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TUESDAY MARCH 11 2008 6:00 AM

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.

Omar's father always said he did not want to die in bed. He wanted to be killed. When his children were very young, he told them, "If you love me, pray that I will get martyred." Three times he asked Omar's older brother Abdurahman to become a suicide bomber. It would bring honor to the family, he said. Abdurahman declined. Later, when Ahmed sensed that Abdurahman's faith was weakening, he told him, "If you ever betray Islam, I will be the one to kill you."

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.

However, a classified document, inadvertently released to reporters at the military prison by a Pentagon official Monday, provides a different eyewitness account of the events.

A U.S. soldier at the battle said in sworn testimony that two al-Qaeda fighters were alive after the fatal grenade attack.

The unidentified soldier says he killed the first al-Qaeda fighter before spotting Khadr, whom he said was wounded, on his knees and facing away from him. For reasons he does not go into, he says he shot him in the back twice.

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

The shooting left him blind in one eye. And Khadrs 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.

"Kill me," he murmured, in fluent English. "Please, just kill me."

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.

In February, his U.S. lawyer told reporters the teenager had been used as a human mop to clean urine on the floor and had been beaten, threatened with rape and tied up for hours in painful positions at Guantanamo Bay.

How about a little more detail?

Many hours had passed since Omar had been taken from his cell. He urinated on himself and on the floor. The MPs returned, mocked him for a while and then poured pine-oil solvent all over his body. Without altering his chains, they began dragging him by his feet through the mixture of urine and pine oil. Because his body had been so tightened, the new motion racked it. The MPs swung him around and around, the piss and solvent washing up into his face. The idea was to use him as a human mop. When the MPs felt they'd successfully pretended to soak up the liquid with his body, they uncuffed him and carried him back to his cell. He was not allowed a change of clothes for two days.

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.

A judge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruled June 4 that Omar Khadr's case could not go forward because a military tribunal had merely determined he was an "enemy combatant" and because the judge believed he could not make such a determination of "unlawful" status.

No problemo.

The new Court of Military Commission Review has ordered a military judge to reopen the terrorism case against a 20-year-old Canadian accused of killing a U.S. serviceman in Afghanistan, ruling that the judge's decision earlier this year to dismiss the case was in error.

In a 25-page opinion issued last night, a three-member panel of the court decided that judges in military commissions can determine whether terror suspects are "unlawful enemy combatants" and are therefore subject to trial

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.

In December 2002, the United States ratified a treaty that establishes 18 as the minimum age for any compulsory recruitment or participation in armed conflict. This treaty "the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Children" obliges governments to assist in the demobilization and rehabilitation of former child soldiers, with a particular responsibility to rehabilitate child soldiers within its jurisdiction.

But hes 20 now, so I wouldnt expect any sympathy from anyone. Hes 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 Omars 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.

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Comments

livertarian

Fairfax, VA

February 2008

MAR 11, 2008 01:38 PM

code_red said:
this entire thing is the result of poor oversight from everyone in the Government. I did my time in the military working at a iraqi prison and I can tell you straight up that not all service members are evil bastards who wish to torture people, but their are some messed up people and the lack of oversight just makes these types of atrocities possible.

Oh yea, and the whole "breaking-international-law-while-existing-through-double-standards" thing also helps.

I believe you. I know too many decent people who are serving in Iraq. We need to bring them all home, right now.

WrockinWrooster - your story is fascinating, though hard to believe.

UpTight - are you making apologies for torture? Don't be stupid. Torture has no benefits, whether strategic, tactical, moral or logical. It is ineffective. John Fucking "Walnuts" McCain endured torture and apparently said nothing of value... so one hopes he will remain opposed to the practice by the US. This is not an endorsement for McCain, rather I am pointing out that even a douchebag war hawk realizes the stupidity of allowing torture.

