Kill an American get 10MM. Thanks Canada

Under what circumstances can the soldier's family sue the child (now adult)? Was it not a war zone? Does the definition of murder remain constant regardless of it occurring under the conditions of war? It would seem that courts could be flooded with claims given the extent of conflict taking place in the world today.

Edit: Previous opinions have changed upon reading CC's post and some more background information being presented.

Read this post the other day. It's a little slanted, but a decent summary. Not as simple as you think:

Okay, I'm fucking sick of the idiocy and done with writing a diatribe every single time a friend posts about how they're upset that Trudeau is giving a terrorist $10m. You people are.... wilfully ignorant and hypocritical. Here's why. (And I thoroughly suggest reading the entire post. If you know me, you know I'm neither stupid, nor an apologist. I am pure fucking science, and this post is such. Read it before making an ass of yourself by posting about how we just gave a terrorist money).

The story (the facts we know).
* Canadian born Khadr was taken to Afghanistan at 15 years old, by his father. We don't know if he wanted to go, and we don't know why they went. There has been zero evidence put forth to suggest the trip had anything to do with terrorism. Regardless, as he was only 15, he had no choice in the matter.
(EDIT: He was actually taken to Afghanistan at 9 years of age. He was taken to Gitmo at 15)
* Khadr was found in critical condition following a firefight. The mission debrief report filed by the US troops stated that a middle aged man threw a grenade, which killed one US soldier. The grenadier was shot in the head and confirmed killed.
* Khadr was taken to Guantanamo Bay prison. No charges were filed against him at that time.
* Several years later, formal charges were filed. These charges were technically not even charges of war crimes, as if they were true, Khadr would be considered an enemy combatant during a time of war, and thus everything he was accused of doing, was legal under rules of engagement. He was denied access to a lawyer at this point and no trial date was set. He was held in detention and tortured for nearly 10 years.
* Nearly a decade later, an addendum to the original mission debrief was submitted, which identified the grenadier as Khadr by name. The description was updated to match that of a 15 year old Khadr. The original report was not rescinded. No one knows who made the addendum. No US personnel present during the firefight confirms the addendum.
* A week later, Khadr is offered a plea deal. The terms of the deal were to admit guilt to all charges and serve a few more years in a Canadian prison, or refuse to admit guilt and be denied trial indefinitely.
* Khadr takes the plea deal, is transferred to Canada.
* Khadr sues the Canadian government for their involvement in his illegal detention, torture, and lack of a trial.

All of the above is true as far as anyone knows. That is the official story, from both the Canadian and US governments. They have said straight out that Khadr would not be offered a trial unless he took the plea deal. Just let that sink in for a moment.

Now let me ask you a question.
As a Canadian, what do you stand for? Do you believe that you, as a Canadian, have the right to be presumed innocent, until proven guilty, as well as the right to a fair and quick trial? I know this is hard for many of you to consider without jumping to "oh, but he's a terrorist, so fuck him, he's a traitor and doesn't deserve anything", but we'll get to that in a minute. Seriously consider this. Do you believe you have, as a Canadian, the inalienable right to everything laid out in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

If you do, but still think Khadr does not, because he is a terrorist, let me ask you; "How do you know he is guilty?" There was no trial for 10 years, and he was only offered a trial on the condition that he plead guilty. How do we, as Canadians, determine guilt? Have you read and understood the Chart of Rights and Freedoms? It's entire purpose is precisely to ensure that what happened to Khadr, is not allowed to happen. Period.

Now I know many of you still can't get past the "but he's a traitor so he doesn't deserve a trial" even though neither you, nor me, nor the US or Canadian government were able to provide ANY evidence whatsoever, of his guilt (no evidence was submitted during his trial, presumably because none exists), but that doesn't matter. Let me explain the problem to you.

You are worried that terrorists are trying to take away your freedoms as a Canadian right? They're trying to force Sharia law upon us and we as Canadians, won't stand for that right?

Do you see where I'm going here? Presuming Khadr's guilt, with no evidence and without trial, is precisely what the terrorists want to do to Canada. Isn't that your concern? Does it not strike you then, that by saying that Khadr doesn't deserve a fair trial because he is a terrorist, with absolutely no evidence, nor a trial to prove the charges, that you are doing precisely what you are worried the terrorists are trying to do do us? A presumption of guilt, no trial, a decade of detention and torture. Is that not Sharia law?

