rebel_yell2 is out of Beirut...in Athens! (Vainity)

Freepmail | 07/20/06 | chgogal

[Chgogal]

"I'm out!!! Got out on the Orient Queen yesterday to Larnaca. Am now in Athens and will be in Chicago tonight. More then. Feel free to share this, as I don't have time to post yet. Got lots of pictures of the evacuation. And about half of the passengers WERE NOT U.S. Citizens!!! Lebanese nationals with Green cards and what all. My group were almost the ONLY people speaking English. It was sickening. MAKE THEM ALL PAY!!! They were treating it as a vacation cruise oblivious that their country is being destroyed. We were so mad we couldn't stand it. I'm still steaming . . . ."

[Chgogal]

Hey, there welcome back! Have you figured out how to post pics? George76 seems to be a master at it. :)

Me, I have no idea.

Well, how did your pillow feel?

[Peach]

Please don't be sorry, Rebel. I'm rather glad because it confirmed some things about a few freepers that I'd always thought, but since I had only run into these freepers a few times, I wasn't certain. Now I am.

Anyway, perhaps I shouldn't have said I'm glad because they were insufferable bores to you and rude and for that, I'm sorry on their behalf.

The thread is still alive, btw and it's here:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1667641/posts

[sheikdetailfeather]

Welcome home rebel!

[Maximus_Ridiculousness]

HOORAY! WELCOME BACK!

[rbmillerjr]

Glad to see you're back RY...looking forward to the pics.

[Publius6961]

Lebanese nationals belong in --- Lebanon. Specially if they are going to spend most of their time there...

Isn't the State Department responsible for citizens?
What is this "green card' shit?

[madison10]

Green Cards are NOT citizens, so why were they evacuated?

They whined louder? The whole issue is disgusting. I fear we brought home the enemy in luxury.

[A CA Guy]

Green card people are not citizens. Did the United States include about 22,000 non citizens with green cards in that 25k figure?

[A CA Guy]

I suspect the reported 25k American citizens in the news were in fact 1k citizens and 24k green cards.

Never should have brought the green cards home IMO.

[A CA Guy]

Forgive the double comment, the prior one didn't show as going until after I posted this.

[Humidston]

Good to see you're home, rebel_yell2. You made it all come alive with your personal observations.

[Chgogal]

"Isn't the State Department responsible for citizens?
What is this "green card' shit?"


LOL (I'd cry otherwise), you don't know the half of it. You'll love these posts. Lots of urls but great reading IF you have the time.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643319/posts?page=710#710

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643319/posts?page=711#711

"How could it, after all, if Visa Express didn't even exist? But a government whistleblower leaked to Mowbray a confidential cable from the ambassador to Saudi Arabia -- written the very day of Ryan's dismissal -- asking to terminate Visa Express and to interview all Saudi applicants. Boucher told the press that the memo from Riyadh only asked for more resources. Asked point-blank at a press briefing by Mowbray whether our ambassador had asked to terminate the program, Boucher said, "No." Never mind that the subject line of the memo was "Request for Guidance on Termination of Visa Express." When Mowbray stated that he had the memo in hand, and so knew that Boucher was fibbing, State Department security officials briefly detained him and demanded that he reveal his source.

So it goes at a Department of State populated by careerists like Boucher, who would be just as comfortable -- no, more comfortable -- if he were still working for Warren Christopher. Congress is now engaged in a debate over whether State should keep the visa-issuance power, an important national-security matter since terrorists get into this country primarily through visas. State's record in creating and then defending Visa Express proves it unfit for the task, which should go to the Department of Homeland Security or an entirely new, more national- security-conscious agency."

Some things just never change, unfortunately.

(Peach, I included you just in case you are saving stuff about the State Department.) Hope you are feeling better about us Freepers, in general, not in particular.

[Peach]

Thanks for posting those links; I'd seen a few of those posts before, but not all of them, of course.

It's just more fuel to the fire for those of us who don't like the State Department, although when we've tried to say that on other threads in defense of rebel, we've been blasted. LOL

[Chgogal]

If there were any mistakes in the Iraq War, it was the Department of Defense turning things over to the State Department so soon after the immediate victory. Can you imagine the State Department trying to run Iraq like they did the telephone banks and Internet in Lebanon? Scary thought, huh?

[Peach]

Very scary. I have about zero respect for the State Department.

[Chgogal]

Ditto. Time to go to bed...'till tomorrow.

[EDINVA]

Peach, did it strike you as odd that someone who joined in 2004 would know about something that happened so many years ago (Snowbunny?). I know some people change screen names after a while for any number of reasons, but that really stood out.... all the while questioning RY2's presence in Lebanon... sure 'nuff odd.

Happy RebelYell got out and is home or at least en route. What a harrowing experience!

[sinkspur]

I have about zero respect for the State Department.

I have been reading these threads, but not commenting.

Permit me to observe that perhaps this experience with rebel yell has disproportionately colored your opinion of people who have tried their best to evacuate Americans in a tough environment.

IOW, your indictment of the entire State department is unwarranted, in my view.

[rebel_yell2]

Let me make this point.

After seeing what was involved in putting in place a secure system for evacuating Americans, I now fully understand the time it took to get the assets in place to get us out. It wasn't efficient but you don't let the great be the enemy of the good.

What I don't understand it the lack of communications between the State Dept and those of us who were trapped. My guess is that this was simply an oversight by staff that were extremely busy working on our evacuation.

A simple update on the website each day or, much better, a blast email to each of us would have let us know that the process was working. More importantly, an email would have let us know that our electronic registrations had been successfully logged, which was not the case for many of us.

Let me also note that once the U.S. military was brought into the evacuation a week after the incident began, things scaled up on an historically unprecedented scale. I read that today 5,000 Americans were evacuated. That is truly stunning and a great tribute to our military. However, it does not erase the track record during the past week of the State Dept. We who were trapped in Lebanon wonder why it took seven days to dispatch the Iwo Jima amphibious battle group from the Red Sea to the coast of Lebanon.

Our government consists of numerous departments. Some have performed admirably. Some have not. This is just my opinion and I am grateful to live in a country where I am free to express it and those of you who choose to are free to disparage me.