Posted on 10/31/2010 4:28:03 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- A former teenage al-Qaida fighter was sentenced Sunday to eight more years in custody under the terms of a plea agreement unsealed after a military sentencing jury said he should serve 40 years for war crimes.
Omar Khadr looked straight ahead as a military judge imposed the eight-year sentence, ending a legal odyssey that began when the Canadian son of a major al-Qaida figure was captured - at age 15 - with severe wounds in Afghanistan in 2002 after a four-hour firefight.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
He’ll be out in three years and back to killing us in four.
2010-2002 = 8 years
Releaased now for time served?
2010-2002 = 8 years
Released now for time served?
The real truth is he probably got treated better in Gitmo thanby his own family who put him on this murderous course.
http://ezralevant.com/2010/10/murderer-omar-khadr-will-be-on.html
Child soldier? How about juvenile delinquent? They can be tried as adults here, and this one should be.
A bullet in the head, or a visit to Ol’ Sparky, is the best bet for sorry SOBs like this.
Chances of returning to murdering women and children, and goat raping = 0%
Disgusting. This creature and its ilk should have been turned into shark food years ago.
OK at this point I am probably asking for serious trouble but am I the only one who is uncomfortable with charging this man with “war crimes” or indeed murder? He was fighting armed and trained US troops in a recognized combat zone, is what is happening a war or is it not?
If it’s a war then he is a prisoner of war and can legitimately be held until the cessation of hostilities. Don’t get me wrong I hope NATO wins and wins big in Afghanistan but we either treat the war as a war and accept that the enemy are combatants too or else we regard it as a crime scene and send the police to deal with it but this is a crazy half assed way of looking at it.
If memory serves me well, this guy killed an SF medic that was making rounds to all wounded (friendly and foe) in the middle of a fierce battle at risk to his own safety. He had treated this scumbag and was returning to check on him when the ‘kid’ pulled a weapon mortally wounding the sergeant.
IMHO, he does not deserve to ever be free.
Regards.
The problem is we are still at war with Al Queda.
Let the guy loose, and he returns to the fight.
Normally, POW are released when hostilities cease. That may be years or even decades from now.
Got a kid to donate??
Where do you stand?
No, it’s 8 more years, no credit for previous confinement.
He’ll be at Gitmo for another year, then transferred to Canada’s custody then, What happens after that is the question - he should serve his full 8, but will Canada release him early?
If the case is as you stated then fair enough (although simply putting him against the wall and summarily executing him would have been more effective) but I would hate to see the situation arise where we regarded killing a soldier in combat as “murder”, that would be a seriously dangerous two edged sword that would be sure to come back with a vengeance.
I agree, but it would appear that in eight years, probably less, he will be legally free. By treating the enemy as criminals rather than combatants the US is creating an incredibly stupid situation. He’s a prisoner of war, he should be kept in a POW camp until his side surrenders no matter how long that takes.
Nothing wrong with asking a question.
but am I the only one who is uncomfortable with charging this man with “war crimes” or indeed murder?
Here? Probably.
He was fighting armed and trained US troops in a recognized combat zone,
It doesn't matter how armed or well trained our troops are in this case, his problem is his own lack of lawful identity. He is not a soldier... soldiers wear uniforms and/or insignia making them distinguishable from civilians, carry arms openly and are part of an openly recognizable chain of command, in contrast to this guy who was part of a shadowy organization whose members are not under obligation to obey any laws or ROE and who on capture often as not deny responsibility for their actions, people who make a point of blending into the civilian population and make no effort to behave as soldiers are expected to behave.
He is also not a militia member... militia members wear uniforms or recognizable insignia setting themselves apart from civilians, carry arms openly, carry documentation and also have a recognizable chain of command. This guy in contrast was not wearing a uniform, nor was he wearing recognizable insignia identifying him as a lawful combatant- a combatant who is part of an organization with a recognizable and responsible chain of command leading to a chief of lawful authority. His chain of command, in contrast, is only discovered after a number of his fellows rat them out because they keep themselves secret to prevent being held responsible and to prevent being arrested by lawful authority.
He was not wearing the uniform of his country- if anything he opposes his own country because his country [Canada] is part of our coalition. Nor is he an Afghan soldier, because the Taliban and al Qaeda to whom he belonged were not lawful authorities, if anything they killed the closest thing they had to lawful authority in that country and had deposed the government of Afghanistan.
His associates made a point of fighting from hospitals, mosques and schools, using civilians and harmless infrastructure as shields to cover their activities and to prevent lawful combatants from taking action against them. He is, in short, nothing like a soldier but only an outlaw, a foreign terrorist, scum of the earth.