At this point, I don't think any of us should even be concerned about Khadrs innocence or guilt. He is inconsequential at this point. The REAL concern for all Canadians, is that our government denied a Canadian citizen his inalienable rights, guaranteed to him under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They did EXACTLY what you are worried the terrorists are trying to do. If Khadr was guilty, a trial probably would have proven such, so why was he denied a trial?

For your information, the Canadian government did not simply offer up an apology and $10m for no reason. They were sued. The Canadian Supreme Court found in favour of Khadr, in that the Canadian government was in breach of Canadian and International law. That money will mostly be covering his legal fees. But here's where you should be more concerned about the money. The Canadian government spent $120m of your money, defending itself for committing what is legally, war crimes. Seriously. Your government, was just successfully sued, for war crimes. Crimes they committed not only against Khadr, but against the entire Canadian public. They assured us that we would all be given a fair trial, but now we know that is not true. They assured us that we will always be presumed innocent until proven guilty. We know that is not true. They took your money, money which could have been spent on building half a hospital or something, and spent it instead, on committing war crimes, and crimes directly against the Charter on which our country was founded.

In summation:
If you believe Khadr did not deserve a fair and quick trial, you are not Canadian. You do not stand for what Canada stands for. You are saying very clearly, that you don't care about evidence, treating people (who we presume are innocent until proven guilty) with basic decency, or your own or anyone else's right to a fair trial. You are, quite literally, openly supporting about half of Sharia law. You fuckwits.

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Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)

I am settling with a somewhat similar point of view. I looked Omar up on Wikepedia and it sure is one complicated story. There are even pictures of him being tended to by American medics who may well have saved his life as he was badly injured.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

So he's found on a battlefield where if nothing else hr was engaged with American forces and detained by Americans in an American facility and Canada pays him 10MM for his troubles? Presumably a better outcome would have been to let him die.

So you are ok with a fifteen year old being detained for years with no charges and no representation?

In the end, don't know, nor do you know, whether he us a terrorist, am enemy combatant, or just a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. But his treatment at minimum appears to be horrid.

And I am betting there were many times that he would have agreed with you over the years of detention, that he would have been better off dead.

I like what Trudeau had to say about this: "the Charter protects all Canadians, even when it is uncomfortable."

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Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)

Canadians were involved in his torture. His rights as a Canadian were violated. He sued the government they settled because they were going to lose.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

This. As a Canadian citizen his rights were violated, as determined by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Again, why is Canada paying him 10MM because he was detained by the US in an American facility?

So he's found on a battlefield where if nothing else hr was engaged with American forces and detained by Americans in an American facility and Canada pays him 10MM for his troubles?


The $10.5 million had nothing to do with the battlefield. As a Canadian, he has rights to a fair trial and it was never given to him and there is strong suspicion that his confession was under duress. It is not black and white and the fact that he was 15 makes it worse.

The government messed up and as much as I hate to see someone profiting from something like this, you are either for the rule of law or you aren't. I would rather pay him and stand for the laws that bend them or why bother having them in the first place. You would end up like China where they pretend to have a fair trial but the decision on guilt or innocence is made in advance.

Torture? What torture? Are you implying the United States tortured him or that Canadians tortured him and the US personnel just let it happen in their facility?

So let's say his "rights" were violates by Somalia, Canada still pays him?

Again all of your issues seem to be with how the US dealt with him, which begs the question why Canada paid him

Again all of your issues seem to be with how the US dealt with him, which begs the question why Canada paid him

The problem was that it was the Canadian intelligence agencies that were the problem. In 2010, the Supreme Court here ruled that our intelligence officials got evidence from Khadr while being exposed to "oppressive circumstances" (ie. torture) while he was investigated at Guantanamo. Our intelligence agencies then shared that information with U.S officials and they kept him in Guantanamo for 10 years.

It's really not as much about the U.S., it's about our intelligence "torturing" him to keep him in your prisons.

Well, I'm glad Obama closed Guantanamo.

