What the hell...?

U.S. forces have refused a Save the Children plane permission to land in northern Iraq to deliver aid, breaching the Geneva Convention and "costing children their lives," the British aid agency said on Thursday.

Save the Children said in a statement it had been trying for more than a week to land a plane in Arbil carrying enough medical supplies to treat 40,000 people and emergency feeding kits for malnourished children.

A U.S. official told the charity no aid flights would be allowed until the area was safe but the U.N. has already declared Arbil a "safe and secure" area, the charity said....

--Reuters

UPDATE: Here's an AP story about a trip to Iraq made by Representative Christopher Shays -- with the help of Save the Children.

Shays, the first member of Congress to get into the war-torn country, traveled across the border with a convoy of aid workers from the Connecticut-based charity Save the Children. But other U.S. lawmakers meeting with military leaders in Kuwait were told they could not go, said Shays in a phone call from Kuwait.

Shays is criticizing the military for making it hard to get humanitarian relief to Iraq. He wants to hold congressional hearings when he returns.