Bastardo

Boston, MA

January 2005

MAR 11, 2008 01:44 PM

FearTheReaper said:

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

WrockinWrooster said:
None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. While in prison in New Jersey, USA I was given a potent very long lasting hallucinogen which I suspect was BZ or rather some new shit which they wished to test. BZ is nasty stuff that we have about a million tons of laying around in various forms. . I was drugged other times and subjected to both psychological and physical torture. Following all of this the guards attempted to assasinate me while in a van being driven from one facility to another. A blanket was thrown over my head and then a very large african american guard began strangling me and beating the shit out of me whilst I was hancuffed behind my back and with my feet in leg irons. The guard who was driving the van pulled over and came in the back and both of them began trying to beat me to death and strangle me. After some time they realized that this was unsuccessful as I was I think to agile for them to and they were unable to completely choke me out. After a very long time of this the van was pulled over on Bloomfield Avenue and they pulled me out of the van took the blanket off my head and then sprayed almost an entire can of mace down my throat. When I got to the next "facility" the treatment continued and I was given something that the guards call "the stations of the cross" the conclusion of which is ALWAYS the prisoners death. Its been done more than once hence the name and an established procedure. It is only by the grace of God that I survived. As a direct result of my survival I was charged with aggravated assault on an officer and attempted escape in order to cover up their grotesque anti-liberty anti-american misdeeds. If anyone is wondering I was in jail on a drug charge and hadnt been in a fight since elementary school. Remember. This kind of shit happens EVERY time the republicans come to town.

So, you followed up this insane story, with this PM to me:

Reaper,

Far be it from me to tell you how to write. But do you think you could have made your point with maybe 3 or 4 sets of hahas instead of an entire column length? You are obviously a complete jackass. Stick a buttplug in it.

Wrooster

And you expect me to see you as anything less than insane?

It puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose!

Uncognitive

Brooklyn, NY

May 2003

MAR 11, 2008 01:49 PM

UpTight said:
"Reject evil in all its forms"? Sorry, it's a fucking war zone. A war declared against us by Jihadists. There are a myriad of factors to blame for this situation before you should even think of blaming US troops for being violent in a war zone.

Guantanamo Bay isn't a fucking war zone.

Even it it was, nobody's blaming US troops for "being violent", they're blaming them for torturing a teenage boy, including threatening him with rape.

Do you really think torture and the threat of sexual assault isn't, oh, what's the word I'm looking for here...EVIL?

UpTight said:
Of course, the military could employ community outreach officers to interview all enemy combatants during a conflict. That way they could know whether the approaching Jihadist in that funny belt was a deranged suicide bomber or just someone who had a difficult childhood. Okay, the military might lose a few outreach officers in the process, but at least they could fight the war against the Taliban with a clean social conscience.

Or the U.S. military could discipline soldiers that do things like torture and threaten to rape prisoners in their custody. Unless you can somehow prove how dousing a prisoner in cleanser and urine or threatening to rape him is part of some magical ritual that prevents suicide bombers from carrying out attacks.

UpTight said:
Wanna blame something? Blame the authorities that are too shit scared to clamp down on radical Islamism, lest they upset the ACLU and get accused of Islamophobia. Blame those that campaigned against surveillance of phonecalls from overseas Jihadists.

Yeah, heaven forbid that the Constitution be considered when discussing how the U.S. should "clamp down" on radical "Islamism". I mean, fuck, it's not like it's the founding fucking document of the country you praise so highly or anything.

UpTight said:
Wanna piss and moan about the occasional, probably unavoidable shortcomings of America? Fine - but don't be angry if people question your loyalties and values.

What's sad is that you confuse a loyalty to the Constitution and valuing basic human rights as somehow siding with terrorists.

Oh, and that you're a troll. But hey, have fun posting and running again.

UpTight said:
We're at war with the most evil enemy since Hitler. Don't expect an ounce of sympathy for the enemy from me.

Wait, "Islamism" is now more evil than Stalinism? Let's combine all the people that Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and every tinpot Communist dictator murdered and stack them up against the "Islamism" that makes you piss your knickers in Constitution-squandering fear.

But hey, I guess you've already signed up to go and fight the "most evil enemy since Hitler", and are as we speak posting from a British army post inside Afghanistan or Iraq, right?