He tried! When Congress shut his ass down, he backdoored the closure by reducing the # of inmates from hundreds to the current 41.

Oppressive circumstances? How is that stomach turning PC phrase defined?

So the position is that Canadians tortured another Canadian in US custody at a US facility and that the Americans didn't participate or monitor said torture but the information gleaned was passed on to the non participating non monitoring Americans in the room next door? That leaps needed to arrive at that scenario are bit far IMO

Good thing none of them went back to being terrorists oh wait they did

Cool. He deserves a trophy. I seem to recall which party controlled congress after the 2008 election.

Enough Democratic Congressmen him on Gitmo. It happens. Just like is happening now (so far) on the Trump promise of ObamaCare repeal.

Trying to redirect from getting schooled earlier in this thread? :)

The issue is that two successive Canadian governments did nothing to bring Khadr back to Canada to ensure that he recieved a fair (and torture free) trial. They allowed him to remain in US custody and be tortured. He plead guilty under coersion just so he could be returned to Canada.

Yes. Precisely. All of this.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Oppressive circumstances? How is that stomach turning PC phrase defined?

That is a little unclear but they did mention sleep deprivation. The threshold for how you can treat prisoners is lower here and they were following Canadian law so that was the decision of the Supreme Court.

So the position is that Canadians tortured another Canadian in US custody at a US facility and that the Americans didn't participate or monitor said torture but the information gleaned was passed on to the non participating non monitoring Americans in the room next door?

The real issue is that a Canadian prisoner was subject to treatment our laws determine as unconstitutional. A government that does that here is going to pay whether we agree or not. To use that "confession" to hold a prisoner for 10 years just added zeroes to the settlement.

Khadr sued the government once he returned to Canada. The government has spent $5 million to date fighting it but it was clear they were going to lose based on our Charter so they settled.

I would say most here are upset but the facts are pretty specific to this case and it's hard to see how it could open the door to a flood of lawsuits. The bottom line is that our government has to follow our laws. If they don't want to do that, then they have to change the laws.

Uh I'm winning

He was tortured how again and by whom? I keep getting conflicting details. So everyone we don't hand over to you gets 10MM? Why didn't he sue the US?

So how did the US torture him along with his countrymen? And torturing someone would not have happened at Gitmo

He got 10MM for sleep deprivation? You have to be fucking kidding me.

So Canada's choice was have a citizen continue to be detained on a prison island speciously or bring him home to serve his time in Canada. I actually think your government made the right decision with that Faustian choice and your court system fucked it up.

We all know you're feeling some oats, what with Duffy and Forge out of the forum, but there's no need for you to take over as the forum blowhard.

The issue/choice was not to bring him home to serve his time. The issue is that he never got an actual trial to begin with. You don't serve time without having been tried in a court of law, at least not in a civilized democratic nation supposedly based on rule of law. He was held without trial, finally convicted/pled guilty in front of a military commission, and his imprisonment and "conviction" have been widely criticized by the UN and a whole slew of human rights organizations. He's the first person since WWII to have been convicted of war crimes as a minor by a military court. Maybe he was tortured or maybe not, it's really beside the point. His right to fair trial was withheld from him, and his own government participated in the denial of his rights.

Here's the problem. If he had been properly arrested and tried, with testimony that wasn't subject to so much doubt, and held in conditions that comport with those of most law abiding civilized nations, he might have been convicted and served the rest of his life in prison. Instead, we tried to cut corners, and now he'll be free and he'll get money because he was denied his fundamental rights as a citizen of Canada.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Yes. Precisely. All of this.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Why don't you read about what happened to him?

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Perfectly said. The Canadian government embarassed itself in how this child was treated, but people refuse to see that point. This will be the ultimate case study in how NOT to treat your own citizens held in foreign prisons.

If I see Omar on the streets of Edmonton, I will shake his hand and wish him well.

He got 10MM for sleep deprivation? You have to be fucking kidding me.

You seem to want to push an agenda without really making an attempt to understand.

The Supreme Court here ruled in 2010 wrote the following;

"The deprivation of [Khadr's] right to liberty and security of the person is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.The interrogation of a youth detained without access to counsel, to elicit statements about serious criminal charges while knowing that the youth had been subjected to sleep deprivation and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects. Canada's participation in the illegal process in place at Guantanamo Bay clearly violated Canada's binding international obligations,"

This was also reported.

