I've written many posts about the case of Omar Khadr. I consider the way that Canadian child soldier was treated by his own government to be one of the worst legal travesties in modern Canadian history. And one that should shame us all. So I'm glad to see that he is finally going to get some justice. And as usual, I am disgusted by the reaction of Cons like Jason Kenney.
In the last nine years I wrote more than 100 posts about the case of Omar Khadr, because I considered it one of the most shameful episodes in modern Canadian history. And could never accept that a Canadian child soldier could be tortured and jailed in a place like Guantanamo. And abandoned by his own government. But this will probably be my last post about him. Not because the case is over, it isn't. The federal government is still appealing his release on bail. But because amazingly enough it seems to have had a happy ending.
I wrote my first post on Omar Khadr eight years ago, and called it The Guantanamo Kid and Canada's Shame. And nothing that has happened since has ever changed my view. For what was done to that child soldier has been one of the most shameful episodes in modern Canadian history, and an absolute travesty of justice. So you can imagine how happy I felt today when I saw that picture of Omar walking free in his own country at last. Or read these words.
I don't think I've ever been so ashamed to be a Canadian as the day I saw this video of CSIS agents interrogating Omar Khadr.
The sound of Omar sobbing "help me...help me" in that ghastly gulag, when he finally realized that those Canadians weren't there to help him, practically froze the blood in my veins.
A shame only made worse by the knowledge that most Canadians didn't give a damn. Because they hate his crazy family eh? Even though he WAS a child soldier.
So I'm glad that two Montreal film makers have made a documentary out of it...
What we see is a blurry, black-streaked box, the faces of Mr. Khadr’s Canadian interrogators hidden behind cartoonish smudges. This gives them a disturbingly jaunty look as they fiddle with an asthmatic air-conditioner and proffer cartons of fast food, their fake bonhomie soon descending into psychological cruelty.
In the film’s most powerful section, Mr. Khadr (now 25 and serving an eight-year sentence after a 2010 plea deal) begs for protection and cries out for his mother while the observers join him on screen, watching his torment as if they were members of a celestial jury.
What they are really doing, however, is bearing silent witness to the repudiation of due process and the basic indecency of treating a legal minor as an adult enemy.
Because I couldn't say it better than that. Or this.
Watching this documentary, we are compelled to consider who we are as a people if our Constitution fails to protect those who, ostensibly, seek to destroy us. Cycling through outrage and then grief, as Omar Khadr abandons his expectations for justice, viewers of every political stripe will understand that the rule of law is the last thing we should ever abandon.
And I only hope it wins an Oscar. So the whole world will see what Stephen Harper's Cons have done to the rule of law, and what kind of a country Canada has become.
Human rights experts want to know why a mentally ill Canadian citizen sat in a secretive U.S. detention facility in Afghanistan for eight months without a consular visit, and more than 18 months behind bars in total.
Well I see the military jury at the kangaroo trial of Omar Khadr has dropped its pants, squatted over a hole in the ground, and...um...delivered its symbolic sentence.
And no doubt given Stephen Harper a warm fuzzy feeling and/or a woody.
Omar Khar was sentenced today to 40 years in prison for murder, terrorism and spying by a military panel unaware that the confessed Canadian war criminal had agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence capped at eight years and the chance to return to Canada after one more year in Guantanamo.
By sentencing Khadr to FIFTEEN years more than even the war criminals at the Pentagon had demanded. Even though he almost certainly killed no one, and the only reason he was singled out for prosecution, as I explained in this post.
Was so the Pentagon could lower the bar of justice and international law so much, they could do ANYTHING to ANYONE.
So now all I want to know is when can that jury and that Stalinesque court be arrested for crimes against a child soldier? And what is the Harper government waiting for to demand that Omar be brought home IMMEDIATELY?
For that barbarous sentence only serves to prove beyond all doubt that the trial was a travesty.
"Everything about Omar Khadr's ordeal at Guantanamo Bay over the past eight years has been a fiasco," Mr. Neve said. "It comes as no surprise that the sentencing phase and this stunningly punitive jury decision has so starkly highlighted the injustices of this process."
And sentencing him to spend another year, in a maximum security section of that hideous gulag called Guantanamo, is an abominable act of cruelty and judicial torture.
