This is really bugging me

I've seen it several times on the leading networks this evening. American nationals who wish to leave Lebanon will receive a bill for their evacuation costs to Cyprus. From Cyprus they're expected to pay their own costs to get back to the US.

This is beyond outrageous. American citizens are trapped in a war zone, and the US government has not only refused to call for a cease-fire, they've blocked other nations from doing so as well. But if you want out, plan on paying for it.

Are other governments doing this? From what I can tell, no. Governments Help Nationals Flee from Lebanon and Israel:

Leah Byrne, 26, an Ohio native, said that she had tried phoning the embassy nonstop — “literally every five seconds” — after Israeli planes began bombing targets south of her central Beirut apartment last week. “I never got through,” she said.

“We could hear all the bombs, could almost feel the bombs in our bodies,” her partner, Miguel Betegon, a 24-year-old Spaniard, said by telephone from Madrid. “She was worried and I was worried because at the time, the only way to get out of the country was by road” — and she had already been turned away once when attempting to enter Syria.

But Mr. Betegon, an intern at the Spanish Embassy in Beirut who made clear he was speaking only in a private capacity, learned that the embassy was planning a bus convoy to Syria, and was told that his friend could come along.

The three-bus convoy, escorted by Lebanese police, reached the no-man’s-land at the border after midnight. The scene, Mr. Betegon said, was “absolutely chaotic,” including vehicles jammed with people and belongings and other people fleeing on foot. Finally the convoy made it to Damascus, where a Spanish military plane flew the evacuees — 116 Spaniards and 10 other nationals, including Ms. Byrne — to Madrid. The Spanish government covered all costs. (My emphasis added.)

I don't know what the French and British are doing, but I'll be surprised if they're as miserly as our bunch of fucking wackos.

I want to know who made the decision to charge evacuees. Is there not a single person in the cheney administration with an ounce of common decency?