For three weeks ahead of an interview with a Foreign Affairs official in 2004, Khadr was subjected to the, "frequent flyer program" a method of sleep deprivation in which Khadr was moved to a different cell every three hours. The court said the Canadian official knew about this before conducting the interview. Sleep deprivation is widely viewed as a form of torture. Indeed, members of the Canadian Forces are prohibited from using sleep deprivation as a tactic of interrogation.

So, you get a 15-year old they think tossed a grenade, arrest him, using different tactics to get an admission of guilt, and then throw him in prison for 10 years without a chance to defend himself.

That's not quite the same as saying he gets $10 million for sleep deprivation.

The Marines that I've talked to that have done time at GitMo paint a picture somewhat at odds with the "torture" idea. The picture they paint is one where the inmates are kept in comfort. They are totally micromanaged, under constant scrutiny, and everything is video taped. The inmates came from one of the more inhospitable environments known on Earth and are kept in Western style comfort. One guy retold an anecdote where folks got their asses in a sling re. reports of "torture" via lawyers and human rights orgs that have access to the prisoners. The "torture" turned out to be a reference to air conditioning.

I agree that given the kid's age when he was taken to Afghanistan and then picked up, he wouldn't have had any choice in the matter. But there's millions of entirely innocent kids dealing with huge hardship, in the world every year, many of them dying. If I have to choose which of those to be especially sympathetic towards, a kid that was engaged in a fight with US military forces is really low on the list.

The discussion of civilian trials and established guilt, in those environments of careful evidence rules and a presumption of innocence, is lost on me. Imagine your kid is in some 3rd world shithole risking their life every day trying to keep the local shitheads at bay so the families in the area can raise their kids in relative safety. Your kid gets in a firefight with those shitheads. Buddies of your kid go down, those shitheads are doing their level best to kill your kid. These are not abstract ideas, it's your kid. Unlike most current world military orgs, and ALL military orgs going back thousands of years, the Americans don't kill all the enemy combatants, instead they take some prisoners and send them to quite comfort at GitMo. Sure, their life there isn't rich, but they're alive. The alternative really is "not alive".

They were enemy combatants in a fight where bad guys don't really "surrender" in the classic WW2 sense. Think of every one of them as a guy that was trying to kill your kid, as that kid stood in the way of bad guys and local families just trying to raise their kids. But we're Americans, and we try incredibly hard not to kill a bad guy if circumstances allow. But we perceived those bad guys as long term threats and as potential intelligence sources. So we built a comfortable prison for them.

Yes, shitty things happen. Kids that had a lot of bad luck end up stuck in no-win situations where they actively engage in evil. But our compassion is finite. We should pour that compassion on entirely innocent kids, not the kids that have "some" innocence.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

noble effort, mate, but i think you could have stopped there.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

The Canadian government embarrassed itself by granting his father citizenship apparently.

He certainly had access to lawyers, doctors and a priest (muslim) from what I can gather from the Wiki page - which is a jumbled mess and one of the worst I've seen.

Also I love how all the Americans are getting on the Canucks' case for excessive lawsuit damages. Shameless!

Lucky for him that he was Canadian. His father chose well to come to Canada first and get citizenship. I wander how would things play out if he would have been, say, Pakistani or Saudi citizen. Would he dare/bother to sue them? But, Canada is always a soft target, human rights, charter of rights, lawyers etc etc and it was probably his lawyers idea to sue and cash in. Wander how much his lawyer made? Why couldn't the Canadian government pay his education if he so wants to be a nurse? Also wander who will hire him and what would it be like to work with a multimillionaire while everybody around you struggles to make ends meet.
Is there anything to stop foreign jihadis from coming to Canada, get citizenship and then go away to fight, surrender/get captured and if the Canadian government doesn't bail you out pronto sue them and money will flow.

Ad Muncher

Pretty good idea. You make it sound like it's frivolous to have your citizenship rights (and human rights) stomped all over.


Yes. Enough with the histrionics.

