Today MacKay will face questions from the opposition for the first time.
In light of this, I have compiled the following helpful cheat sheet for him.
Number of children killed in Israeli air raid on Qana yesterday - 34
Number of Lebanese refugees - 750,000
Number of Lebanese casualties - 750
Number of Israeli casualties - 33 soldiers and 18 civilians
Number of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails - 9,153
Number of Israelis captured by Palestinians since 1984 - 1
Bonus tip : Polling on Lebanese support for the Hezbollah resistance as reported by the Christian Science Monitor: an increase of 29% since February :
Shiite - 87%
Sunni - 89%
Christian - 80%
Druze - 80%
So if you wanted to finish on an upbeat note, Mr MacKay, you could point out that your government's support of the US/Israeli "Birth of a New Middle East" policy is helping to unite Sunnis, Shiites, and Christians in a common cause.
Or you could just quote Condi again : something about deeply regret...omelet...eggs.
Tuesday update - Two corrections required here :
A typo : Number of Israelis captured by Palestinians since 1994 : 1
And not doing my own fact checking : Shiite support for Hezbollah resistance : 96.3%
You can read the rest of the Beirut Center For Research poll here.
Update #2
No regrets or eggs or omelets from MacKay today.
I guess Israel denouncing the ceasefire an hour after Condi's plane left the ground following her announcement of an immanent ceasefire threw him off his game a bit.
Wait a minute....what's this? Holy shit! New post!
9 comments:
Why would would you call palestinians in Isreali jails political prisoners ?
Unless you are an Islamic terrorist you would know that those prisoners are in jail for comiting crime, not for their political views, unless you consider terrorism political expression ?
Blanks,
Care to show transcripts fo the trails? Or were they the secret, military variety so popular with the kids these days?
Have you forgotten that sme of those prisoners have not faced trial, like the two kidanpped by Isreal a few days before Shalit?
How's that moral relativism working out for you anyway?
Blank57:
Leaving aside for the moment the fact that terrorism, however desperate or heinous, obviously *is* a form of political expression, the reason I called them 'political prisoners' is because that's what the Israeli government calls them. They also call them "administrative security detainees", in order to distinguish them from the jailed Palestinians who have been brought to trial and charged. I did not use the larger figure that includes jailed Palestinian criminals, as it is not relevant here.
All prisoners anywhere should have human rights, and a fair trial, period.
You kicked blank's butt there, alison!
P.S. and O/T Where is our own "Wolf?" He's been MIA since the bombing of the UN observer station and has not yet been found.
You missed a statistic, there. How many innocent Canadians have been killed by Israeli weapons now?
I'm counting at least 9, but I haven't been watching the news every day. Kinda makes my blood boil when I see my PM can't be troubled to say harsh words about a country which is killing Canadians.
ya but bruce, i think peter's after condi after the belinda jilt.
and way to go alison....a very 'neat and tidy' response.
blanks57 writes:
"Unless you are an Islamic terrorist you would know that those prisoners are in jail for comiting crime,..."
The fact that people are in custody charged with crimes means absolutely nothing, as we have already learned from the experience at Gitmo:
Most of the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are likely to be freed or sent to their home countries for further investigation because many pose little threat and are not providing much valuable intelligence, the facility's deputy commander has said.
All you need to do is Google on some combination of "guantanamo" and "innocent" to learn how many Gitmo detainees there are that the U.S. government openly admits have done nothing wrong, and are still sitting there, year after year.
So quit babbling on about things of which you are totally clueless. It's quite unbecoming.
I must admit I enjoy a little dissent after the main course, especially if it's topped with lashings of lambasting.
Alison,
Go on, keep blaming everyone but the terrorists, typical looney leftist!
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