The Department of State reminds American citizens that the U.S. government does not provide no-cost transportation but does have the authority to provide repatriation loans to those in financial need. For the portion of your trip directly handled by the U.S. Government we will ask you to sign a promissory note and we will bill you at a later date.

Hey people who just found yourselves getting bombed by the Israelis? Your country will get you out! Of course, you'll need to pay for that service, probably including combat pay for the Haliburton group that gets you out since the actual military forces we would normally use are all tied up in Iraq, and we have a liner ready to go into the port of Beirut, just as soon as they stop bombing there, and assuming we can find a pier still standing, and we've even tasked a destroyer to protect the liner from the airplanes firing harpoon anti-ship missles that we sold to Israel which are designed to take out a destroyer in one shot (to say nothing of that big floating target we plan to stick you on if we can get it to what's left of the docks that is). Or if you prefer, you can walk to Jordan and maybe see if you can catch a connecting flight from there to someplace else as the Beirut airport has been bombed to shit.

If we actually had ANY interest in actual peace in the Mideast, there is usually a full carrier battle group stationed in the eastern Med, and we could say, Lebanon is a no-fly-zone to any except US planes which will be flying in humanitarian supplies (and hey, we could even make some money off the red cross flying the stuff in) and the planes of the carrier battle group there to enforce that, but since that would put us in opposition to Israel, you can forget about that ever happening. Hell, we could even put Hawkeyes up and pinpoint the Hezbollah launch locations and hit those instead of blowing up random shit in Beirut. That's something AWACS capability is good at.

Too bad actually helping people is a fantasy world.

Lebanon Situation Update - July 15, 2006 - US Embassy Beirut Lebanon