Continued from here ...

And while we're talking about the bottom perhaps falling out of Guatemalan adoptions, how about the bottom just falling out completely?

A 330-foot-deep sinkhole killed two teenage siblings when it swallowed about a dozen homes early Friday and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood.

Officials blamed the sinkhole on recent rains and an underground sewage flow from a ruptured main. They warned that the crater could widen or others could open up.

Or, perhaps a look at a bottomless pit?

On Thursday, Guatemala arrested four policemen accused of murdering the three members of Central America's regional parliament, along with their driver.

The policemen, who included the head of Guatemala's organized crime investigation unit, were caught because a global positioning system transmitter in their vehicle revealed they were at the scene of the kidnapping and the site where the bodies were found.

[Guatemalan President Oscar] Berger said he hoped two more policemen would be arrested soon.

Both the Guatemalan national police and the regional parliament have been mired in drug-trafficking scandals in recent years with some congressmen accused of using their official status to smuggle narcotics.

So, like Cambodia, Guatemala can be corrupt.

Duh!

Show me a poverty-ridden wasteland of former American interference that isn't.

Now, can someone explain how a place crawling in underhanded nastiness of every stripe can be expected to be totally aboveboard in the one aspect of governing that deals with children?

When a country runs on corruption, how self-righteous ... and how pie-in-the-sky ... is it to demand ethical standards on one hand, but not be too bothered when that corruption is happening on another?

Do we live in a perfect world? Is it for those in countries less obviously compromised to pick and choose categories of acceptable sleaziness and dig heels in where it's not quite so innocuous ... or profitable?

And should children born in countries where doing things the 'wrong' way is a fact of everyday life be sentenced to that country and that life for life ... however short that may end up being?

Forgive me if this ramble is convoluted, but the present situation with Guatemalan adoptions scares the poop out of me, and I see nothing but CAMBODIAN FIASCO written all over it.

The end result, if it goes the same way, will be nothing short of tragic for thousands of children.