Or maybe I should call this one "Zombie lies" because this is one that won't seem to die. In reporting that the Hapless Government™ is still considering an appeal of the decision that instructed them to seek Omar Khadr's repatriation, CTV tells us:
Khadr, 22, has spent years in the detention facility on charges that he killed an American medic in Afghanistan in 2002.
As I've said before, Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer was a special forces soldier with cross-training as a paramedic. On the day he was killed he was not wearing the appropriate insignia nor was he acting as a medic; he was acting as a combat soldier. To continue to repeat that Omar Khadr is charged with killing a medic after all this time is just sloppy reporting.
CTV = "sloppy reporting"? Surely you are misguided. Don't you know that CTV never reports anything until it has both sourced AND approved by the Tory's! C'mon, with "checks" such as these, how could there ever be a lack of "balance"?
I was giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming it was just sloppiness. Given all the attention this case has had and the fact that this is a pretty basic fact, I would have thought that calling it sloppiness would make them look bad enough.
I have yet to hear of a country that will nor repatriate one of it's own Child Soldiers. What is the goverment trying to hide here? Is it because it was complicite in either the torture of Omar, or the coverup of the details that show Omar was not the only person that was still alive when they entered the compound. Omar was shot twice in the back,so he was hardly in an aggessive or threatening position. Perhaps the rules of engagment have a double standard for the nato troops and the resident population?
Bring this poor boy home and at least give him a fighing chanch at a normal life
Slightly off topic.. (but not quite)... this was interesting over at Macleans tonight"
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/26/the-whole-thing-could-turn-out-to-be-moot/
I cringe every time they refer to Khadr killing a medic. That is so far from the truth that it makes me ill that they keep repeating this lie. He should have been released from the get-go and to think he is still languishing in Guantanamo is just tragic. I am definitely hoping he is released soon and that he can recover from all the abuse he has suffered.
Come on pogge, GEEZE ..... next thing is you are going to tell me that some of the 9/11 hijackers did not come from Canada. The US FEMA director and your good friend and mine, John McCain, have told me:
"Well, some of the 9-11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know,"
"AS YOU KNOW"!
I could never understand the so-called reasoning behind charging Khadr with murder in the first place. If anything, it was self-defense. Somebody shoots at you in battle, and you're not supposed to shoot back??? Or you can shoot back only if you're an American? What a pile of BS.
I suspect they're reluctant to bring him home because it will show that the whole thing was wrong from the beginning. Typical stupid government response to anything they don't want to face up to.
croghan27:
Yes, but we know that McCain and reality aren't on speaking terms. I'm not sure they've even been introduced.
I could never understand the so-called reasoning behind charging Khadr with murder in the first place.
Politics. They were looking for high profile cases to demonstrate that they were winning the so-called war on terrorism. When they figured out who Khadr's father was, they figured they could get some mileage out of trumping up some charges and having a splashy trial.
The official form charging Khadr makes no mention of Sgt. Speer being a medic. It says:
" Omar Ahmed Khadr did, in Afghanistan, on or about July 27,2002, murder Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, U.S. Army, while in the context of and associated with armed conflict and without enjoying combatant immunity, by throwing a hand grenade that caused Sergeant First Class Speer's death."
The claim is therefore that Sgt. Speer was a soldier, and because Khadr was "without combatant immunity", i.e. he was a civilian, the killing of a combatant becomes murder.
The official charging document nowhere alleges that Khadr killed a medic, which would be a totally separate war crime.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Khadr%20-%20D%20-%20068%20Motion%20to%20Dismiss%20Speedy%20Trial.pdf
pogge, I think that charging Khadr (so they could hold him and interrogate him) was at least partly for reasons more than politics. The drum-beat for "actionable intelligence" was being hyped (cynically by some, but believed by many), and actionable intelligence doesn't require a guilty person. It works by association, and Omar had associations. I think that some people, at least, really believed they could find things out from him -- places he'd been, people he'd met, and so on.
From what I've been reading the past couple of days about the intentional solicitation of false confessions, though, I admit that my mind is turning around seriously on the general topic. Not on Khadr much, though. At first somebody really thought he might know things. And then after that, they had to cover up the outrage of what they'd done by hanging on to the fiction of his guilt.
"When they figured out who Khadr's father was, they figured they could get some mileage out of trumping up some charges and having a splashy trial."
I doubt that is the reason, since they originally kept him at Guantanamo with no trial planned.
It is a pretty big stretch to charge Khadr with murder, though since, according to international law, he was probably not required to wear a uniform or insignia.
According to the Hague Conventions, combatants have to wear uniforms, and wear insignia, because the failure to do so tends to bring civilians into jeopardy.
However, there is an exception:
"The inhabitants of a territory which has not been occupied, who, on the approach of the enemy, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having had time to organize themselves in accordance with Article 1, shall be regarded as belligerents if they carry arms openly and if they respect the laws and customs of war. "
I think that Khadr may fit that profile. If so, he is a lawful combatant, and cannot be convicted of murder.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp#art2