Khadr's lawyer has worked pro bono since Day 1. He gave a speech recently on how he came to be Khadr's lawyer, and the circumstances of his first visit to him at Guantanamo Bay. Hardly housed in comfort, contrary to the claims of a previous post. Comfort does not include being chained to the floor.

http://www.cbc.ca/...omar-khadr-1.3961508

An hour of very interesting insights into what drove his lawyer to take on the case and never give up on taking the Canadian government to task.

Why histrionics? When people figured that you can get citizenship and residency in western countries just because your baby is born there many took advantage of that. And they still do as birthing tourism is popular in Canada. Back in 1960 there were thousands of marriages of convenience in West Europe. Marry an escort, get residency, divorce the escort. There are thousands of Canadians in Middle East who use Canadian citizenship as a safety net, never intending to live in Canada. During some of the past Arab-Israeli conflict many of these Canadians were protesting and complaining that Canada didn't rescue them fast enough, they suffered etc. Should we pay them too?

Ad Muncher

Is there anything to stop foreign jihadis from coming to Canada, get citizenship and then go away to fight, surrender/get captured and if the Canadian government doesn't bail you out pronto sue them and money will flow.


Since the lawsuit and settlement had nothing to do with the Canadian government not bailing him out, I guess we'll have to wait to see if something like that ever happens to know for sure.

One thing I've learned is that it's ok to stomp on rights of people if they aren't you. Or perhaps if they aren't like you.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

youre right. We should torture these fuckers and let them be held without trial. That's the right thing to do. Especially if they are minors.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Sometimes a guy needs to be chained to the floor. Except for it's earliest months, GitMo was under a microscope at all times. At every level of supervision, your career was toast if you were caught being harsher to an inmate then what was spelled out in detail. So maybe he was chained to protect visitors, maybe he was chained because he had a tendency to be violent, I've no idea.

In general terms, we should all have the same reaction as you....being reflexively sympathetic to another. But this isn't a general situation. The unit that got into a fight with his group of terrorist assholes decided that he was a participant. At that point, sympathy mostly gone.

An argument could be made that a huge fraction of terrorists from 3rd world countries didn't have much of a choice. Often they are victims of a constant drumbeat of falsehoods designed to turn them into a weapon. The grade schools that Palestinian kids attend, for example, are chock full of lies and vitriol re. Israel so extreme as to be cartoonish. What chance does some little Afghan kid have, born into a tribal group beholden to a terrorist warlord looking to protect his poppy fields?

We perceive this story of the Canadian kid dragged into evil before he could make his own choices as both unusual, and also terribly sad, and want to absolve him of guilt. When in fact, the idea of a malleable young kid dragged towards evil is common as dirt. Large fractions of the world are a really shitty place, because....people.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Bingo! Go google what his oldman has done and the hatred the old lady has spewed out . Not hard to imagine her salivating at the mouth with glee every time a terrorist blows himself up somewhere around the world. Then watch the CBC interview with Khader the other night where he implies he is still involved with them..'they are still my family' etc. So what??..... presumably he will be free to share the loot with his parents?!.Ok then..Fucking joke - (and this is the opinion of a left of centre Canadian liberal :) so can only imagine how the poor cons in this country must be dealing with this ..lol

Yes, there are awful societies in our world with a much occurrences of everyday evil, permeating to even the youngest members of those societies. Some might call those circumstances barbaric.

In the Western society you and I call home and so appreciate, that's not our experience. More importantly, we've made the choice to live by different standards and apply them throughout the ways our societies do business -- governed by a rule of law that assumes innocence and says we have the right to fair trials to prove anything otherwise.

We haven't made the choice that those units on the ground get to decide guilt or innocence outside of that. They can gather & provide evidence to support a case and trial, but the trial rules.

Unfortunately that didn't take place here. So we can't decide that we're not barbaric because we provide for fair trials and then go ahead and do something that is barbaric by not providing that fair trial; that's as problematic as the societies whose values we believe are inferior to our own. If Western values are to be compelling and meaningful, we have to make the choice to live by them consistently. Failure to do so not only cheapens all of us, but emboldens those we call enemies.

In that light, it sounds as if the settlement was the only just action.