Oh well. I'll have more to say about this in the days ahead when I'm not so angry. But tonight I just want to pay tribute to the extraordinary strength of that young Canadian, who has been victimized by just about everyone.
His own family, the Taliban, the Pentagon torturers, two Canadian governments. And abandoned by so many of his own people.
But although he is still riddled with shrapnel and blind in one eye, has somehow managed to endure, and is by all accounts a decent and gentle guy.
I also want to salute Khadr's defence team, Canadians like Dennis Edney, as well as the members of the U.S. military, who criticized their superiors and their own government to stand up for the rule of law.
“Al-Qaeda uses kids, they had radicalized him,” Col. Jackson said, reminding the panel that Mr. Khadr is considered internationally to be a “child soldier,” a victim, rather than a combatant who can’t, under United Nation’s protocol’s be held accountable for war crimes.
And by so doing tried to save the honour of their country. Unlike their weak and cowardly President.
The verdict of history will be harsher on Obama, and Harper, and all the others, than today's abominable sentence was on Khadr.
And what else can you say eh?
Except that for Canada the shame will last FOREVER.
And that NOTHING will ever change the truth. Omar Khadr was a child soldier.
I've been standing up for the human rights of Omar Khadr for so many years you can imagine how I feel about his shameful show trial. This horrifying mix of Kafka and Stalin.
The statement of facts Khadr signed also says he would think back on his actions and the death of the American soldier when he was aggravated by his guards in Bagram, Afghanistan, and "it would make him feel good."
Dr. Welner's conclusions were reached, he explained, based largely on his understanding of the work of a psychiatrist in Copenhagen, Dr. Nicolai Sennels, who published a study of young Muslims in prison there. Although Welner admitted that he hadn't actually read Dr. Sennels's book because it was written in Danish, which Welner can't read.
He "expressed no interest in developing himself academically," said Welner, because when given U.S. schoolbooks - not classes, just books - he did not show much interest in reading them. Instead, he read Harry Potter, which Welner characterized as a form of "escapism."
The fact that Khadr is surrounded by all Muslim prisoners - a choice made by the U.S. military, not Omar Khadr -- is also a strike against him, said Welner. He's been "marinating in radical Jidahism," Welner said several times on Tuesday. Welner had not spoken to any of the other prisoners in Camp 4, and the source of his information about those prisoners and their beliefs was unclear.
Kafka.Or Dr Strangelove. Or just Dr Welner the inventor of the...um... Depravity Scale.
Because let me get this straight. They riddled this kid with shrapnel. Then shot him twice in the back.
They then tortured him, and locked him up in Guantanamo, and now because he spent so many years there, he's too dangerous to release?
Oh boy. Here we go again . For the record, Khadr's guards say he is a decent young man. Not a religious fanatic. He almost certainly did not throw any grenade because he was too badly wounded.
Yesterday I told you why the Bush/Cheney administration decided to single out Omar Khadr for prosecution, when they had so many other adult prisoners they could have gone after first.
In the case of Khadr, the agenda was clear enough: Khadr would be accused of murdering an American soldier. He would demonstrate a new principle that the Bush Administration sought to establish, namely that it is a war crime for civilians to take up arms against a military force that invades their country.
The fact that this new principle is opposed by most of the world and undermines the very foundations of the laws of war was probably only an added benefit, in their perverse reasoning. And similarly, they seem to have taken a certain perverse pleasure in violating the protections that international law gives to child warriors. They were trying to prove a favorite neoconservative meme: international law is meaningless.
Because if they could rape the rights of a Canadian kid, and get away with it, they could rape the rights of ANYONE.
Today the wonderful young humanitarian Craig Kielburger writes about the time he met Omar.
It dawned on me that people thought my 13-year old self did something kids shouldn’t be capable of doing. But, when Omar was pushed into weapons training at 10, apparently he should have known better.
Really though, the two of us are products of our environment. Omar is just being punished for his.
And the so-called King of Torture lays a little pain on Canada.
The directors also interviewed Damien Corsetti, who worked as an interrogator in Afghanistan and Iraq, including at the Abu-Ghraib prison which became infamous for the torture of inmates.
Corsetti, who was nicknamed “The Monster” and “King of Torture,” sympathized with Khadr.
