Asia Bibi is a mother of five children and a devout Christian. She is also on death row -- for "blasphemy." And incredibly, she lives under a government that receives billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars every year: Pakistan, one of the top recipients of American foreign aid. Over the last 10 years, the Pakistani regime has raked in well over $20 billion from U.S. taxpayers. Meanwhile, the government has been brutally persecuting and oppressing the sizeable Christian minority. Indeed, the Pakistani regime consistently ranks as among the worst in the world in terms of persecution. And according to senior U.S. officials, Pakistan's "intelligence" services have even been collaborating with terrorist groups to attack American targets. Almost three years ago, Bibi was working as a farmhand when she apparently got into an argument with some Muslim women also working in the fields. Her co-workers alleged that she "defamed" the Islamic prophet, Mohammed. She insists she merely defended her own faith and was falsely accused because of existing animosity. That's when the tragic ordeal began. Hearing that a Christian woman made a derogatory remark about Mohammed, a furious mob led by a local cleric promptly descended on Bibi's home. According to news reports, her family was beaten and tortured by the outraged local residents. They sexually assaulted Bibi, put a noose around her neck, and almost killed her. When police finally arrived, they rescued the family -- temporarily, at least -- before charging Bibi with a capital offense: blasphemy. She was ultimately arrested, and has been in jail ever since. Her family went into hiding to avoid being murdered by vigilantes. "My children," she wrote in a letter to her family, published in a book about her ordeal, "don't lose courage or faith in Jesus Christ." In November of 2010, Bibi, also known as Aasiya Noreen, was sentenced to execution by hanging. She has been in a tiny prison cell for years -- in deplorable conditions and complete isolation -- awaiting an appeal with a higher court. But even if she is freed, countless religious leaders have vowed to murder her -- there is already a bounty on her head. And Bibi was not the only victim. As her case attracted international attention, Salmaan Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, spoke out in defense of Bibi and against Pakistan's brutal blasphemy laws. He paid for his activism with his life. In January of last year, he was murdered by a member of his own security detail. Hundreds of Muslim scholars and clerics praised the assassination, and more than a thousand lawyers rushed to the killer's defense. Taseer's son was kidnapped by Jihadists later that year. Two months after the assassination, Pakistani Minister of Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti -- the only Christian Minister in the regime -- was also murdered. His killers left leaflets at the crime scene indicating that they assassinated him for opposing the blasphemy law. Just this March, another mother, 26 years old, was reportedly taken into custody on "blasphemy" charges. More than a few Christians have been executed by vigilantes after being charged. "A close examination of the cases reveals the blasphemy laws are often invoked to settle personal scores, or they are used by Islamist extremists as cover to persecute religious minorities, sadly with the help of the state under these laws," noted Pakistanis for Peace founder Manzer Munir, saying there had been almost 1,000 cases of "blasphemy" since the death penalty was adopted as a punishment for it in 1986. The U.S. government, of course, knows very well that it is bankrolling the atrocities. "Pakistan continues to be responsible for systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief," noted the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in its 2011 annual report. And conditions continue to deteriorate. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, another close U.S. "ally," is also ranked as among the worst oppressors of Christians in the world, behind only Afghanistan and North Korea. And the hard-line Islamic dictatorship's Grand Mufti -- the highest-ranking Muslim cleric -- recently claimed it was "necessary to destroy all churches in the region." Trillions Spent, 
and for What? After trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives were sacrificed by the U.S. government over the last decade intervening in the Middle East -- the birthplace of Jesus Christ and Christianity -- Christian communities are facing unprecedented struggles across most of the region. More than a few analysts have even called the systematic and growing persecution of Christians throughout much of the Muslim world an ongoing example of genocide. "Conditions for genocide against non-Muslim communities exist in varying degrees throughout the region stretching from Pakistan to Morocco. The crisis of survival for non-Muslim communities is especially acute in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Iran and Pakistan," explained Dr. John Eibner of the non-profit human-rights group Christian Solidarity International. "Millions of lives and the future of a religiously pluralistic civilization in the Middle East are at stake." According to some estimates, more than 150,000 Christians are murdered every year for their faith around the world. The vast majority of those -- over three-fourths -- are in Islamic-dominated nations. And in many cases, U.S. taxpayers are either subsidizing the slaughter by distributing billions to oppressive regimes, or worse, helping to create the conditions that allow the persecution to happen in the first place. One of the most frequent excuses offered to justify the persecution of Christians by murderous regimes and the anti-Christian fanatics they enable is that believers in Christ are somehow acting as surrogates or proxies for Western interests -- especially the U.S. government. After decades of meddling in the internal affairs of nations around the world -- backing dictators, sparking revolutions, imposing sanctions, and more -- America is widely perceived as hostile and dangerous. Plus, as tyrants throughout history have learned, minorities make good scapegoats. The trend of linking local Christian populations to American foreign policy goes back decades. In 1970, for example, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued an official Islamic decree, or "fatwa," accusing Iranian Christians of "working with American imperialists and oppressive rulers to distort the truths of Islam, lead Muslims astray, and convert our children." The fatwa came while the Western establishment was still intervening on behalf of the Shah of Iran -- leading to widespread anti-American resentment -- and after the Central Intelligence Agency sparked a coup d'