NEWS: Feel The Pride, America!

POLITICS: Feel The Pride, America!

The treatment of Omar Khadr is an example of the monsters we have become in our “War on Terror.” Born in 1988 in Toronto, Khadr was raised by two, insane Muslim parents. They spent every moment preparing him for Jihad, telling him suicide bombers were the bestest of the best.

Sounds like my old man -- except he made me play baseball.

When Omar was two, the family moved to Pakistan. In 1992, the family moved back to Canada for three years because Dad stepped on a land mine and needed to recover. Shit happens during a Jihad, yo. Omar's father raised money for Al Qaeda and sent Khadr to get formal military training before he was 12. He spent most of his formative years in Al Qaeda camps and even spent time with Osama bin Laden in Jalalabad.

When the US attacked Afghanistan, Omar was fighting with the Taliban. Well, sort of fighting. At 14, his job was to wash clothes and cook for the actual fighters. On July 27, 2002, Khadr was sent to the village of Ab Khail to translate for Taliban fighters at a gathering. American forces arrived and a firefight broke out.

Khadr was captured and charged with throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer. The Pentagon said that Khadr was the only one who could have killed Speer, because he was the only person alive at that point. Of course, the Pentagon was lying.

Khadr was 15 on that day. Check him out in all his glory.



The shooting left him blind in one eye. And Khadr’s fucked up life was only about to become a lot worse. Raised by animals, who filled his mind with poison and attempted to turn him into a killing machine, Khadr saw one way out.

No can do. We have to torture you and make you go crazy. Khadr was patched up and sent to Guantanamo for some civilized American treatment.

How about a little more detail?

In 2004, the U.S. called him an “enemy combatant” in a Summary of Evidence memo that was prepared for his Combatant Status Review Tribunal. A judge tossed the case out last year.

No problemo.

But just to make sure there are no further problems, Khadr is now an "unprivileged belligerent." “Unprivileged belligerents” apparently don't have the right to wage war.

I am constantly amazed at our retardation and incredible lack of humanity. I am, however, no longer amazed by our constant defying of our own laws and treaties.

But he’s 20 now, so I wouldn’t expect any sympathy from anyone. He’s a product of child abuse, raised by an insane family that tried to turn him into a suicide bomber. He is the reason many countries came together to create child soldier laws. But rather than being civilized, we have gone the other way. We have justified every lie Omar’s parents ever told him. We have erased any doubt he may have had that America must be destroyed. And we have given up any right to condemn another country when they torture our soldiers during war. We are no different than the supposed enemy we fight.

Omar Khadr will have another hearing next week. Maybe we should ask him if he wants to continue to live like a rat, or if he would rather die. But, then, that would show a glimmer of humanity.

i struggle to comprehend such hate and injustice, on both sides

i couldn't possibly comprehend the hate he must feel

Pretty fucking incredible.

Let's see if Mr. POW McCain can split with the sadistic glee of the current administration to address the issue of Guantanamo and prisoner torture.

In times of war, isn't it understood that people die? Since when do we prosecute individual soldiers for killing other soldiers? Even if the kid DID throw the grenade, isn't that kinda what you do during a war? And it's not like they're waging a war on us behind our backs...I think that if we declare war on terrorism, then we should kinda acknowledge the rules of war. But then we would be the good guys, and other people might stop hating us so much. Can't have that.

Vile.

this is fucking insane. i know we torture these people down in guantanimo bay, but it still surprises me every time how fucking ridiculous it is. how the fuck can someone treat another human being like this? if i ever used someone who was completely defenseless as a human mop i'd fucking stab myself in the neck. what happened to these troops down in Gitmo? what happened where they find this kind of behavior as acceptable? hopefully our next president, whomever it might be, will do something about this.

America: Protecting the world from laundrymen, worldwide. Maybe the CIA thinks he found a list of attacks when he was scrubbing bin Ladens BVDs. He might have vital information! Better send stockula down there quick to waterboard him to find out Osama's inside leg measurement.

Great reasoning there, Gen'rul! Excuse me while I go puke.

I feel ill all of a sudden. But thanks for continuing to post this sort of stuff, FTR - I'm betting I wouldn't hear about it from almost every other media source in the US...

Perhaps we should send members of Al Qaeda to Disneyland, or Six Flags, or something. Perhaps a parade in their honor on Main Street, USA. They should be rewarded for wanting to kill as many white devils as they can. There are far too many of us around anyway.

The current administration is full of assholes, and the President may well be the Antichrist, but Al Qaeda is the enemy. If you met Omar Khadr and apologized for the way he's been treated, he would much rather kill you than thank you.

Don't doubt that for a second.

He's been taught to hate and kill American's since birth. He was bred for murder. This is not a philosophy to respect, it is to be feared. These are the bad guys, we are not.

That has more to do with the fact that the way he's been treated is unforgivable than anything else.

Troll.

Maybe I'm not properly terrified by a 14 year old Taliban errand boy, but I'm not quite sold on that whole "Let's throw everything that makes America a shining beacon of hope, freedom and liberty out the window otherwise those scary Islamofascists will murder us all" concept.

And Americans have done their damnedest to reinforce that. That's going to work.

