Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Cruise ships takes Americans from Lebanon to safety in Cyprus

1,000 Americans were on vacation in Lebanon? That seems like an unusually high number to me...

LARNACA, Cyprus - The luxury cruise liner Orient Queen arrived in Cyprus' port of Larnaca early Thursday with about 1,000 Americans aboard, completing the first trip in a massive operation to evacuate thousands of U.S. citizens from wartorn Lebanon.


I had heard a few talk radio shows with people criticizing the US State Deptartment and embassies for not getting our people out sooner. Give me a break...

You try to get 1,000 civilians organized, and mass transported out of a warzone. You've got to let the Israelis know what you're doing so they don't accidentally blow them up thinking it's terrorist movements, and at the same time be discreet enough so that terrorists don't think that a cruise ship with 1,000 Americans on it sounds like a big fat sitting duck of a target. The last thing we want is the smoldering wreckage of a cruise ship sitting in harbor with dead Americans in it. And you've got to do all this without putting any troops on the ground because heaven forbid the world (or the terrorists) think that we're trying to invade Lebanon...