Patricia McKenna is an Irish MEP (Member of the European Parliament), who is also a member of the Green Party. Last week she got a bit hysterical over US Secret Service agents, remarking that “Now the big danger is that Irish protesters will be more at risk from George Bush’s trigger-happy security people than ever from terrorist actions.” This is pretty much par for the course stuff from McKenna, but Ryle Dwyer takes her to task for it in the pages of the Irish Examiner (registration required).
In all of the attacks on the presidents, not one shot was fired by the secret service, so there was clearly no justification for Patricia McKenna’s assertion that the agents are trigger-happy. She obviously did not know what she was talking about.
Her remarks exhibited ignorance and poor judgment, which she compounded the following day by her refusal to withdraw the unjust allegation, despite being offered repeated opportunities to do so on Joe Duffy’s ‘Liveline’ programme.
It was Patricia who was trigger-happy in shooting her mouth off. If she thought her babble was obscuring her ignorance, she was just fooling herself.
Apparently, demented anti-Americanism does not play all that well even in the press. Curiously, I cannot even find a mention of it on the Green Party website.
UPDATE: If I had kept up with my blog reading, in which I am sadly behind, I would have noticed that the Irish Eagle was already on this story.
MORE UPDATE: Kesher Talk links to a related story, and puts it under Euroweenie watch. God help me, but I am actually going to put in a defense of Europe on this one. Kesher Talk links to a misleading piece in Newsday:
Justice Minister Michael McDowell, speaking during a two-day meeting of European police chiefs in Dublin, said U.S. Secret Service agents would be allowed to open fire if deemed necessary "to save lives."
"Shooting at anybody in Ireland is only done to save lives. That's a fundamental principle of our constitution and our common law, and it's not going to be abrogated in any way," McDowell said.
Opposition leaders critical of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq called for Ireland's national police force, the Garda Siochana, to have sole responsibility for Bush's security.
"This is a sovereign nation, yet Minister McDowell appears to be prepared to hand over responsibility for law enforcement and for the use of firearms to the security personnel of another country," complained Joe Costello, justice spokesman for the opposition Labour Party.
Notice that the actual government has agreed to cooperate with the Secret Service. The complaint is from the Labour Party, which is not in government. I think "opposition Labour Party" is misleading. It suggests the primary opposition, like the opposition Conservative Party in Britain. The primary house of the Irish parliament is the Dail, in which the Labour Party has only 21 out of 166 seats. I don't see why Ireland should be blamed for its self-styled intellectuals and its trendy leftists. Kesher Talk wouldn't denounce America because of Cynthia McKinney and Noam Chomsky.Posted by sjostrom on March 29, 2004 10:14 AM
