Soccer Dad

A bit premature Roger

Roger L Simon's enthusaism for Secretary of State Rice "She walks the walk and talks the talk... " is a bit premature. Consider the following excerpt from a Q & A:

SECRETARY RICE: . . .On the first issue, the Prime Minister and President Abbas will be meeting on Tuesday. I know that they have a large agenda. I do believe that they have already, of course, a joint committee to review prisoner issues, and I do know that they have agreed that there should be a very active role for that committee and that committee needs to continue its very important work in a very active way.

It's reported more explicitly here:

During a meeting with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz Saturday night, Rice herself called on Israel to immediately carry out significant steps to further ease the daily lives of the Palestinian population. She asked Israel to release more Palestinian prisoners and to hand over security control of more West Bank cities to the PA.

(via IMRA)
News release from the MFA, "Islamic Jihad explosives laboratory uncovered in Jenin":

Now released for publication: In a joint IDF and ISA operation last
night in the city of Jenin, an IDF force uncovered an Islamic Jihad
explosives laboratory containing 50 kg. of explosives.

The explosives were detonated in a controlled manner by IDF sappers.

Rami Muhammed Hassan Kandil, a 21 year old wanted Islamic Jihad
terrorist was arrested in the operation. Kandil had planned to carry out
a suicide terror attack inside Israel. Kandil had been previously
imprisoned and was released by Israel as part of a goodwill gesture to
the Palestinian Authority.

(Empahasis mine; again thanks to IMRA.)

So you'd think that she believes that prisoner releases are an unqualified success. Well actually, no, she doesn't:

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, thank you. On Guantanamo, not about the security reasons for having Guantanamo, but just the foreign policy impact. Have you not found in your discussions with especially the Arab leaders, some of whom you'll be seeing again this week, that Guantanamo makes the pursuit of American foreign policy interests more difficult, even among our friends in the Arab world?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, there are certainly concerns about the whole detainee issue in a number of places, not just in the Arab world, but you know that those concerns have been there too with our allies. And what I try to do when that comes up is to address those concerns, but to address them in helping people to understand that the United States has -- the President of the United States has an obligation, first and foremost, to protect the American people. And that means being able to deal with people that we found on the battlefield. I mean, the people who are under detention are people who we, for the most part, met fighting on the battlefield.

And I remind people too that we have had significant releases from Guantanamo. We have released hundreds of people from Guantanamo, some back to their countries, some we've simply released.

We have, in turn, run into a few of them on the battlefield again. And so there is an important balance to be met here and that has to, first and foremost, be concerned about the security of the American people, but it also has to be done in a way in which we are sure that we are carrying out the President's objective, which is -- and the President's guidance, which is that we are in conformance with our international legal obligations and our treaty obligations.

( emphasis mine.)

It's not fair only to criticize Sec Rice for this inconsistency. Obviously blame also has to be given to her boss, President Bush.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at June 21, 2005 07:00 AM | TrackBack