Spain Apologizes to Bolivia for Presidential Plane Delay.

[elleng]

Source: nyt/reuters

Spain apologized on Monday for its part in the events that led Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane to be delayed earlier this month during an international search for U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/07/15/world/europe/15reuters-usa-security-snowden-latinamerica.html?hp&_r=0

[99th_Monkey]

1. Spain apologized, then "denied it had closed its airspace to his flight." ?? huh?

That's a rather an odd juxtaposition, if you ask me.

What are they "apologizing" for doing then?

[Arctic Dave]

2. Where are all the apologist monkeys

to say this never happened.

[cosmicone]

6. I speculate that all the apologist monkeys

who were ridiculing Evo Morales and Bolivia are out celebrating Zimmerman's victory.

[struggle4progress]

3. Nobody seems to be reproducing the full text of the note Spain's envoy presented to Quito

It's likely to be polite diplomatese

As far as I can tell, from the snippets I've seen, Spain has stated that Spain was inadvertently caught up in the events and never closed its airspace or restricted the President's access to its airspace; has expressed its regrets for the inconvenience, discomfort, and irritation of the Bolivian President; has further expressed its regrets its ambassador in Vienna was ineffective or somehow offensive; and finally regards the matter as closed

The proper reading, I might guess, is something along the following lines:

Hi, Bolivia! Look, we're always tickled pink to have the President of Bolivia enjoy our beautiful and scenic Spanish airspace -- in which we take an enormous national pride, perhaps comparable only to the enormous national pride we know you Bolivians take in your beautiful and scenic airspace, which we consider second only to the beautiful and scenic airspace of Spain -- and we had really been looking forward to waving howdy as you flew by. But cheese Louise! we really don't have a clue what all this is supposed to be about: we don't invite ourselves to clusterfucks, and whenever it looks like a clusterfuck might be in progress we make it a point of honor to scram as quickly as we politely can. Naturally, we are very sorry that the President of Bolivia experienced travel delays, and we sure know how grumpy we all feel when that happens to us. And golly gosh, we do feel awful bad our ambassador didn't know what lullabies or funny songs to sing to soothe the Honorable the President of the Great and Sovereign State of Bolivia. So, what we're suggesting is this that we send you this nice note, from which we have carefully edited out most of what we would really like to say, and you can call it an apology if you like, but we're tired of this fucking bullshit and we're not playing along anymore, so grow up. From your BFF, Spain

[DeSwiss]

4. Was there groveling? Because it's no good without the groveling.

- I mean, for impeding the movement of the President of another country's plane, it would seem more than apropos. Mandatory, really. And it always looks better in hindsight if there was at least a little groveling. For the legacy....

K&R

[Judi Lynn]

5. There has to be some groveling, good grief! Where are their manners?

A man never stands so high as when he stoops to grovel when the occasion requires.

Their apology is a greater insult without adequate groveling.

[DeSwiss]

10. ....

[The Great Dadda]

7. Anti-Snowdenites will not like this

They don't think an apology was owed to Morales.

[struggle4progress]

9. Do you have the actual text of the Spanish note?

[Comrade Grumpy]

8. Maybe this will punch a small hole in that giant wall of denial over in General Discussion.

But probably not.

[Douglas Carpenter]

11. the Spanish and French governments are full of Paulbots