Omar Khadr: The Sorrow and the Shame

As you know, I have always considered the story of Omar Khadr to be one of the most disgraceful truly shameful episodes in the history of this country.

And this only makes it worse.

Omar Khadr has agreed to plead guilty to all war crimes charges he faces — including murder — and is ready to serve a total of eight years in prison, seven of them in Canada, Postmedia News has learned.

Khadr was a child soldier, he never should have been jailed and tortured. He is almost certainly not guilty of killing anyone. His so-called trial is a travesty. And sentencing him to eight more years would be an absolute ABOMINATION.

Not only would it be incredibly cruel, it would make a mockery out of justice. It would spare the Canadian government from being rightfully sued. It would take the cowardly Obama administration off the hook. And it would drive another nail into the coffin of the U.N. Protocol on the Treatment of Child Soldiers...that we were the FIRST to sign.

Omar has always resisted a plea bargain, but if he has finally given up, who can blame him eh?

First his crazy terrorist father dragged him off to Afghanistan. Then he was riddled with shrapnel, blinded in one eye, then shot twice in the back, with exit wounds in his chest so big you could see his heart beating.

















Then he was tortured and jailed, first at the CIA prison at Bagram, and then at that hideous gulag called Guantanamo. Then he was betrayed by two Canadian governments, and finally abandoned by his own people.

I'm not surprised that Stephen Harper is still stonewalling. That cold, heartless, psychopath and torture freak is capable of ANYTHING. 

But to see so many Canadians act like Pentagon stooges, racists, and rednecks, just because they don't like him or his family, has both shocked and disgusted me. Those teabaggers should all be ashamed of themselves.

I have absolutely no sympathy for Jihadists or any other kind of religious fanatics, for obvious reasons. But there is no evidence that Khadr is one of them. Everyone who has ever met him, including his guards, describe him as a pleasant young man who prefers reading comics to reading the Koran.

But even if he was a religious fanatic or a rabid homophobe, it wouldn't make any difference to me. Because he was a child soldier, he should have been rehabilitated not tortured and jailed. Whatever happened to doing the honourable, decent, and Canadian thing ? And if we are not better than our enemies who the hell are we?

Oh well. What more can I say that I haven't said so many times before? 

The trial is a travesty. I'm so ashamed of my country. 

Stephen Harper is a bastard.

And whatever they say or whatever they do.

Omar Khadr lives here...