I can't believe I agree with the Lying Jackal on this one. If that "interrogation" represents Canada's best shot at getting "wartime" information. Than we're in BIG trouble.
CSIS Agent.. "“Look, I want to take a few minutes, I want you to get yourself together, you know, relax a bit, have a bite to eat and we’ll start again.”
Criminals I say. To The Hague with them ALL!
Apparently cruelty is inspirational -- it certainly inspires some people to unleash their own demons, doesn't it.
Refresh my memory: Didn't Harper also conveniently absent himself the day the Commons discussed the Arar affair, and voted to apologize to the poor guy? And didn't he or his buddy Stockwell drop a few innuendoes about Arar?
Harper doesn't give a damn about due process or guilt or innocence. He lives in Bush's bubble-world in which we have to be afraid of The Terrorists (basically anyone with brown skin and a funny name), all the time, without question.
Dr Dawg: '...Jonathan Kay made the case for action yesterday, while somehow managing to leave Harper's name out of it:
"Millions of Web surfers are now wondering why Canada's government has acquiesced — and as the video shows, even participated — in the unconscionable treatment of a blubbering boy-soldier."'
You forgot to mention leaving Messrs Chretien and Martin out too. The did the acquiescing longer than the current government.
Mark
Ottawa
Mark:
You are correct. The Liberals do not get a pass in this respect by any means. But instead of pointing that out and effecting a breach, Harper is trying to have it both ways--denouncing Liberal inaction in the area, but using it as an excuse for his own.
"But of course it's not about law. It's about cruelty, and the almost erotic delight that too many conservatives take in it (Kay being one honourable exception, and there are no doubt several others). To be blunt, there seems to be many a manly swelling of the trousers in those ranks when child-torture is brought up."
What an idiotic thing to say.
Sure, Kay is "one honourable exception" because he happens to agree with your POV.
How magnanimous of you.
There's nothing like self-approbation.
What if a conservative woman, such as myself, believes that due process should be allowed to continue?
What are you going to say then?
What conservative women's "erotic delights" at Khadr's alleged torture will you point to?
Never mind. I don't need to get into your mind.
What if a conservative woman, such as myself, believes that due process should be allowed to continue?What are you going to say then?
When is "due process" going to start?
Sorry I left you out, by the way. How sexist of me. I was forgetting all about Ilse Koch and Irma Grese. Of course there are female sadists too.
What conservative women's "erotic delights" at Khadr's alleged torture ...
The mind boggles. You tell me. On second thought, please don't.
What if a conservative woman, such as myself, believes that due process should be allowed to continue?
Well, since you're a well-documented idiot, no one should care what you think.
You identify yourself as a "progressive immigrant ..."
The only progressive thing about you appears to be galloping infantilism.
And Ti-Guy, true to his moniker, displays his other little thing - his mind.
Enjoy each other's company.
You're banned, you bestial old bat.
And Ti-Guy, true to his moniker, displays his other little thing - his mind.
Translation: Gabby is implying I have a small penis. Obviously some of that denotative language Gabby claims comes naturally to conservatives...whereas oily and disingenuous liberals use connotative language. Yes, she really did say this. And yes, she was dead serious.
Why don't you go over and cheer on the mouth-breathers at SDA, you supercilious tw*t? (insert vowel of your choice).
Ti-Guy: Maybe some things also come naturally to persons of your sort?
"Mark Collins? You mean that queen is still trolling this blog?
Ti-Guy | 07.16.06 - 1:40 am | #"
Might you be the twit? To be polite.
Mark
Ottawa
I thought we'd settled that long ago.
Do you remember every slight you've ever encountered in a combox, Mark? I use my "Edit" function to free up my dwindling supply of neurons. I'm a lot happier for it.
Do you remember every slight you've ever encountered in a combox, Mark?
Apparently so. And when I'm not even addressing him or anything's he's said, he brings it up like he's in the grip of some PTSD flashback.
Anyway, it's nice to see the "law and order" Conservatives so focused on the substantive issues here; not the vile and disgusting things expressed by their fellow travellers or the corrupt process that has Canadian citizen ensnared, but their ruffled feathers.
I truly despise these people.
Dr Dawg and Ti-Guy: "Do you remember every slight you've ever encountered in a combox, Mark?"