The difference is that you see him as a criminal. I don't. In our civil world, our opponent, in this context, is criminals. To curb them we have and system designed to both protect their rights and also protect society by deterring and rehabilitating those criminals. In war we have enemy combatants, otherwise decent types that have managed to get (earn?) themselves politicians that don't like our politicians, as a result we and our buddies are trying to kill them and their buddies. Nothing personal, just another tragic and disappointing aspect of humanity.

Then we have the terrorists. I imagine my son in that 3rd world shit hole risking his life every day to stand between the innocent families of that country trying to live a normal life, and the terrorist scum that would kill them. I perceive terrorists as vastly worse than the enemy combatant, and orders of magnitude worse than the criminal.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

And how do you perceive child combatants that may or may not have actually done what they are accused of doing?

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Now try and imagine your son 9 years old abducted and taken to that part of the world then brainwashed and forced to be a terrorist, then found half dead and held with out trial, and only after being sleep deprived he signed a statement saying he did it when in fact there's no real evidence that he did, how would that make you feel? This kid was only 9 when his brainwashing began, he was under rubble and rocks when he was found half dead, first reports by the soldiers was that a middle aged man threw the grenade, sorry but there is no evidence that this kid did anything and until I find out otherwise I refuse to call him a terrorist.

Blowhard because I think WE may have been at fault but Canada wasn't?

I do not care what the UN or human rights groups say (should we discuss Saudi Arabia on the UN Human Rights commission). He was convicted in an appropriate venue.

Why did he deserve a civilian criminal trial instead of a military one, or do/did you oppose the all of the military commissions.

Here's the problem. If he had been properly arrested and tried, with testimony that wasn't subject to so much doubt, and held in conditions that comport with those of most law abiding civilized nations, he might have been convicted and served the rest of his life in prison. Instead, we tried to cut corners, and now he'll be free and he'll get money because he was denied his fundamental rights as a citizen of Canada

This is bolded because I think this is especially specious on your part. You are effectively stating that our military must read people their Miranda rights in the middle of a firefight and that chains of custody must be followed in a war zone. I'm actually disappointed by your whole post because you are usually at least logical and grounded in reality with most of your posts.

I did. Why don't you read something not from his defense attorney?

15 is not a child.

You're at least rationally defending the Canadian position.

The US captured him, detained him, tried him. The logical interpretation to draw is that your Supreme Court a) did not want members of the Canadian Government to visit him b) wanted him to serve his sentence in GITMO.

I don't see how your government acted in the wrong. What were you going to do, bust him out of a US jail? For better or worse yoru government acted in his best interests by allowing him to serve his sentence in a Canadian jail after his alleged rights violations by the US. There's literally nothing else your government could have done.

What agenda am I pushing asshat? That the Canada did nothing wrong?

Too bad that's not what happened here, unless your kid is guilty of torture for depriving you of sleep.

Well we'll see if the fucking asshat judicial system honors an American judgement because the family of the soldier he killed has applied a judgement against him to be enforced in Canada. Yep he won't see a dime of the money!

Please don't put words in my mouth.

Nowhere in the post did I liken him to a petty criminal nor state that he's not a terrorist. I said we've made the choice as a society to act differently in war; more clearly, we have made the choice to not level entire cities, towns, and villages, to leave people surviving, to leave an opportunity to rebuild.

This includes taking soldiers or suspected soldiers -- some of whom may be terrorists -- as prisoner. In doing so and imprisoning them we've made the choice to stick by our system of law and say we offer trials. Free and fair trials, I might add, that aren't precipitated by forced, torturous "confessions" made under extreme duress. We've made the choice that people on the ground don't have all of the evidence and knowledge to always make that decision; thus they don't level everyone and everything. As you said, the unit "decided" he was guilty and not a bystander caught out; our system of law did not, but may have after trial. This is the society we've made the choice to create; we say that we're not barbaric when we live by that.

If our values are truly moral ones, we don't get to choose when to apply them. When we do, we become as guilty as those we call barbarians. Taking a 15 year old prisoner for 10 years and then forcing a confession before trial is possible, and threatening life imprisonment without confession is a violation of what our societies call just. I think you know that deep down, because you wouldn't be defending a dressed up system of barbarism.

Yes, all they did was deprive him of sleep. That's it.