“Ultimately the blame now lies on the Canadian people, of how I, as a cold, callous son of a bitch, had more compassion for that boy than his own people.”
I'm not quite sure what to say after a statement like that, from a guy like this:
Damien Corsetti looks at me with his small eyes and says: “Look, they leave us alone in this room, they give me a roll of duct tape to tie you to the chair, I turn off the light and in five hours you sign a piece of paper for me saying that you’re Usamah Bin-Ladin”.
Except what does it say about a country, when a torturer has more of a conscience than a Prime Minister?
Why are we allowing our Bush/Cheney Cons to keep raping the rule of law?
Can you imagine what Omar must have endured in a place like that?
His defence team (which has changed a number of times over the years) has long maintained he is innocent. He has had opportunities to accept plea deals in the past, and turned them down. Now he’s willing to agree. Do people plead guilty to murder when they’re not guilty? Do lawyers advise their clients to admit to murders they didn’t commit?
And I realized I hadn't.
So for those who still don't get it, the ONLY possible reason Omar Khadr would agree to plead guilty is because if he doesn't, the kangaroo court he faces could sentence him to THIRTY years in jail, in addition to the seven years he has already spent in one of the worst prisons on earth.
For a young Canadian who has endured what he has, Omar has shown remarkable strength. Although he's still riddled with shrapnel, and blind in one eye, and has been abandoned by just about everyone, he's never given up hope. But a human being can only take so much.
As for those who have ever wondered why the Bush administration, and their stooges the Harper Cons, chose to make an example out of Khadr, they should really read this (PDF)
Or just this paragraph:
In the case of Khadr, the agenda was clear enough: Khadr would be accused of murdering an American soldier. He would demonstrate a new principle that the Bush Administration sought to establish, namely that it is a war crime for civilians to take up arms against a military force that invades their country.
The fact that this new principle is opposed by most of the world and undermines the very foundations of the laws of war was probably only an added benefit, in their perverse reasoning. And similarly, they seem to have taken a certain perverse pleasure in violating the protections that international law gives to child warriors. They were trying to prove a favorite neoconservative meme: international law is meaningless.
Sound familiar?
Oh yeah. If you want to know what kind of people you attract by standing up for the rule of law and human decency, here's a comment I received tonight:
Julie said...
Wow...I'm almost ashamed to be Canadian when I see such a collections of vile, putrid, sub-troglodytes terrorist-sympathizers (that would be the Khadr family) supporters (that would be you) creatures like yourself.
I hope you and your terrorist sympathizer relatives all get cancer and die you worthless piece of terrorist sympathizer shits.
Regards.
Nice eh?
As I've always said, this case is EVIL. People who think like Julie are Amerikan scum.
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.
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.
As usual I'm having trouble finding the rights words to describe how I feel about Omar Khadr, Stephen Harper, and this kangaroo court. It's difficult to imagine that a 15-year-old, handcuffed to a stretcher after surgery, bullet holes in his chest and his eyes full of shrapnel, would feel anything but coerced during an interrogation. Yet a U.S. military commission judge ruled yesterday that statements given eight years ago in these circumstances by the Canadian Omar Khadr to U.S. authorities at a prison camp in Bagram, Afghanistan, were reliable and not the product of coercion.
It is a painful irony that the 15-year-old who was coerced by his family to be a terrorist could then be coerced by a democratic state to give evidence against himself.
Because after that what can you say? Except that the trial is a travesty. The judge is a Pentagon goon.
And this outrageous violation of a young Canadian's human rights won't just shame Barack Obama and Stephen Harper
His historic trial before a discredited American military tribunal promises to shame not only U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration but also Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s acquiescent Conservative government. And it may well bring the law into disrepute in both countries.
It will shame us ALL.
In short, Khadr has been cut adrift by his own government, denied rightful status as a child soldier and will be judged by his enemies.
However this case plays out, powerful figures have shown cavalier disregard for a Canadian citizen’s rights, Parliament’s will, and international law. Khadr may be alone in the dock, but judgment will fall on others, too.
Which is why I keep writing about this case. So that if a hundred years from now anyone ever stumbles across this humble blog they will know that some Canadians never went along with this mockery of justice.