Just the insults that seem to arise from uncontrollable and ill-considered ideological impulses--of course only to be found on the other side, not yours.
Dr Dawg: What's a combox?
Ti-Guy: 'Anyway, it's nice to see the "law and order" Conservatives so focused on the substantive issues here; not the vile and disgusting things expressed by their fellow travellers or the corrupt process that has Canadian citizen ensnared, but their ruffled feathers.
I truly despise these people.'
Some substance. Do read the link. And I am no part of any herd of fellow travellers. Read, think, assess...
Mark
Ottawa
Long before I get to the particulars of Khadr's case I have to ask two questions: how the hell did his hate mongering parents ever get into Canada and why were the children not taken away from these beasts before they could be shipped out to the 'Stan?
That said, it is well past time for Harper to man up and recognize that Canada has an obligation to the murderous little savage. That obligation is to, as England and Australia have done, spring him from Gitmo and deal with him in Canada.
(As an aside: I happen to think Gitmo was necessary for a relatively few cases. The Americans blew it when they took it from 10s to 100s.)
I suspect Daimian is spot on as to our options. We have law which will cover his alleged activities and we should be using it.
I say again, Harper got stuck with this file by way of the dithering of the previous Liberal administrations. So what, just as his government should switch sides in the CHRC fiascos, it should reverse the previous Liberal government's total indifference and bring Khadr home so he can rot in a Canadian prison after the due process of law....or not. The point is that the fog of war makes it exceptionally difficult to know exactly what happened.
And all of that said, we should still kick Mum and the kids the Hell out of a country which they, apparently, neither understand nor appreciate. (That we can't simply underscores how pathetic our immigration policy has become.)
--------
On an unrelated topic: Dawg, you just kicked some conservative shill. Fair enough, she was not contributing...so when will you kick the largely incoherent, throughly obnoxious, ad hominem 'r us, Ti-Guy? I have not seen a bona fide Ti-Guy contribution in months. He isn't even bright enough to be funny with his drive by smears. I often think he may be the Lying Jackal under an assumed name.
Jay:
I generally have a pretty open policy here, but I draw the line at people who rationalize torture. Ti-Guy is just...Ti-Guy. He doesn't mind if you give it back. Besides--he's no "john begley," not by a long shot.
That being said, I do like to keep things reasonably civil here. Ti-Guy: Jay's on my blogroll. He's interesting if you give him half a chance. Why not discuss the issues on their merits?
Jay, what do you think a 15-y-o Khadr would get in Canada by way of a sentence? I for one think he's served it, and the legal regime there is rotten to the core. six years at Gitmo, torture, prosecutorial misconduct, the tossing of a judge mid-stream who allowed defence motions on disclosure...
I say bring him home. I don't see the point of trying him. Time served, say I, but keep him away from that awful family of his, if legally possible. (I doubt that is is.)
On the contrary, Ti-Guy clearly relishes torture.
I tend to agree with your solution, Dr. Dawg, not because the little scumbag deserves a break, but faute de mieux. This seems to be a case where the legal vagueness of the war on terror has come back to bite its architects. It's all very well to say soldiers out of uniform have no rights, but that was because they were assumed to be spies or maybe urban terrorists behind lines. The idea that guerillas fighting an invading army in a remote land can be treated with absolute impunity (because they were wearing robes, not khaki?) until a never-ending war finally ends just ain't going to fly. And what he is arguably really guilty of--treason--is legally dubious because nobody declared war. Sometimes the legal vacuum is at the low end.
But can you and Dallaire please give this child-soldier trope a rest? He was fifteen, not ten, and now he is twenty-one and apparently completely unrepentant. The man is a hard core Islamicist soldier who killed or tried to kill soldiers of the army now holding him, not a misunderstood little tyke with daddy issues. And I am shocked, shocked, that you would want to keep him from the warm, nurturing bosom of his loving family. Were you not moved by his plaintive cries for his mother? You're a hard man, Dr. Dawg.
"the murderous little savage."
Except for the evidence that he didn't do it and that the record was changed after the fact because the guy who did throw the grenade was dead, and they needed to have some reason to keep him.
