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Those peices of paper were then scanned and emailed to teh Deaprtment and all are now on the centeral system.
I have to leave for the taskforce right now but could check to make sure the name is on if I had a private e-mail. or call 888 407 4747 and ask to register. all the blasting of the Departmet of State is illinforemed we are workign arround the clock to help people get out.

I apologize for the State-bashing. The problem is not that the staff is not working hard enough but that contingency planning failed to prepare for an incident of this scale, especially on the IT side. All of us here certainly appreciate the hard work you and your co-workers are putting in.

BIG THANK YOU!!!

I understand that the State Department is working to get people out. I also realize that the U.S. isn't just a few hundred miles away from Lebanon, and the logistics of evacuating thousands of people from a war zone with no mass air or realistic land evacuation alternatives must be a nightmare. Sending thousands of Americans by bus to an airport in Syria (as some European countries have done) doesn't sound very appealing.

The problem is that perception is often more important than reality. If the LA Times reports that some low-level bureaucrat in Lebanon is telling people their name isn't on the list when it actually is, then people are going to think that's true, even if it isn't. When France starts evacuating its citizens more quickly than the U.S., perception will be that we care less about our stranded citizens than the French, unless someone explains why it's taking longer.

This is starting to sound like another Katrina story in the making - the reality is that it was a miracle than tens of thousands were saved from hurricane-ravaged, flood-damaged New Orleans. The perception was that the rescue attempts were bungled because the people on high ground near the TV cameras weren't sent out of town first.