Approx. lede: On DEC. TK, a dozen happy American families were ready to bring a group of newly adopted kids home from Cambodia -- when the U.S. government stepped in and aborted the adoptions on spurious charges of SLAVERY.

I heard about it because one of the parents caught in the blender is a colleague. But every American ought to care. For one thing, the war we¹re in is going to be showing us pictures of orphans on a daily basis and figuring out how to manage them is going to matter. But even more important, this story tells us that key people in the U.S. government think it's better for a child to die in Cambodia than be raised in Akron .

In parts of the Third World children, mostly female, are sold by their families to slave traders. They are also stolen or simply dumped as too expensive to feed. Most end up in brothels, mines or sweat shops. A few end up in orphanages who then pass them on to people from the First World who are desperate for children.

It sounds trite, but slavery and kidnapping really are bad things. And in 2000 Congress passed legislation to reduce it. Among other things, countries that did not act to reduce it could be slapped with sanctions.

Good move? Sure, except for the unintended consequences. Let's take a look at reality for a moment, shall we? These children are living in hell. They are going to be either raped, used as human mine-sweepers or get adopted by a couple from Akron, Ohio. Virtually none get returned to their parents. Indeed, it is usually impossible to find the parents.

So why not let them be adopted? The percentages of children in orphanages that have been traced to trading is vanishingly small. Indeed, outside of a special case in Argentina , virtually no cases of abduction for adoption have been proven.

In countries like Cambodia , slavers try to get the children out of orphanages, to sell them to the sweat shops and brothels. Indeed, due to the massive numbers of legitimate orphans, children who are not adopted by age 8 are turned out into hell. Logically, loosening the adoption rules would be a huge net benefit to the children. So why make it nearly impossible?

The short answer is the sort of America-hating guilt-trip that has been so widely described and recriminated since 9/11. Some people think it's better for a child to die in Cambodia than be raised in Akron . They may not phrase it that way, even to themselves, but that is the reality.

Let's get back to those 12 families.

First off, all 12 families DID get to bring their kids home == after a months of fear and agony -- because it turned out the authorities had NO BASIS FOR BELIEVING THE CHILDREN HAD EVER BEEN THE VICTIMS OF SLAVERS.

That's right. All adoptions in Cambodia were suspended by order of the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- but neither the INS nor the U.S. Embassy staff had done any real investigating to determine if the orphans were "legitimate" or not.

As Later reporting by ABC's 20/20 none of the "investigations" by the local embassy or INS staff held water. The embassy staff had never talked to the actual managers of the orphanage or examined the documents on the children. They talked to a caretaker who had no clue about paperwork. This is the equivalent of perpetrating a lawsuit on the basis of talking to a janitor.

Can we trace down this bureaucratic inanity?

The actual suspension is dated Dec. 21, 2001 by INS Commissioner James Ziglar, a Bush political appointee who spent most of his previous stints in government in the Bureau of the Interior. But the INS press release says: "These concerns were first identified by the U.S. embassy in Cambodia ." Ah, hah ...

The current Ambassador to Cambodia is Kent M. Wiedemann -- a State Department careerist appointed by President Clinton. Furthermore, we note this in his official bio: "Ambassador Wiedemann ... served in the Peace Corps in what is now Micronesia ."

Let me guess. Right out of the Peace Corps into Foreign Service, learning all the "why it is good to hate America and middle class Americans" mantras until he turned into the perfect example of why State needs an " America " desk.

It's not just the ambassador. There are dozens of organizations that scream all the time about "cultural imperialism." They are enraged by the really odd notion that American families would rather bring the children to the United States and raise them in loving homes than have them die on the streets under some syphilitic pimp. They use the "stolen from their parents" rationale as an excuse, but when asked for numbers can't find any. Is it really better to people like Ambassador Wiedemann that a child die poor and starving in Phnom Penh than grow up fat and middle class in Fly-Over country? Is it better that they have a one in a billion chance of ever meeting their family again than that they have a roof over their head? Apparently so. Better dead than American. Anything but Akron .

So to assuage their liberal guilt trip they condemn them to a life that is short, brutal and hellish. To be whores in Phnom Pen brothels. To be child-soldier minesweepers for the Kmer Rouge. To die in a thousand miserable ways. All in the name of policy and procedure and the battle against "cultural imperialism."

It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I hope that in the fullness of time, everyone involved in tossing those children to the wolves have a nice conversation with Osama bin Laden. They have probably killed more children than he has.

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