That's why we have trials Jay. Free and fair trials, not military tribunals without habeas corpus, testimony from torture that is undisclosed to the defense.
That's the kind of thing Eat Block Commies did and the kind of stuff Franz Kafka and Solzhenitsyn wrote about. Or is it ok to treat them like this because they are little brown Muslims?
Peter,
"He was fifteen, not ten, and now he is twenty-one and apparently completely unrepentant."
15 still makes you a child, according to Conservatives (and international law, but who care's about that eh?). Too bad he didn't try to have sex - gash then a 15 year old sure is a child in the eyes of Cons.
Completely unrepentant? Well, first, citation please. And second, I wonder how repentant you would be if you were held by a Saudi army for 6 years without charge or trial, tortured and maltreated in a Kafka-esque Gulag for something you may not have even done.
I'm sure you'd be about as sorry as William Sampson.
er..."East" Block commies....
Harper has no choice but to hold fast to his position. Khadr the person has ceased to exist. It is Khadr the symbol that is that is left. Khadr is a symbol of everything the Tory base hates. He is a young offender who may be covered under international law. This reminds Tories of the old Young Offenders Act, something that had to be destroyed at all cost.
Second, Khadr is a Khadr and as such needs to atone for the sins of his whole family. The Tory base demands a sacrifice and Omar is the chosen one.
Third, Khadr is Muslim and you don't have to travel very far in Blogging Tory land to get an idea how the base feels about Muslims.
So, if Harper relents on this, he will dash the hopes and dreams of revenge of his most loyal allies. For base political reasons (and because he truly shares all of these fantasies), Harper cannot and will not change his mind.
Here is what I think will happen. Khadr will be found guilty in that kangaroo court down in Cuba and sentenced to life. The new president will close down the Cuban prison and ship Khadr home. The Tories will promise to keep Khadr in jail for the rest of his life and should they lose the next election and if the Liberals ever get the spine to someday release him, will use that fact as a fund raising talking point.
Mike:
Funny, you should mention sex, because I was going to throw that back at Dr. Dawg, i.e., whether he would refer to a fifteen year old Lothario as a "child-fornicator".
We all tend to become legal constructionalists when the law supports us and assert a higher morality when it doesn't, but you seem to have missed the point that Kay, Jay and I are agreeing with you on legal grounds. It's the attendant play for sympathy that sticks in my craw, as if he were one of those twelve year old African children who had been kidnapped, abused and conscripted into a kiddie army. Am I to assume that if it had all happened a few months later you would be saying: "He was an adult and deserved everything he got."?
We have to ground our actions in legal principles because that's who we are, but let us not pretend law equates with ethics by definition or forget our soldiers are fighting an enemy that imposes no such burden on itself.
He's interesting if you give him half a chance. Why not discuss the issues on their merits?
I'm not animated by a discussion of the merits of an issue with someone who is, to be blunt, a liar and a bigot.
You can do that if you want (in fact, you seem to live for it), and I generally try not to bother until Jay Currie really starts spinning out unbelievable howlers, but I think it's a total waste of intellectual energy and yet more proof of the flaccidness of progressives when they seem so eager accommodate this type of aggressive and ignorant distraction.
"Murderous savage." Yes. Plenty of merit here to discuss, I'm sure.
I told you he relished torture. Chinese water torture to be precise.
I told you he relished torture. Chinese water torture to be precise.
And this is not ad hominem, how exactly?
Ti-Guy:
Lighten up. He's teasing you.
We all tend to become legal constructionalists when the law supports us and assert a higher morality when it doesn't...
How do you know we all do this, Peter? I certainly don't, for the simple reason is that I rarely have sufficient evidence at hand to make any kind of moral assessment with any great conviction, even after a legal process is complete. I don't see much value in doing that, as it serves solidify beliefs that may have to change later, in a process that might be quite shocking and discombobulating, if new evidence is brought to light.
Shock, as we all know, it not very good for critical thinking.
The only thing I've become convinced of in the last few years is to be very wary of the rationality (which is not a moral issue for me) or the good faith (which is a moral issue for me) of those who seem so adamant to make assertions when they have no way of knowing.
Lighten up. He's teasing you.
Torture is just not amusing to me. Psychological torture most of all, as anyone who's been to graduate school can easily attest. 
