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| Great White North |
| Harper to aid evacuation |
| 2006-07-19 |
| PARIS (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is flying to Cyprus where he intends to take up to 120 evacuees from Lebanon home to Canada on his Canadian Forces plane. It's a start. Apparently there are over 40,000 dual Canadian Lebanese citizens travelling/living in Lebanon. Who knew? Not known is how many of those are also card carrying Hezbollah Harper announced the surprise side trip on his week-long European diplomatic tour after a meeting with French President Jacques Chirac at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday afternoon. "Because of the seriousness of the situation and our relative proximity to Cyprus, we have decided to take the Canadian Forces aircraft we have been travelling on to help airlift evacuees back home," Harper said in a statement. "The aircraft will be stripped down to a skeleton staff." Media travelling with the prime minister have been bumped to commercial flights for their return home to Canada. Reporters booted for refugees! WTF. Only Harper's wife, Laureen, a couple of his communications staff and his official photographer, will join him on the 3 1/2-hour flight to Cyprus where the first boatload of Canadian evacuees from Beirut was expected to arrive in the port of Larnaca sometime on Wednesday. |
| Posted by:john |
| #5 Why not collect just the passports? Harper surely can get all 40,000 passports and fly them, all at once, to safety on his plane. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-07-19 16:01 |
| #4 "The aircraft will be stripped down to a skeleton staff." Graphic PLEASE! I know you've got a great one. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-07-19 15:53 |
| #3 Canadian reporter embedding at work! |
| Posted by: USN, ret. 2006-07-19 15:46 |
| #2 Hope that his bag screeners have had their coffee. |
| Posted by: Master of Obvious 2006-07-19 15:15 |
| #1 Oh, this is gonna open up a can of worms! Forget that he is still in the area, (the MSM will) but I give it maybe 5 hours before there are cries of why Bush hasn't already been there, and not landing in Beirut even if the runways were bombed to pieces. And getting those refugees on board Air Force One and besides, we even have a backup for Air Force One. Which reporter will be the first with the screams? |
| Posted by: Sherry 2006-07-19 15:13 |