Bumbling Conservatives Leave Thousands of Canucks Stranded in Hell

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[Editorial cartoon by Patrick Corrigan of The Toronto Star]

[Editorial cartoon by Theo Moudakis of The Toronto Star]

Hours of tears and Frustration

Only 261 Canadians able to leave; Hundreds stranded at Beirut port

Oh, such a comforting opening line for a drearily-titled article, highlighting the plight of the thousands upon thousands of Canadians stranded still in Lebannon unable to get out because of the current administration's mind-bloggling blundering incompetance and willingness to sacrifice Canada's conventional neutrality in the Mid East in order to cosy up to the Americans.

BEIRUT - Ottawa says it will take up to two weeks to rescue Canadians trapped in Lebanon after 2,000 citizens had their evacuation hopes dashed by a chaotic and gruelling attempt that left them stranded overnight at Beirut's port.
...
Canada had hoped to evacuate 4,500 citizens a day, and then scaled that down to 2,000. Foreign Affairs officials had initially hoped to complete the rescue in three days.

Just 261 Canadians were evacuated yesterday when only one of seven ships leased by Canada managed to reach Beirut's port to ferry them to Cyprus. The other 2,000 spent the night sleeping on the floor of a cavernous port building with babies crying among piles of suitcases.

It's now Thursday. We barely got any of our fellow Canadians out of hell, forcing those who were lucky enough to hold dual citizenships to flee with other foreign nationals, or even risk their lives by taking a taxi cab to the Syrian border, on the nearly bombed out road to Damascus, and eventually over to Jordan and its capital.

Initially, foreign affairs officials estimated it would take three days to complete the evacuation, but yesterday that was revised to upwards of 10 days to two weeks.

This is precisely why I despise the Conservatives - they don't know shit about efficiancy unless it comes to religion! They should step down, go pray and leave the beureaucratic process to the Liberals who know how to evacuate Canadians effectively and still somehow screw up without endangering lives.

It's not known how many of the estimated 50,000 Canadians in Lebanon - at least 30,000 of whom have registered with the embassy - will want to be evacuated. But what may become the biggest evacuation of stranded Canadians in history began as the most disorganized and stressful.

Will want to be? What kind of asinine bullplop is that question? No, a handful will want to stay because they love the uncertainty of a bloody warzone! Stupid writer...

The first group of frightened Canadians hoping to flee Israel's bombing - which has killed 300 people, mostly civilians — found themselves pushing and shoving for hours under a baking Mediterranean sun, dehydrated and in some cases fainting.

Most were tourists with limited links to Lebanon. They jammed the gates of the port where foreign affairs officials had told them to gather at 8 a.m., only to feel sweat drench their backs while Canadian embassy workers read off names on a list in alphabetical order, letting only those called out into the port.

Mothers feared for the lives of their babies as the crush of bodies squeezed out the air. Several pleaded for help until men picked up their baby carriages, raised them over the crowd, and walked them away to safety.

Is this "Standing Up for Canada", Conservatives? Is this how you live up to your flimsey election promises? You're just lying down and playing dead as the Americans hold a little treat above your head and have you parade around, humiliating the nation and selling out our interests. This is not standing up for Canada, this is leaving Canadians to suffer.

How long before more Canadians are killed unnecessarily by Israeli fire?

As night fell on the lucky few who were set to leave, passports went missing, there were rumours the ship couldn't hold all of them, and then the ground started shaking as Israeli jets bombed Beirut's southern suburbs again. Panic spread back at the port as the Blue Dawn tried to dock.

"Will they kill us on the boat?" asked Christine Dasher, a Toronto physician. "What if they have a bomb, what are we going to do?"

Oh, right, nice going Israel. That's real smart. Bombing the city the foreign nationals are trying to evacuate from... That's not going to earn you any friends. Then again, who needs friends when you've got the US watchin' your ass...

Initially, embassy officials couldn't produce the official manifest the Lebanese immigration authorities needed to allow the ship to start boarding. When they finally eased restrictions, several passports were temporarily misplaced as officials tried to hand them out in the dark.

That just seemed to create more confusion and the officials decided not to bother with passports at all, telling people just to get on the ship and that they would deal with passports later.

Did they ask the evacuees from Dunkirk during World War II for their passports as they pulled them away from the onslaught of Nazi fire? No, they got both the French and the English out of there, and it didn't matter what the nationality was.

"It's quite irresponsible of Canada," said Montreal student Mark Chebla. "We're the last country to leave so you'd think they had enough time to work things out."

Yes it is...

Escape from Beirut

One Canadian's story about travelling by car to Syria then Jordan. Like some others, she was forced to find her own way out. Others weren't as lucky due to certain reasons beyond their control.

