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The Office of Children's Issues
Posted on 06/21/2003 12:04:50 AM PDT by JustPiper
Held in Saudi Arabia against their will
COMMENTARY by Joe Scarborough
June 19 — American women and children continue to be held in Saudi Arabia against their will. The cream puffs at the State Department can call it what they want… but if it were our children trapped in a foreign land, we’d call it kidnapping.
WOMEN HAVE FEW rights in Saudi Arabia. Like the Taliban, our so-called Saudi allies prohibit women from leaving the country without their father and husband’s approval. Thirteen years ago, an American woman actually got kicked out of the U.S. embassy for having the nerve to escape there with her children. It seems the children’s father regularly beat the woman and children. Reports of other American women and children trapped in Saudi Arabia continue surfacing at an alarming rate — despite Prince Bandar’s September promise that no American women and children would be held in his kingdom against their will.
Well, today’s news made the Prince out to be a liar.
Watch Joe Scarborough on “Scarborough Country,” 10 p.m. ET, weeknights on MSNBC TV.
23-year-old Sarah Saga and her two children escaped to the U.S. embassy to get away from another abusive Saudi relationship. Miss Saga’s story is typically tragic: Her Saudi father kidnapped Ms. Saga when she was 6 years old and refused to return her to her American mother. Saga grew up and was forced to marry a Saudi man; she had two children, and then found herself trapped in an abusive relationship. Last month she tried to take her children home to America, but once again, the Saudis refused and offered Ms. Saga a Sophie’s Choice: your freedom or your children. Already facing death threats, Ms. Saga chose to escape Saudi soil and finally come home to American soil.
But the question remains. Why does our administration and Congress continue allowing the Saudis to kidnap our women and imprison our children? If Iran were to do such a thing, we would quickly declare war. It begs the question, is the pursuit of cheap oil really worth selling our nation’s soul? I think not.
And that, my friend, is the ‘Real Deal.’
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
Better get all such women & children out at once. They could probably manage to get Sarah & her kids to a US military base, then out of country, but that's be the last Saudi Americans to leave that way, I'll bet. SA would clamp down on ingress / egress to our Embassies & Consulates so much that another 'Sarah' would be 'purt near impossible.
Getting them to a military base would be tough, though, (do we have bases on that side of the desert?). Maybe they could smuggle them out across the Red Sea?
Back then you took your licks. When I found out what Susan went through, her mother and brother, it ate me up. But I was already active when we met. Then of course, by then her father had killed her mother, then himself ;(
Supply-Side Forum I have been in search of a way to try to contact Sarah!
While our country abandons imprisoner Americans our Saudi Consular is doing possible to help any Saudi get a Visa as easily as possible. The VISA EXPRESS program allows Saudis to get a Visa by just meeting a Saudi travel agent, NO interview, questions, nothing!!! And its the only program in the world.
VISA EXPRESS NO MORE?
Here
The only solution is stripping visa-issuance powers from CA, and placing that duty in the hands of the new Department of Homeland Defense — a move Bush did not initially propose. But if the officials currently running the show are simply transferred to another bureaucracy in which they can seek solace and resist reform, then the action will be meaningless. The visa house must be cleaned, and every visa applicant must visit a consulate or embassy and be interviewed.
Let's hope Congress realizes what CA does not: Cosmetic changes alone will not protect us from people wishing to do us harm.
If only Sarah Saga were trying to crash a men's-only golf club. Then she and those like her might be guaranteed some sustained media coverage. As it is, this intrepid 23-year-old American mother is now holed up with her two children in the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah in a desperate bid for freedom.
Back in September Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., claimed in this newspaper it is "absolutely not true" that any American women were in his country against their will. Ms. Saga's flight to the consulate suggests otherwise. For under Saudi law no woman--even an American--is free to leave that country if her father or husband forbids it.
If we have learned anything since 9/11, it's the strong national interest all Americans share in letting the world know there will be consequences for molesting an American abroad. So long as the Saudis insist on the dismal status quo, we can't understand why any U.S. Administration would even consider issuing another Saudi visa or repatriating another Saudi detainee from Guantanamo.
As soon as the Iraqi oil fields are back in full production, and the strategic petroleum reserve is topped off, President Bush should deliver the same message to the Saudis that Moses delivered to Pharaoh — Let my people go. If the Saudis refuse, we should inflict such destruction on them that they wish they were in Pharaoh's Egypt, suffering the plagues and curses God loosed on Egypt.
The Saudi treatment of women, in general, is appalling. The Saudi treatment of these American women is utterly unacceptable. There are energy security concerns that must be considered, when dealing with the Saudis, but no American government should tolerate the abuse and false imprisonment of any American citizen by any government. Sarah Saga, and all of her non-Saudi sisters, must be permitted to come home, with their children.
Riyadh delenda est! Posted by Cato the Youngest at 04:38 PM
Ever seen the movie 'Green Card'? ;)
Ooooh, and a snappy dresser too!
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