I was wondering how long it would take for one of these posts to show up.

With regards to this...

... the treatment described in the article more or less proves you wrong, in case you hadn't noticed.

What happens to him if we let him go? Are we then (rightfully) obligated to compensate him for his mistreatment and provide him with therapy?

Through this show of moral superiority, we're sure to win friends and influence people. We are showing our enemies what a great and wonderful people we are. Through these displays of honor, compassion and justice... how can our enemies not want to through down their weapons and want to be our friends? And think of how heartened our allies are by examples like this... it must gratify them to know that they have sided with the good guys and that if we were to ever be at war with them (check our history... we've been at war with almost everyone at some point, including our current allies), they too can be assured they will receive the same humane treatment we showed this child.

This is democracy in action!

I'm so happy that I live in a country that has gutted our healthcare and education system, ripped away our civil liberties, allows our own people to go hungry and homeless... all to divert money into a war that truly demonstrates what a shining beacon of liberty and freedom we truly are.

Our tax dollars at work!

I think it is equally shameful that the Canadian government has done nothing to help this kid, who fits the criteria of a child soldier. We are fuckin' hypocrites.

This is the point i can never get across to the die hard conservative repubs i happen across. I even tried to explain it like this:

If someone tries to kill me, I have the right to kill them. I do not have the right to put him in my basement and torture him for months or even years. The police would arrest me for doing that.

If someone just says they want to kill me, I don't have the right etc etc

If I hear someone else say that someone else might want to kill me or knows a person who said that they wanted to kill me, etc etc

People still didn't grasp it.

Regardless, article 26 of the Geneva convention, our international agreement on how to treat prisoners of war, recognizes that

and it declares there will be no physical, emotional or mental torture or coercion of prisoners of war.

If you can't accept this on legal or moral grounds, then even a troll should recognize the difference between a minor and an adult.

Summary of the UN Convention against torture

Or, perhaps, we should focus on finding actual high-level leaders, prosecuting them in a legal court, sentencing them to whatever sentence is decided, carrying out that sentence, and getting some closure. Instead of picking up confused teenagers who have been forced into battle by their families.

Because, of course, the only way to react to a wrong is by a larger wrong. There's no chance he might take the moral high ground and walk away.

I'll quote trolls like you as much as I want, thank you very much.

Did you miss the part where he was employed as a highly trained combat servant? He was fucking clothes. That might give you a clue as to his desire to enter actual combat. al Qaeda isn't a group to stop someone from fighting because of their age. If he had wanted to fight, he would have been given a gun, pointed in the direction of US soldiers, and been told not to expect to come back.

Just like all Islamic kids, right? You make me sick.

we don't prosecute soldiers for killing soldiers. however, i believe the geneva convention defines a soldier as a combatant who wears a uniform fighting for an organized military structure as a part of a recognized government. al- qaeda and the taleban don't fall into these catgories, aren't recognized by any international treaty as made up of legitimate soldiers and are thus categorized as unlawful enemy combatants (not to endorse a bastardized bushism). they, therefore aren't protected under the "rules of war," formally or otherwise, and are subject to prosecution under many international laws.
that being said, i still think we need to take a hard look at what defines our humanity and us as a nation. mistreatment of a child who was indoctrinated into a terrorist organization is still mistreatment of a child and this will help to negatively color the world's view of modern america. thus, i don't think we need to "recognize the rules of war" since the organizations we are engaging don't do such; however, i think we need to recognize that the treatment of this child in guantanamo presents a real risk of pushing us one step closer to becoming the 'enemy' we are supposed to be fighting.

You put your children on the battlefield and bad things are going to happen. They call it war. It's not different from any war in the history of man, and we should always be fighting on the enemy's terms and not some false belief that we must treat an enemy with mercy or dispassion.

We're supposed to be better than that. We're supposed to behave a certain way or else we're no better than those warlords who give guns to 10 year old kids and send them into battle.

Ok, take a step back for a minute and think about what I am about to say, this is not a justification for guantanimo or any of the treatment which is under law illegal under military and civil statutes of just about any country.

In any conflict the longer it goes on the more hardened both sides become and worse and worse atrocities become justified in the eyes of the combatants. Altho Iraq and Afghanistan are fairly recent Islamic terrorists have been staging attacks for decades and the US has been hit. Considering things like the Daniel Pearl killing and constant almost daily suicide bombings of civilians it's not actually that far of a stretch for people who have to deal with that sort of thing to no longer see the other side as being human anymore. I know we would all like to think that we would be able to always know right from wrong black from white, but it's not always the case, yes we are using tactics that are as deplorable as the ones the enemy uses. All of this did not all spring up in a vacume it was a progression to this point and as long as it's ok for people to be killed in the name of Allah it's going to be ok in the eyes of some to do equally deplorable things in the name of freedom.

Ask yourselves are we the monster, are they the monster or did we just end up creating each other?

i agree, but a prison cell isn't a battlefield. his treatment occurred after he was disarmed and no longer a threat. if you put children into a war they will be killed, i know. but i think our greatest punishments should be reserved for those who put the children there, not the children themselves.

interesting perspective, people don't often make the effort to thoroughly analyze that many aspects of such a complex issue.