Never let this foul Con government, and all the other racists and Pentagon stooges in this country, get away with this crime against a Canadian child soldier.
And never stopped repeating, even when most Canadians didn't give a damn, or would rather not know.
In all the years this young Canadian has been jailed in the most sinister prison on earth, we have never heard a word from him.
Except for that ghastly CSIS interrogation video, where he realizes that the Canadians he thought had come to help him, are collaborating with his torturers. And weeps with despair.
So I was really glad to read this letter from Omar Khadr.
Dennis you always say that I have an obligation to show the world what is going on down here and it seems that we’ve done every thing but the world doesn’t get it, so it might work if the world sees the US sentencing a child to life in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham this process is, and if the world doesn’t see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate, unjust and discrimination! I really don’t want to live in a life like this.
Coming as it does from the loneliest and most abused Canadian in the world, the letter both impresses me with its power.
And scares me.
I know it is hard for you. Just think about me as a child who died and get along with your life. Of course I am not saying that will or willn’t happen but its on my mind all the time.
Because if anything tragic should happen to this young Canadian, this child soldier, this victim of violence, gross injustice, and racism, the ugly stain on our country will never be erased.
But ultimately it inspires me.
I’m so sorry to cause you this pain, but consider it one of your sons hard decisions that you don’t like, but you have to deal with, and always know what you mean to me and know that I will always be the same person you’ve known me and will never change, and please don’t be sad and be hopeful and know that there is a very merciful and compassionate creator watching us and looking out for us and taking care of us all, you might not understand these thing, but know by experience they have kept me how and who I am.
With love and my best wishes to you, and the family, and everybody who loves me, and I love them back in Canada, and I leave you with HOPE and I am living on it, so take care.
Because I believe it clearly shows what everyone who has ever met him has said. Despite the long agony he has endured, Omar Khadr has managed to hold on to his humanity. He is not a fanatic, and could easily be rehabilitated and reintegrated into Canadian society.
And I also love the way he spells HOPE. Like I do. Because if he can hold on to it in Guantanamo, I can hold hold on to it in Stephen Harper's Canada.
And what more can I say eh? Except what I've said for years. And always will say.
I don't think I can ever really understand why Stephen Harper hates Omar Khadr so much. Because I'm not a psychiatrist. But it sure is a creepy Hate Story. The Prime Minister with the cold dead eyes, and the Canadian kid in Guantanamo.Who is slowly going blind, and who just got some more bad news. I used to think it was because Harper wanted to impress George Bush, and show him that he likes torture just as much as he does. Even though there was always more than enough evidence to show that Khadr was innocent. But now I realize that Harper is just feeding his rabid Reform base, who howl with excitement at the pain of others...especially if they're brown,or gay,or women. And who hate the Supreme Court above all Canadian institutions. Because when the Cons roll out the dickhead Pee Wee Poilievre... Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre told reporters that "any decision to ask for Mr. Khadr’s return to Canada is a decision for the democratically elected government of Canada and not for the courts.”
You KNOW they are talking to the crazies... or the morons who think it's OK to torture a Canadian kid because they don't like his family. And after today's hearingone thing is clear: the Cons have run out of arguments and are just extending Omar Khadr's agony, so their rabid base can scream like banshee bigots and keep funding their Perpetual War Fund.
Which makes Stephen Harper look like even more of a psycho. A sadistic freak who would play cheap politics with the life of a Canadian kid. Who was first horribly wounded.
Then tortured. Left to rot in a hell hole like Guantanamo. And is now getting another raw deal. In other words, a Canadian citizen who was captured as a child soldier in Afghanistan, who was dragged over there by his jihadist father, who has rotted without charge for years, will be afforded less fairness and due process than the man accused of masterminding the worst attack on innocent civilians in American history. To repeat: Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen. Oh boy. I know why he's doing it, but why does Stephen Harper seem to enjoy torturing Omar Khadr so much? When he asked that CBC journalist whether she liked handcuffs I thought he was joking. But now I really wonder.
In the name of human decency when will these foul pervert Cons finally be defeated? Before they corrupt us all...
Another day. Another court victory for Omar Khadr. Another slap in the face for Stephen Harper's ugly rogue regime.
