As U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq this month after nine bloody years, President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki paid tribute Monday to their sacrifice. The two leaders placed a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery, where some of the nearly 4,500 U.S. dead have their final rest.

But what about the thousands of Iraqis who risked their lives to help the U.S. military and government, non-governmental organizations and media outlets as sources, interpreters and drivers?

Hundreds have already been killed or injured. Those who remain will be prime targets as America leaves. Yet, as the war ends, they are not getting near enough attention or help.

Human rights groups correctly point out that the United States has a special moral responsibility to aid Iraqi refugees. After criticism – and shame – that countries like Sweden were doing more, the U.S. government stepped up its efforts in 2007. More than 54,000 Iraqi refugees were resettled in the United States between 2006 and 2011, the State Department says.

Our duty is even higher toward those who worked for the U.S. government. In 2008, the Bush administration and Congress created a special immigrant visa for those Iraqis and allotted 25,000 slots over five years. Only about 7,000 visas have been issued, however.

Advocates say the process is too convoluted; background checks, added recently due to terrorism fears, made it worse. Just seven were admitted under the special visa program in March and only nine in April, compared with more than 200 some months last year, according to the New York Times.

The program "has been an utter failure," former U.S. development official Kirk Johnson told an interviewer last month. He and others who worked with Iraqis created a nonprofit, The List Project (www.thelistproject.org), to help them resettle here.

The burden has also fallen on journalists. Hannah Allam, who was Baghdad bureau chief for Knight-Ridder Newspapers (later McClatchy Newspapers), wrote in Sunday's Bee that of six Iraqi staffers in June 2004, one is dead, one had his foot blown off, one lives in a refugee camp, and the others left for Australia, Sweden and the United States. A dozen other Iraqis also helped the bureau.

"None," she wrote, "has a post-invasion story with a happy ending."

That Iraq has a chance for a halfway good outcome – to become something close to a democracy – came at a very high cost. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed or maimed. America made an "enormous investment of blood and treasure," the president declared Monday.

If we abandon Iraqis who risked all to help us, it would dishonor all we tried to do in the war.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.