He is something the Geneva Conventions were created to prevent. These agreements weren't created to protect fighters in war, they were created to protect civilians so that in the aftermath of war there would be infrastructure remaining to get the afflicted nations back on their feet rapidly. It was done by classifying some fighters as lawful- those who avoid using civilians and hospitals, places of worship andschools and such as cover- even at great risk to themselves... from unlawful combatants who specifically put civilians at risk in order to make life easier for themselves.
Why people want to grant such people what the authors of those protocols went out of their way to deny such fighters I do not know.
is what is happening a war or is it not?
Doesn't matter. He's a terrorist whether there's someone fighting him or not, or whether there's a mutual war going on or not. He is what he is regardless of his surroundings.
If it’s a war then he is a prisoner of war
No, he's not. POW status is reserved for lawful combatants and is specifically denied to those who do not play by ROE. You don't get the privileges such as they are of being declared a POW if you don't accept the responsibilities and handicaps of fighting like disciplined soldiers who have to answer for their decisions, right or wrong, to actual commands or courts that have the authority and means to punish unacceptable behavior.
... and can legitimately be held until the cessation of hostilities.
He can legitimately be held until after the cessation of hostilities as he is, as an unlawful combatant. POW status is not required for that, even were it practical, which it certainly isn't. Being a POW requires the captured personnel to behave according to mutually recognized rules, too. They also have to give their actual names, not an alias, to their captors, as well as their rank, etc. This is something terrorists generally avoid doing because it gets their commanders, who unlike real soldiers, need anonymity to remain hidden in countries where the lawful authorities are looking for them. Their commanders most certainly do NOT want to be held accountable for giving the orders to deliberately blow up a schoolbus or to assassinate a cartoonist. That's why you never see terrorist commanders wearing their rank on their sleeves.
Don’t get me wrong I hope NATO wins and wins big in Afghanistan but we either treat the war as a war and accept that the enemy are combatants too
We do accept that they are combatants. They just aren't lawful combatants. It was and is their own choice- no one forced them to fight from under the skirts of civilians or from behind schoolkids.
or else we regard it as a crime scene and send the police to deal with it but this is a crazy half assed way of looking at it.
It's not crazy- it's the only reasonable way to do it- unless you think that it is "reasonable" to equate lawless self-appointed vigilantes who strap bombs on unwitting retarded people or drugged-up people, or who commandeer civilian jets full of unarmed passengers and ram them into population centers, with trained and disciplined soldiers, who are bound by laws, subject to punishment, whose commanders are directly responsible for insuring they remain within the law, and must fight under ROE that no terrorist org must endure.
We do not OWE it to anyone to be "fair" unless that "fairness" is returned. We do not OWE it ot anyone to honor them with the lawful combatant designations of "soldier" and "POW" unless they actually fit the description. POW status is Geneva's "reward" for abiding by rules of conduct. Those who do not abide don't get the respect because they didn't deserve it. Otherwise, why should we bother keeping POWs at all if we are only going to have to feed them, protect them, and devote large numbers of personnel to guarding them and deny ourselves the use of those troops in combat? Why bother with uniforms and insignia if they only make us a target, easy to separate from the crowds, from civilians? Why avoid fighting from inside schools if taking kids hostage will make our enemies hesitate to come after us? Why bother carrying weapons openly when we can transport them in ambulances and not be discovered? Why subject our personnel to worrisome regulations? Why punish particularly brutal and unneccessary actions when we can simply praise the perps as good "shaheeds?" Why concern ourselves with deploying a formal army and all it entails when we can simply form and send terrorist groups to do the work by proxy, not bearing any responsibility for what they do, and rely on faithful bleedinghearts to feel sorry for our fighters when they get caught behaving like unregulated monsters?
We do it because soldiers are not mere moral equivalents to terrorists- we expect more of them, much more. So we recognize other nation's soldiers as we did Iraq's uniformed soldiers and treated them accordingly as POWs when captured, because we want other nations to also rely on legitimate fighting forces rather than proxies. But we must recognize terrorists for what they are: lawless men, not soldiers, and rightly deny them the privileges of being a POW upon capture because this will discourage people from emulating terrorist bahavior. The more costly we make it to be a terrorist or to use terrorists, the better. Terrorists should not be elevated to the status of soldiers, nor should soldiers be degraded to the status of terrorists.
The man he murdered was a medic.