A mother's hope turns to anguish

Kohar Tcholakian has only one question for Prime Minister Stephen Harper while she waits for word from her daughter, Lara, who is stranded in Beirut.

"If it was your children what would you do?" she asks. "Would you act so slow?"

Of course, really, would one expect the Prime Minister to do such a thing? No, he'd act quickly. But, then again, it isn't his kin who's stranded in the cross-fire hurricane.

Born and raised in Toronto, Lara holds a Canadian passport. She has felt like anything but Canadian after the Canadian Embassy turned her away at the evacuation port yesterday morning.

"She called crying on my cell at 5 a.m.," said Lara's younger sister, Garine. "`I want Canada to know how the embassy here is treating me,` she cried out. She was frantic."

Nice to know that the Canadian Embassy is giving priority to those who need it. Pregnant women, elderly and those with children have been left out in the sweltering sun and heat as they wait to leave. And, in some cases, they're all-out rejected and forced to come back later.

"She registered one week prior to going and she was called the night before," says Garine. "Even if she was not on the list, how can you turn away a pregnant woman?"

Do you think the English merchantships turned away French soldiers during the evacuation of Dunkirk? No, they banded together as allies and just took everyone they could. They all lent a hand to the British navy to help protect those who were fleeing from Nazi fire.

Swedes show the way

The Europeans have a class act.

Canada is being thoroughly embarassed by the Conservatives' overall lack of experience and intelligence in handling anything beyond a legislation that wants to raise the age of consent.

While Canada left about 2,000 of its stressed-out citizens behind yesterday to sleep on the floor of a port building, Sweden evacuated the same number of its citizens on the same day.

The 261 sweat-drenched Canadians lucky enough to be evacuated after a draining 13-hour process watched at the Beirut port as the Swedes put their last batch of the day on a ship for Cyprus.

So, let me get this straight, Sweden got the LAST of its citizens out of Lebannon while Canada was JUST evacuating the first 261?

Something isn't right. Something's horribly amiss.

On display was a bureaucratically inflexible, poorly organized process that kept people baking in the sun for hours at the port gates with no water being distributed.

They couldn't even provide water?

So, my fellow Canadians are left stranded in the cross fire hurricane, being turned back and forced to go back into the hell that they're trying to escape because of utter incompetance and those who are allowed through are being deprived of water and subject to a "list", which isn't even allowing for families to stay together?

If the Liberals were in power, they've have just taken all Canadians out and then made them wait in an airport in a true Canadian fashion, or better yet, somewherw where its nice and frigid...

Harper's flight into the unknown

Harper makes a straightforward case. As he explained his abrupt change of plans here, timing and geography put him in a position to help Canadians needing help.

"It's more than a symbolic trip," he said. "There is real need for air support in Cyprus."

So why, then, are Harper, his wife, a skeleton staff including a photographer, as well as his public relations team and RCMP bodyguards, taking up needed seats?

Why aren't they maximizing the assistance by sending an empty aircraft across the Mediterranean to the island nearest Lebanon?

The official answer is that it is too dangerous for the Prime Minister to fly on commercial aircraft. He has no choice but to stay with the plane, detour to Cyprus and bring home to Canada about 120 of the thousands fleeing Beirut by ship.

That strains credibility. It's hard to believe that taking a scheduled flight - or waiting for a government plane to arrive here - would expose Harper to more danger than flying into a chaotic region and then out again with 120 very upset people escaping a war.

It's "dangerous" for the Prime Minister to fly in a commercial airliner, but, it's not unsafe to send him closer to a warzone?

If the PM's safety was really a concern, they could've very well left them back in Paris. It would've left room for more Canadians on the craft. There was no need for him to fly out to Cyprus. They should've only taken the pilots and the cabin crew, leaving everyone else who normally uses that craft in Paris.

Last I checked, Paris isn't Toronto, is it? It's a pretty classy city and it's got nice people and safe areas for a leader to stay in.

This is precisely why I hate the Conservatives - they don't stand up for Canada!

Reports from Beirut suggest Canada's late-starting evacuation was snarled and confused. Instead of greeting Canadians relieved to see their prime minister, Harper was likely to be meeting furious citizens asking embarrassing questions.

It would be surprising if they didn't want to know why Canada, with the largest number of citizens in Lebanon, trailed others in launching its rescue effort. Even stranger if they didn't have strong opinions on Harper's seemingly cavalier acceptance of the civilian dangers inherent in Israel's "measured" response to Hezbollah kidnappings.

Asking embarassing questions? I didn't realise that they would be so diplomatic. Most would probably just fire off the usual placate Canadian obscenities, followed by a vote threat and leave the embarassing questions to the media, who will be locked out...