The Vietnam Adoption Scandal ...

.... has even reached the New York Times. This is the case that Máeráed's family is caught up in, as I have mentioned several times before. Here is the core of the article:

“Everything we know now says the State Department is, frankly, using these babies as a tool in a battle that has nothing to do with these families or the children themselves,” Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, told the three families who met in her office last week.

The State Department says it is making sure babies are legitimately available for adoption.

“It would be unforgivable for us to look at a case and think something is wrong, then to let it go,” said Michele T. Bond, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for overseas services. Ms. Bond said Vietnam had never posted a schedule of adoption fees, as required in the bilateral agreement, and said documentation on how some babies came to be orphaned “is unreliable.”

As has been the case too often with the Bush admin virtually everything Ms Bond has to say about the case is... well, wrong. To be polite about it. The French family has already been allowed to bring their family home for the simple fact that there was nothing wrong with the adoption in the first place. Their case is exactly like Máeráed's case. There never was any need for the embassy to turn down the request in the first place. Once the proper documentation was secured, and CIS in Washington ruled in both families favor, what was the reason for the embassy once again to hold it up by fighting the decision in Washington? Ms Bond's explanation is 'inoperative' and Barbara Boxer is absolutely correct.

One little additional problem with Máeráed's case. The embassy in Hanoi simply pigionholed the application for reconsideration and when this was discovered came up with the lame excuse that they had been told that since Mickey, the little boy being adopted, had gone to Ireland, he was an Irish citizen and the embassy could wash his hands of the case. When pressed, however, they couldn't exactly say who had told them that. It's just a mystery.

All in all it is a pretty sorry commentary on how our State Dept., and the Hanoi embassy, and the Bush admin in general works. Not quite as bad as starting a war for no good reason, or watching New Orleans get blown away, but infuriating just the same.