Peter:
It's the attendant play for sympathy that sticks in my craw, as if he were one of those twelve year old African children who had been kidnapped, abused and conscripted into a kiddie army. Am I to assume that if it had all happened a few months later you would be saying: "He was an adult and deserved everything he got."?
No one deserves this:
O.K. was 15 years old when he was captured in July 2002. Military officials at Bagram treated him roughly, despite his young age and his poor physical condition. He was interrogated repeatedly by military officials, and on many occasions was brought into the interrogation room on a stretcher. On one occasion, interrogators grabbed and pulled him, he fell and cut his left knee. On some occasions, interrogators brought barking dogs into the interrogation room while his head was covered with a bag. On other occasions, interrogators threw cold water on him. They also tied his hands above the door frame and made him dangle painfully for hours at a time. While his wounds were still healing, interrogators made O.K. clean the floors on his hands and knees. They forced him to carry heavy buckets of water, which hurt his left shoulder (where he had been shot). When he was able to walk again, interrogators made him pick up trash, then emptied the trash bag and made him pick it up again. During the interrogation, he was not allowed to use the bathroom, and was forced to urinate on himself. Around March of 2003, O.K. was taken out of his cell at Camp Delta at approximately 12:00 – 1:00 a.m., and taken to an interrogation room. An interrogator told O.K. that his brother was at Guantánamo, and that he should “get ready for a miserable life.” O.K. stated that he would answer the interrogator’s questions if they brought his brother to see him. The interrogator became extremely angry, then called in military police and told them to cuff O.K. to the floor. First they cuffed him with his arms in front of his legs. After approximately half an hour they cuffed him with his arms behind his legs. After another half hour they forced him onto his knees, and cuffed his hands behind his legs. Later still, they forced him on his stomach, bent his knees, and cuffed his hands and feet together. At some point, O.K. urinated on the floor and on himself. Military Police poured pine oil on the floor and on O.K., and then, with O.K. lying on his stomach and his hands and feet cuffed together behind him, the Military Police dragged him back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil on the floor. Later, O.K. was put back in his cell, without being allowed a shower or change of clothes. He was not given a change of clothes for two days (Center for Constitutional Rights 2006, 5f).
Dawg, you know they'll dismiss that as fabrication.
*sigh* Even if half of that is true, he was treated worse than Saddam Hussein.
And really, for what? I don't feel one degree safer after this. If anything, I feel less safe thinking our own authorities will do this to the rest of us, given the chance.
Oh good gawd, Ti-Guy, didn't your mother warn you about watching too many horror flicks after dark?
I don't know what "they" would say before "they" did unspeakable things to the "rest of you", but as for me I would neither dismiss it as a fabrication nor give it the benefit of the doubt. Audi alteram partem and all that. But I certainly wouldn't assume Khadr wins the credibility battle over the U.S. Forces.
As to the content of the statement, I have several inconsistent thoughts, Dr. Dawg, but they aren't really for blogging. Time for that tipple soon.
But I certainly wouldn't assume Khadr wins the credibility battle over the U.S. Forces.
Oh, I wouldn't either....that is, if I had been born yesterday.
Good grief, Peter: after Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, black sites....etc, ad nauseum, damn near everyone wins the credibility battle over the US Forces.
So you think Al Qaeda is more credible than the U.S. Government? Well, I guess that joins the issue, doesn't it.
So you think Al Qaeda is more credible than the U.S. Government?
What has Al Qaeda told us lately that proved to be deception, Peter?
I'm frankly on the verge of answering "yes"...that is, if there were any point to answering a question this silly.
As a point of interest in a now dead thread: apparently, the Geneva Convention defines an illegal child soldier as being under 15.
Jay:
Do you have a reference? Most references to international law that I have seen regards 18 years as the cut-off.
This chap seems to know what he is talking about. Seems it is under 18 for conscripts and under 15 for volunteers, but also under 18 in all circumstances for non-state armed groups. Which raises a thorny legal point. If an armed insurgent group like the Taliban breaks international law by recruiting 15 year olds to fight, what is the duty of the army they attack when it captures them? I don't know but "send them smartly back to their mothers" seems a little facile.
Commenting by HaloScan