The Appeal Court agreed with O’Reilly that Canada had an obligation to take steps to "protect Khadr from further abuse" and that by refusing to request his repatriation, his charter rights were also violated. From those trying to defend our precious Canadian values. But still this cruel political thug doesn't get it: Noting that the Appeal Court's ruling was a split decision, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that he wouldn’t comment until the Department of Justice had examined the decision. Oh boy.I've written about this foul travesty of justice for three years, and I've just about run out of things to say. So I think I'll just echo Dr Dawg. And what Boris says at the Galloping Beaver. And wonder who are these crazed CBC commenters? Because I don't recognize them: Arrest warrants should be issued immediatly against the 2 judges that voted for the terrorists.
They are blatently putting the Majority of Canadians at risk by siding with a known terrorist and as such. should be arrested ,charged and jailed indefineatly
Just like I don't recognize the kind of Ugly Canada Stephen Harper believes in. And will never accept that our beautiful country can't be better than that. Because whatever Harper and his braying jackass supporters say or do, NOTHING will ever change the fact that this badly wounded Canadian child soldier should NEVER have been locked up in that gulag called Guantanamo.
And should NEVER EVER have been tortured.
You know I don't have many things to be proud of in my life so far, but supporting Omar Khadr in the face of this deranged vengeful racist hysteria is definitely one of them. So the only question I have now is when will we FINALLY be rid of this disgusting un-Canadian apartheid regime? Before they shame us FURTHER...
From the Guantanamo trial of Omar Khadr...just so we don't forget him. Or forget what a kangaroo court looks like. On a day when Omar tries to fire both his U.S. military lawyers including his champion Lt. -Cmdr. Bill Kuebler. The man who has fought harder to free him than any other person. The guy the Pentagon tried to fire. But of course Omar doesn't know that, because he has been cutoff from the outside world for seven years. Not allowed access to any news about his trial. So he doesn't really understand what's going on. Except that it's not right "It is not the first unfairness I have gone through, and I expect more unfairness," Mr. Khadr told Col. Parrish. By the end of the day he agrees to keep Kuebler, but it doesn't really matter because Omar's champion is off to graduate school soon. So he will be stuck with the new defence lawyer the Pentagon appointed, who probably won't argue like Kuebler did, that since his client was a child soldier he should be rehabilitated not punished. Or held in a place like Guantanamo. Meanwhile the Canadian government, that was the FIRST to sign the U.N. Protocol on Child Soldiers, didn't even bother to send a representative today. No doubt because they are too busy appealing the Canadian court order that Omar be returned to Canada immediately. Just to appease the cruel, ideological, vindictive nature of Stephen Harper.
Oh boy. Some things are for sure eh? Omar Khadr's Guantanamo trial is a morally bankrupt travesty of justice. And you get the government and the country you deserve...
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by Stephen Harper's decision to appeal the Federal Court ruling that Omar Khadr should be brought home. But it still disgusts me. Because the shame goes on and on. You know when I learned that Canada was the FIRST country to sign the U.N. Protocol on Child Soldiers....the one that says they should be rehabilitated not punished.... I was extremely proud to be a Canadian. Because that's the kind of country I believe in. So when I heard about the Khadr story I couldn't understand why he was being held at Guantanamo, because regardless of what he had done nobody could deny that he WAS a child soldier.
But then when I looked into the case I discovered something that makes the case even more horrible. Omar Khadr almost certainly did NOT kill that American soldier.
And not only that.... some evidence suggests that the soldier who died may have been killed by an American grenade thrown by one of his OWN soldiers. Instead of a Russian grenade used by the Taliban. In other words a death by so-called friendly fire.
Which suggests a possible COVER-UP... and that the only crime that occurred was what they did to Omar. But of course, as I said before, it doesn't really matter. Because even if he had killed that Special Forces soldier, he was a child soldier. Who should have been rehabilitated .....not imprisoned and tortured in terrible places like Guantanamo or Bagram.