And Omar was not in uniform. He wasn't in uniform because Omar was not a soldier. He was also not a citizen of Afghanistan and was not a member of a military force established by and reponsible to a representative government, nor was he a member of a militia established according to the laws of a representative government. He wasn't even a member of a police force.
Instead he was a member of a family of outlaws whose patriarch defrauded Canadian taxpayers in taking money intended for humanitarian aid via CIDA to establish a terrorist recruitment center under the guise of caring for "orphans." Orphans he no doubt was literally raising up for the purposes of exploiting them not only for the cash of well-meaning westerners but for forced recruitment.
His family was involved in a number of terrorist attacks, on on an embassy in Pakistan, also a country in which they had no business. NOt to mention they lived in the same compound as bin Laden for a while, and he was certainly an outlaw with no authority as his own country had stripped him of citizenship. His dear sister was cought brining more bin Laden materials into Canada after 9/11. They are of Egyptian extraction and reside in Canada- neither nation granted them the authority to wage war, or to kill, therefore when they kill they commit "murder."
Strictly from a moral perspective it is "murder" to kill anyone when you have no legal authority to do so. Such "moral authority" is restricted to government, and no government here, in Canada or in Afghanistan had authorized him to kill or deputized him to enforce their laws. Had he and his family been innocent they would have at least had the moral authority to defend themselves after being fired upon but this is not the case [they most likely fired first]. Of course, had they been innocent they wouldn't have had special forces soldiers on their tail, and wouldn't have prepared an ambush for them by letting a 15 year old play with a live hand grenade.
I take aboard all that you say and appreciate the length of your post but I think we can be too precious about who does or does not constitute a lawful combatant. The rules were drawn up in a different time when two countries declared war on each other via their diplomatic representatives and then sent their clearly uniformed and identified armies to fight each other in set piece battles.
To the best of my knowledge the US has fought quite a number of wars in the past sixty years but the last time the US actually declared war was against Italy in December 1941. That being the case we need to accept that the old style of war is no longer always relevant and not to sit on our high moral perch about who does and who does not constitute a legitimate combatant. Is a US special forces soldier in plain clothes who draws down a missile strike against Al Queda troops in a civilian village perhaps killing innocent people in the process a “terrorist”? No of course not but if we stick to the rules you outline there could be a good case made against such a man.
If you stick to what you say then no one who takes up arms against what they regard as illegitimate invaders in their country (and no I do not say the Nato forces are illegitimate but there are many people in Afghanistan who do so) can be regarded as legitimate combatants unless they chip together to buy proper uniforms, insignia, and get permission from their government even supposing such a body existed. If the Russians had invaded the US and overthrown the US government would you and your neighbours have regarded yourselves as terrorists if you banded together to fight the Russians?
No I am not making some sort of moral equivalence argument. I am being a realist and no, anyone who deliberately targets unarmed civilians is a terrorist plain and simple. However anyone who, untrained, barely armed and with little more than raw guts decides to take his life in his hands and attack fully armed, trained, equipped and supplied professional soldiers who are backed up with airpower and artillery, well I don’t regard such man as a terrorist or murderer no matter how much I want him to lose (I accept that Omar did indeed murder the medic who was trying to help him so this doesn’t apply).
Let me draw an analogy, on August 27 1979 the Irish Republican Army carried out two spectacular attacks, in one in the Irish Republic they hid a bomb in a boat being used by the elderly Earl Mountbatten, an uncle of Queen Elizabeth, the bomb exploded at sea killing Mountbatten, an old woman and two young boys. Later in the same day in British ruled Northern Ireland the IRA exploded a landmine against a convoy of trucks carrying British paratroops killing six instantly, the paras took cover by a roadside wall and called in back up. A helicopter carrying reinforcements soon landed and the IRA exploded another bomb all the while engaging the British soldiers from across a river with gunfire. At the end of the ambush 18 British troops were dead, including a Lieutenant Colonel without any losses to the IRA.
Now for weeks after these events the British press was filled with outrage about these two “terrorist” incidents, but were they terrorism? The first one, an attack on defenceless, unarmed, innocent children and old age pensioners was undoubtedly terrorism but what about the second attack? A well planned ambush of fully armed British soldiers in territory which the IRA said was illegally occupied by the British? You don’t have to agree with the IRA’s aims, and I didn’t, to see that the second attack was hardly terrorism or murder, is it even physically possible to terrorise a platoon of armed British paratroopers?
I think if we start talking about the US fighting “terrorists”and “murderers”in Afghanistan we demean what the US forces are doing, we risk turning it into some sort of glorified police operation instead of the war that it clearly is.
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