Interesting…

So I’m watching CNN’s live coverage of the “Crisis in the Middle East” at work just now and Soledad O’Brien is reporting live in Cyprus. She had a chance to speak with at 21-year-old student from New Jersey who got a spot on a Norwegian cargo ship that was taking evacuees from Beirut to Cyprus.

In order to get on an evacuation ship (Any, not just the Norwegian one) American evacuees had to sign a repayment waiver that basically said that as an American being evacuated, you agreed to repay the United States government with in 90 days for any and all evacuation costs.

Nice. Nothing like looking out for our own, huh? It’s not enough that countries from around the world started evacuating their citizens three days ago and we can’t even get a chartered cruise ship to make the 5-hour trip from Cyprus to Lebanon on time - it was supposed to arrive yesterday. But now we’re making people sign waivers promising compensating the U.S. government for evacuating them from a war zone?

UPDATE - Now CNN’s Miles O’Brien is interviewing a spokesman for the State Department who says that American evacuees will not be forced to repay the government.