growing strain on health, education and social services in the two countries, and the United Nations refugee agency earlier this month urged the international community to "put its money where its mouth is" and provide Syria and Jordan with more financial assistance.

Many of those fleeing are professionals whose exodus leaves Iraqi services in an ever more precarious state, said the report by international relief agency Oxfam and the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI).

"The brain drain that Iraq is experiencing is further stretching already inadequate public services, as thousands of medical staff, teachers, water engineers, and other professionals are forced to leave the country," it said.

"Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, health care, education, and employment," as violence continues to rage in the country more than four years after the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, it added.

Forty-three percent of Iraqis live in "absolute poverty" and of the four million people who depend on food assistance, only 60 percent have access to rations from the government-run public distribution system, down from 96 percent in 2004, the report noted.

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Source: The Nation

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"We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region," OSU declares on its website about its planned trip to Iraq. "We'll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq."

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"The constitution has been assaulted and brutalized," Mikey Weinstein, former Reagan Administration White House counsel, ex-Air Force judge advocate (JAG), and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me. "Thanks to the influence of extreme Christian fundamentalism, the wall separating church and state is nothing but smoke and debris. And OSU is the IED that exploded the wall separating church and state in the Pentagon and throughout our military." Weinstein continued: "The fact that they would even consider taking their crusade to a Muslim country shows the threat to our national security and to the constitution and everyone that loves it."

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With the endorsement of the Defense Department, OSU is mailing "Freedom Packages" to soldiers serving in Iraq. These are not your grandfather's care packages, however. Besides pairs of white socks and boxes of baby wipes (included at the apparent suggestion of Iran-Contra felon Oliver North, according to OSU) OSU's care packages contain the controversial Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game. The game is inspired by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' bestselling pulp fiction series about a blood-soaked Battle of Armageddon pitting born-again Christians against anybody who does not adhere to their particular theology. In LaHaye's and Jenkins' books, the non-believers are ultimately condemned to "everlasting punishment" while the evangelicals are "raptured" up to heaven.

The Left Behind videogame is a real-time strategy game that makes players commanders of a virtual evangelical army in a post-apocalyptic landscape that looks strikingly like New York City after 9/11. With tanks, helicopters and a fearsome arsenal of automatic weapons at their disposal, Left Behind players wage a violent war against United Nations-like peacekeepers who, according to LaHaye's interpretation of Revelation, represent the armies of the Antichrist. Each time a Left Behind player kills a UN soldier, their virtual character exclaims, "Praise the Lord!" To win the game, players must kill or convert all the non-believers left behind after the rapture. They also have the option of reversing roles and commanding the forces of the Antichrist.