They didn't hold him without charges for years. Hold him without trial for years and they certainly didn't do things like this to keep him awake...


Oh and 15 is a minor. Otherwise our military would accept soldiers that young.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

And yet 15 is still not a child, but carry on with your delusion.

Sorry have to firmly disagree with this statement having a 15 year old myself...

The US did. Canada did not. What exactly did Canada do wrong here? I'm serious. As I laid out before their fault seems to be that they didn't bust him out and that they questioned/visited him whilst in US custody and then promised to hold him in a Canadian jail instead of US to get him away from GITMO.

So if you're 15 year old picked up a gun and shot someone no harm no foul? I'm not saying they are mature adults, but they aren't kids.

How about demand that their citizen be given his rights? And if you won't do it then give him to us.

They participated and then turned their backs to messy problem.

See no evil, hear no evil. It's all good.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

I'm not saying that at all. I am saying 15 year olds are not adults and are very much still children maturity wise. Let me ask you this. At what age does a child become an adult?

Depends, was he abducted by his father at nine and then brainwashed and forced to shoot someone? Profound difference, this kid was taken from Canada at the age of 9, conditioned and brainwashed by his own father to fight and kill, I refuse to believe you don't see the difference.

orphious wrote:

I'm not saying that at all. I am saying 15 year olds are not adults and are very much still children maturity wise. Let me ask you this. At what age does a child become an adult?

Dave Chappelle has something to say about 15 years old.

"No real evidence that he did". If the troops that were in the fight say that he was involved, that's good enough for me. Sure, that's not a perfect measure of guilt/innocence, but our guys on the ground are very good folks with their hearts in the right place. If my alternatives are to defer to their judgement, or require proof that will stand up in a civilian court, I will defer.

"Sleep deprived". From the reports I read, I've been thru harsher sleep deprivation conditions many times. If we called it "torture" at the time, we said it with a grin on our faces.

"How would I feel". Of course that would be awful, but as I said before in this thread, sympathy is finite. We should be sympathetic towards the entirely innocent kids that go thru incredible hardship, many not surviving. Once we've helped all those kids out, then if we have sympathy and the capacity to help left remaining, then we can apply it to more gray areas of kids that got brainwashed into being evil. The latter is an awfully long list tho. I'd argue that most of the world's terrorists can be lumped into " as kids, they got brainwashed into evil".

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

"Sleep deprived". From the reports I read, I've been thru harsher sleep deprivation conditions many times. If we called it "torture" at the time, we said it with a grin on our faces.

But it's not up to you to decide what is and what isn't torture. We have laws that say differently and the Supreme Court's job is to apply those laws for this exact reason. You don't want to make legal decisions based on what others "feel", it's arbitrary and could lead to problems.

"How would I feel". Of course that would be awful, but as I said before in this thread, sympathy is finite. We should be sympathetic towards the entirely innocent kids that go thru incredible hardship, many not surviving. Once we've helped all those kids out, then if we have sympathy and the capacity to help left remaining, then we can apply it to more gray areas of kids that got brainwashed into being evil. The latter is an awfully long list tho. I'd argue that most of the world's terrorists can be lumped into " as kids, they got brainwashed into evil".

I have never seen anyone in Canada who is sympathetic to terrorists. I do know a lot of people however, who want our country to abide by the laws of our country. If a Canadian was in Afghanistan, and one of the local population wanted to collect on a bounty so fingered our citizen as a terrorist, then the U.S picked him up and sent him off to Gitmo, I would hope he is given a fair trial and a chance to defend himself.

That may be an extreme example but it points out to the real issue, a Canadian citizen, deprived of his right to a fair trial. If the government made the laws and then bends those laws in cases they don't like, there is no point in having the laws at all. If it cost us $10.5 million to make that point, then it has to be done so that it won't happen again.

Re. torture. We're talking about different things. You're oriented on the attempt by legal systems to define torture. I'm addressing only the more common interpretation of the word. The popular consensus of torture is one of horrors that leaves a person shrieking in agony. I'm merely pointing out the contrast between that image, and the reports of what the boy actually went thru at Gitmo. If folks wanted to provide a more accurate image of his "torture" they would say instead something like "on some nights he missed some sleep, much like a kid in military bootcamp". But the author of the story wants to generate drama and sympathy so instead uses the word "torture" because of the powerful images it invokes.

