Omar Show Trial on Hold

just in time for Ramadan, eh? (4.00 / 11)

"When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky" Buddha

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by: Lady Libertine @ Fri Aug 13, 2010 at 16:28:44 PM UTC

rtfo, sister (4.00 / 4)

This reprehensible.

I hate Obama as much as Bush now - of not more for portraying himself as the anti-bush.

Fucking LIARS and WAR CRIMINALS are all in DC.

Visit me @ The Wild Wild Left! Crossposting is good for us all!

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by: Diane G @ Fri Aug 13, 2010 at 16:44:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

After almost two years, all the evidence is in, and is in the public record now. (4.00 / 9)

Available all over the web everywhere you go for anyone who wants to read it.

It's time.

Time for The Left (professional, amateur, or otherwise)... while we still can... with our Free Press and open public Internet).... to publicly, in the court of public opinion,  try, convict, and sentence any terrorist who has bragged about and publicly confessed to  "'trying' a child soldier for War Crimes".

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by: Edger @ Fri Aug 13, 2010 at 16:38:25 PM UTC

They always go after the women and children first, usually civilians as collateral (4.00 / 5)

.... damage, to terrorise the occupied population into cooperating.   Now, looking at the history of places like Afghanistan (or Vietnam) how well do they think this policy is really going to work ?  The one side uses troops wearing uniforms and the most sophisticated military hardware on the planet, and the other side uses guerilla technique, intimidation, the local culture,
history, and just waits for passerby.

Re Omar Khadr,  they killed the guy's father back in 2003 in Pakistan, the Canadian government has been resisting sending Omar Khadr's older brother Abdullah to America in spite of the attempt to do the same thing to him.  Yeah, you drag your kids around to foreign countries and raise them to be mini military mujaheeden you're a ****.   But you can't blame the kids for having this happen to them.  

Ottawa Citizen.com  "we should be embarrassed"  8/13/2010

A United Nations special representative for children and armed conflict issued a statement on Aug. 9, saying "the Omar Khadr case will set a precedent that may endanger the status of child soldiers all over the world."

"Even if Omar Khadr were to be tried in a national jurisdiction, juvenile justice standards are clear; children should not be tried before military tribunals," the statement from Radhika Coomaraswamy explains. "The United States and Canada have led the way in creating and implementing these norms. ... I urge both governments to come to a mutually acceptable solution on the future of Omar Khadr that would prevent him from being convicted of a war crime that he allegedly committed when he was a child."

Canada's government has ignored this, as it has ignored questions about the implications of Khadr's age all along.
His age, though, is not the only factor that makes many observers of his trial queasy.

There is also the fact that the judge has ruled that statements Khadr made to his interrogators are admissible, even though they were, as Khadr's defence argued, "fruit of a poisonous tree." Khadr was, in the words of a defence submission, "asphyxiated, terrorized by dogs, doused with freezing water and left in the cold." He was threatened with rape.

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by: AmericanRiverCanyon @ Fri Aug 13, 2010 at 18:10:29 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

They do that because (4.00 / 4)

they are apparently "real men", or something... in their delusions.

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by: Edger @ Fri Aug 13, 2010 at 18:28:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The whole weight of the empire, in a showcase trial, against (4.00 / 4)

a child.  Who was following his father's instructions.

It's despicable.

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by: cumberland sibyl @ Fri Aug 13, 2010 at 23:41:03 PM UTC

More than despicable, I think.. (4.00 / 3)

CTV, June 03, 2007

   Khadr, who was only 15 years old when he was taken into custody, presents a special challenge as the first juvenile to face war crimes charges in decades.

   ...

   For activists, Khadr's as much of a victim as Speer and Sgt. Layne Morris, who was nearly blinded during the firefight.

   "We have a kid who was dragged to meet al Qaeda leaders from the age of 10, sent to military training camps at age 15 and then out to the battlefield to be shot at," said Jennifer Daskal at Human Rights Watch.

   ...

   Authorities insist international law permits them to prosecute Khadr as an enemy combatant without the rights afforded prisoners of war while others argue the United States has an obligation to rehabiliate child soldiers under a United Nations treaty it has ratified.

   Meantime, some find it strange that Khadr is among only three prisoners to be formally charged since the military commission system was revamped last year [in 2006] after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was illegal.

   "You have to wonder why it's Omar Khadr who may be the first to go on trial," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.

   To give others with links to the Sept. 11 attacks a hearing may expose some uncomfortable information about interrogation techniques employed by the CIA, he said.

   "They don't want that information on the front of the New York Times."

Omar Khadr "...was dragged to meet al Qaeda leaders from the age of 10, sent to military training camps at age 15 and then out to the battlefield to be shot at," said Jennifer Daskal at Human Rights Watch.

When a young kid is exposed to and indoctrinated in, for example, a dogmatic religion such as Roman Catholicism (or any other doctrine), from a young age the mindset created is nearly impossible to break out of, and the entire world is seen through the lens of what s/he has been taught. Anything that questions it is seen as threat.

Khadr's entire experience with Americans took place after he had already been indoctrinated, and consisted of being shot at and bombed by Americans.

The US troops entered the flattened compound and now they say the kid jumped out from behind a wall after being shot and killed one US soldier with a grenade?

If I was him and I could get up I probably would have done it too. It's called defense.

Should anything different have been expected?

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by: Edger @ Sat Aug 14, 2010 at 00:36:29 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

There is a strong constituency that is advocating (4.00 / 1)

for prosecution. Obama does not decide he's going to prosecute Khadr based on the merits of the case. Like anything else he evaluates the political pressures. First in line to pressure him are men and women with guns pointing at him; in other words the covert ops people within and without government who have considerable power. These people are no different from thugs that worked for Saddam Hussein or Joe Stalin or A. Hitler. These are American thugs no different from any others that have ever lived. They prosper, in large part, because Americans refuse to believe that underneath the surface the current oligarchy rules by physical force, i.e., the ability to hurt and, ultimately, kill their enemies. That power counts for a lot in Washington or anywhere.

The various cliques that make up this mob of thugs are in the military, in the various intel services and all the other investigative and security services and they have been partners in power for a long time. Khadr and the whole Guantanomo caper had very specific goals but they boil down to this: terrorizing people. America is the main source of terror in the world and the idea is to make people scared who would oppose imperialism and predatory capitalism. Khadr emphasizes the arbitrary and thoughtless way American justice now operates--this is intentional. The policy makers want the world to think we are crazy and unbalanced and capable of any crime. Official denials that they are doing anything wrong in the face of obvious evidence is part of the stance of cultivated evil.

In a sense, this clique which came out of the Wall Street banking millieu early in the 20th century is about as close to evil as you can get. My sense is that they are actively cultivating evil as an almost magical force much like the Emperor and Darth Vader did in the Star Wars series. You can see this reflected in some of the writings of the Neocons (closely associated with that community I speak of) which explicitly stated in the 90's that they wanted the U.S. to appear to be unbalanced and capable of anything in order to inspire fear, i.e., terror.

If we look at the solid evidence for this clique's involvement with some of our most violent episodes (the assassinations of the 60's and 9/11) we can get a sense of the magnitude of this evil. I hate to use the term "evil" because I don't actually believe these individuals are "evil" but rather that a force we can call evil works through these people as it could work towards us if we had made different decisions in life. My guess is that most of these people believe they are doing the right thing.  

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by: banger @ Sat Aug 14, 2010 at 14:05:25 PM UTC