Or are you simply cowering at home, applauding the radical expansion of governmental power as long as you don't have to suffer its ill-effects, and getting your sociopathic jollies masturbating to the pain and suffering of other human beings?

Varuka_Salt

I'm lost

October 2006

MAR 11, 2008 01:49 PM

UpTight said:

attn_ho said:

BlastProcessing said:

Weren't you leaving?

troll claims to have a fan that bought him a years worth of trollery.

you have mail

Could you send me a message when the year is up so I can come back when every thread in here is not hijacked by you and your ego instead of actually discussing the topic? Thanks.

UpTight

I'm lost

December 2003

MAR 11, 2008 01:56 PM

vermicious_knid said:

UpTight said:
Only libs take the side of the enemy during times of war.

Which explains why you favor torture and this kind of foreign policy.

You are not a conservative. You never argue for any kind of conservative economics. You never argue for any kind of conservative philosophies on the role of government and federalism. You constantly self-promote how many liberal endeavors and causes that you support and endorse.

I am certainly not a social conservative, which to me can be a conflict in terms. Conservativism is supposed to minimize government interference, yet social conservatives always want to govern people's sex lives, alcohol consumption etc.

I am a moderate fiscal conservative. I think that government does have a role in ensuring the poor are helped, but I certainly don't endorse the way socialists throw my money at every social cause that can not or will not help itself.

I've lived with the nightmare of the national health service which only offered my father one form of chemo for his cancer (the same one they offer everybody who gets cancer) I remember how he was left on the floor of a hospital Florence Nightingale would have been shocked at. Enjoy all this when Hilobama introduces it to America.

The only thing "conservative" that you argue in favor of is callous and sweeping Muslimcide and excusing or being entertained by their torture, parsed with the occasional lampoon of the media and liberal blogs.

again - you're asking me to feel sympathy for the Jihadist scum that declared war on us. Ask yourself why you feel pity rather than revulsion towards Islamism and its fascist aims, the way it fights its war, the way these people treat women, gays and apostates.

And yes - if once in a blue moon - pouring water on a senior Jihadist scumfuck gets him to reveal information that can save lives, I'm all for it.

If the enemy "hates freedom" - I am looking at the ones who are gutting the Bill of RIghts, suspending due process, spying on the citizens, claiming "unitary executive" legal theories, issuing signing statements, running international torture facilities, claiming executive privilege/secrecy/immunity to oversight rights, etc.... all of which run contrary to legitimate conservative principles of limited government, public control, and balanced three branch government. <---- The Muslims aren't doing that to us. Neocons are.

The Islamists are too busy trying to whip women for being gang raped, hanging gays, stoning people to death for infidelity, chopping off heads for apostasy, aiming suicide bombs at civilians and plotting how to bring this culture to America. They don't have time to get involved in knotty constitutional issues.

WrockinWrooster

USA

March 2006

MAR 11, 2008 01:56 PM

Liver,

As anyone who has any contact with the 2.3 million Americans in prison right now will tell you... Its not that hard to believe. Im curious what exactly you find hard to believe? Testing on prisoners was done quite a bit in the past. Heck we have at times done things to our own servicemen. I see you live in VA. Many people there make their living off the government. Are you perhaps one of those people? oooooh heres one that isnt hard to believe. Fucking security guards at giants stadium murdered this kid at a dead show in one of their vans and then threw him off a bridge. Some time after the fact it surfaced that the vans had often been used as mobile beating stations. These were just rent a cops not even prison guards who I can assure you are the absolute dregs of our society. These men are to a large extent the same and in many cases much much worse than the people they are holding in captivity. Prison guards at least here in Jersey are criminals. They are frequently involved in violent incidents on the street that are subsequently hushed up. Many times firearms are involved. It is only because the legal thing has swelled to the Orwellian horror that we now have that these men are not out committing robberies, rapes, etc.. and in fact many times they still do on the side. After all there's only so many enforcer jobs out there and if you are a brutal thuggish person prone to getting ones jollies out of pushing around folks who cannot defend themselves then what better job could you have.