Your example of once citizen fingering another is kinda weak. Troops in the battle said that the kid was in the firefight. That's pretty different then one citizen fingering another, with a bounty on the table to create an incentive for such a thing.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Your example of once citizen fingering another is kinda weak. Troops in the battle said that the kid was in the firefight. That's pretty different then one citizen fingering another, with a bounty on the table to create an incentive for such a thing.

I'm just using that as an example of what could happen if your government doesn't defend it's citizens. There were reports during the war in Afghanistan that people were in fact accusing others of being a terrorist so that they could collect a bounty. There was no Afghanistan government to defend it's citizens and you could end up with innocent people, spending their lives in jail, with no one to defend them.

I'd rather pay $10.5 million than run the risk of that happening. We elect and pay for a government with the hope that they will defend us if something goes wrong outside of our borders. That' why we have embassies and consulates. In Khadr's case, our government didn't do that and they have to pay.

So does our legal system.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

He was 8 when he was taken overseas, and based on our legal system, yes, 15 is still a child.

Saying stuff like this is why I call you a blowhard.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

" Troops in the battle said that the kid was in the firefight. "

Kind of. It appears consensus that he was in the area, but reports seem to have varied (and changed over time) regarding who lobbed the grenade he is charged with using. If this had happened in the US, and the only evidence was testimony that a grenade was lobbed over a wall (i.e. no one saw who tossed it), and they found several injured people on the other side of the wall after a firefight, and decided it was one kid (although there's really no way to prove that), it wouldn't stand up in court as anything other than conjecture.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

You can be tried as an adult at 15 in the US

Doesn't count. We're talkin' 'bout terrorists. Not criminals.

See, who we deem to be terrorists are much more nefarious than your garden variety criminals. So their rights get thrown out the window.

That's how it works.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Blowhard because you jump into threads, clearly having no clue what you're talking about, and make loud brash declarative statements like "Kill and American, get $10million." Blowhard because you flap your gums about the choices at play for Canada, while demonstrating that you don't really understand what those choices were, but hey, you do so with gusto.


You should probably start, since we don't have a great record of being completely on the up and up with how we've treated terrorists. He pled guilty in what may or may not have been an appropriate venue after being held for a considerable time without trial and under what many describe as unconscionable conditions. Not quite the same as "he was convicted in an appropriate venue."


I'm not a lawyer, but I have not been convinced of the full legitimacy of the process we are putting some of these people through. We have criminal statutes covering international terrorism. So, I would assume, does Canada. I'm not convinced that somehow these men and boys couldn't or shouldn't be tried under those statutes, else why do we have them? I'm also not convinced that a 15 year old boy who may or may not have been engaged in a firefight with soldiers trying to kill him is guilty of terrorism. That's not what terrorism is.


Hard to argue it's legally a war zone if we, as a country, have not decided to declare war. It's the sovereign territory of another country, into which we have asserted ourselves to hunt and kill people we think might attack us. Not the same thing. That said, if we have decided to treat this as if it was a legitimate war zone, then we still have to treat prisoners in accordance with the appropriate processes, which includes how we try them for their crimes. That doesn't mean Miranda, but it does mean legitimate evidence and testimony regarding the offense with which they are charged, and it doesn't mean held without trial for years before we decide to get around to it.


I'm actually disappointed with your inability to read what I wrote, and your choice to instead assert your own poor reasoning instead of the arguments I actually made.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

If you take your 15 yrs old to a war zone and he gets injure/ captured/ tortured what are we looking at:
-His rights and freedoms only
-Your responsibility for taking him there in the first place

Awn an exception to the rule. Try harder.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Then why don't we hold his father/family responsible? Oh, yes, father is dead and the family doesn't have 10 mils. But the government does, so lets go after them.

Kill an American get 10MM. Thanks Canada


That's a gross simplification of the whole Khdar situation.

It's one of these extraordinary situations, where there really is no easy answer or solution. You CAN take a side straight-up, one way or the other, but to do so, you completely ignore some key information, that is legit, that fleshes out each other sides story.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog