"A Bag of Cement Here, a Bag of Cement There..."--Sounds Like a Great Way to Rebuild Those Damn Terror Tunnels, Buster!

After the way Hamas missiles were fired from UNRWA premises in Gaza during the latest war there, you would think that most people would have second thoughts about handing tons o' cash to the UN agency that's done the most to maintain Palestinians as perpetual/permanent refugees. In which case you would be entirely wrong.

It would also be wrong to assume that the head of the wretched body--a bloke from Iowa, of all places--is at all repentant about the role his racket has played in exacerbating the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In fact, he is anything but; he's defiant, actually--especially when it comes to the Israeli concern that building materials earmarked for reconstruction will once again be put to a subterranean use:

We told the Israelis - and they recognize that - that they will not be able to verify down to the last bag of cement, it is not possible. What they are concerned about is material disappearance at a scale to rebuild the tunnels. A bag of cement here, a bag of cement there, it will take 100 years to have enough cement to rebuild some of the tunnels that were destroyed during the conflict. Let's say you have this room and three rooms are knocked down, that is like 30 square meters of cement and we have agreed with Israel and the Palestinians that every square meter requires so much cement and so much aggregate and so much steel. You multiply that by 30 and roughly that is what I need to rebuild the three walls. The part that is going to be more difficult is saying my home that was destroyed was 100 square meters, I have been saving because my son is getting married and I have another son behind him and I want to build 300 square meters. So how are we going to solve this? I think this has to be linked to the building permit and the design through the municipality.

Hey, thank for crunching the numbers there, Scotty (and congrats on your lad's impending nuptials). You'll forgive me, though, if I place your figures under the same "Untrustworthy Statements" heading as Obama's assurances about the non-threat of Ebola and, not so long ago, of ISIS.