But he was. And two Canadian governments didn't lift a finger to help him. Even though according to his lawyers AND his guards Omar remains a decent gentle young man, who dreams of being an artist in Canada...even though he is half blind. A guy who has rejected the extremism of his family, and managed to avoid the clutches of the religious fanatics that surround him. A guy who amazingly enough apparently still loves Canada, even though it abandoned him. My only consolation is that the Federal Court decision is in my opinion rock solid...as well as a harsh indictment of the moral failure of two Canadian governments to do the right and decent thing. And I'm hoping the Appeal Court ruling upholding that decision will be even more BRUTAL. So everybody in this country can understand what CANADIAN values really mean...for those who have forgotten.
So that Stephen Harper is condemned as a mean, miserable, cruel bastard.
Take a close look at this photograph. Because for me it marks the exact moment when Stephen Harper lost his moral authority to govern. The moment he stood up in Question Period today, and announced that he will seek to appeal this ruling.
"The facts, in our judgment, have not changed. "We will be looking at the decision very carefully and, obviously, considering an appeal."
Even though that means that Omar Khadr will continue to be held even longer in that hellish gulag called Guantanamo.
Even though the Judge couldn't be clearer.
"The ongoing refusal of Canada to request Mr. Khadr's repatriation to Canada offends a principle of fundamental justice and violates Mr. Khadr's rights," O'Reilly said in his 43-page decision.
And stated the ugly truth that cannot be hidden, and will not be silenced anymore:
To their eternal shame two Canadian governments allowed the Bush/Cheney war criminals to send a Canadian kid to a place like Guantanamo. Even though he was a child soldier.
Even though he had been badly wounded.
Allowed these monsters to keep him there for almost seven years and torture him.
Never lifted a finger to help him.
And COLLABORATED with his torturers.
How could we ever have allowed this to happen? How can we ever stand up for the rights of children and child soldiers after committing this human right's outrage? You know...William Kuebler, his heroic lawyer, says Omar will probably not find out about today's decision for a few days. But I hope when he does it's as big a present as the Disney comic books he loves so much. Because apparently he has been able to hold on to his humanity better than many Canadians have. Even in that horrible place. And because his horror has been our shame. A black mark on Canada's reputation that will NEVER be erased. Oh well. At least now I will never have to call Stephen Harper Prime Minister again.
Because after today he lacks the moral credentials to call himself a Prime Minister....and uphold our Canadian values. He should resign or be dismissed by all decent Canadians as soon as possible.
Until then all he'll get from me is this:
Harper you miserable, cruel, racist, Bush stooge bastard.
Well I see Miss Universe got a tour of the Guantanamo Bay Torture Centre. And she REALLY loved it. "It was a loooot of fun!" Other highlights included meeting the military dogs – who "did a very nice demonstration of their skills" "We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the(y) recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting. I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful...." Groan. No doubt she thought waterboarding had something to do with surfing. You know I always thought the Miss Universe contest was a crass and grotesque spectacle designed to make women look like bimbos and sex objects. Now I'm forced to conclude that the organizers of the Torture Tour pose a serious threat to Jason Kenney and Dr Roy in the Small Brains but Big Boobs International Idiots Contest. Which is really bad because I've got a quarter riding on each of them. As for La Guantanamera herself....words fail me. So on behalf of Omar Khadr. The Canadian kid who has been rotting in that evil place for years. And all the other people abused by the guards she entertained. And since she loves dogs with skills.... I thought I'd let this guy express my appreciation.
For her equally talented performance...
You know if someone tried to write a musical score for The Great War on Terror. Apart from the screams in the background. I bet you a quarter that's what it would sound like...
I see that the war criminals at Guantanamo are having a farewell bash. Where they get to say a long farewell to their nasty little gulag.....and bash the prisoners.
Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed,
"If one was to use one's imagination, (one) could say that these traumatized, and for lack of a better word barbaric, guards were just basically trying to get their kicks in right now for fear that they won't be able to later..."
Meanwhile, despite this our foul BushCons still won't bring Omar Khadr home.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon says he told his U.S. counterpart that Canada will not interfere in the case of Omar Khadr, the only remaining Western prisoner in Guantanamo Bay. Even though Omar doesn't even have a lawyer.
The attorney for a Canadian-born detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, says the center's chief of military defense lawyers won't permit him to see his client.
Even though he was a child soldier who should be rehabilitated not punished.Even though he has suffered ENOUGH. The dirty racist Con bastards.
Close that monstrous gulag. Put those filthy war criminals on trial.
