An image the CBC isn’t likely to show you. Omar Khadr during his younger, more happy days as a terrorist apprentice building IEDs to kill and main people.
Photo: U.S. DEFENCE OPERATIONS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

I can’t think of anything more appropriate to sum up this slobbering suckupfest to the life and times of a murderer, terrorist and a war criminal, than the following screenshot:

Whatever truth that the commenter imparted to gain the “thumbs up” from the 76 per cent of people who voted was apparently not truthful enough for the CBC, who not only deleted the comment, but appears to have deleted all and any comments that were approved of by the majority of the readers. Because you know what they say at the CBC, the customer is always wrong.

These, apparently, were allowed to stay. Probably because they reaffirm the main basis of truth the CBC operates under, which is that Canada is inhabited by a land of racists:

Well, uh, you see, Neoriel, the reason this young man is being villified, as it were, is that he’s an admitted murderer, a terrorist and a war criminal. Glad I could clear that up for you.

But it just might make sense:

Canadian Forces eye Obama’s chopper cast-offs
Cancelled presidential helicopters could supply spare parts for Cormorants
…
Preliminary discussions are underway on the possible sale of the US101 helicopters to Canada. The aircraft, which were to form the new fleet of “Marine One” presidential helicopters, are similar to Canada’s CH-149 Cormorant search-and-rescue choppers [both based on the EH101] which, at times, have been grounded because of a lack of spare parts …

The Obama administration pulled the plug on the US101, also known as the VH-71, after the projected cost of the aircraft doubled from $6.5 billion to $13 billion U.S [more from Defense Industry Daily]…

Canada originally bought 15 Cormorants but one has since crashed. The Cormorant helicopter fleet has faced a series of problems, including cracked windscreens and cracks in the tail rotor area. The aircraft have been hindered in their operations by the lack of spare parts…

Here’s our Air Force’s CH-149 Cormorant site, and a photo:

Milnet.ca topic thread on the Cormorant’s long-continuing problems here (the government certainly can’t afford to buy more new ones), and an earlier post on the Air Force’s other chopper adventures:

Helicopters: “Auditor General on CH-148 and CH-47F acquisitions (plus lessons/risks for F-35?)”

Update: If Canada ends up accepting back Omar Khadr, maybe President Obama should just give us the helicopters out of gratitude for taking the fellow off his hands.

Mark
Ottawa

A forensic psychiatrist has testified at the sentencing hearing of Omar Khadr that he is “likely” to become a jihadist following his release from Guantanamo Bay. Dr.Michael Welner identified three important factors that would make his reintegration into Canada — something his supporters have consistently advocated for — difficult:

First, Omar Khadr has shown an almost complete lack of remorse for his crimes. Whether it be the IEDs he helped build and plant, the war crimes he helped commit, or the soldier he has admitted to murdering, Khadr hasn’t shown any genuine remorse. His emotionless attitude about it all would indicate that he is not sorry for his crimes, and would even suggest he’s proud of his accomplishments.

In apologizing to the wife of the soldier he murdered in Afghanistan, Khadr even drew a parallel between himself and apartheid prisoner Nelson Mandela saying, “you won’t gain anything from hate.”

“Love and forgiveness are more constructive, they will bring people together and solve lots of problems,” he added.

Khadr said to Sergeant Christopher Speer’s widow: “I am really, really sorry for the pain I have caused you and your family.”

She refused his apology, saying she would always consider him a murderer. And according to a forensic psychiatrist, she’s probably right.

Khadr has also refused to speak to any psychologists during his entire eight-year detention, Welner testified, which means that he hasn’t attempted to seek help for his terrorist pathology. This would indicate that his admission of guilt is more self-serving than a sudden act of conscientiousness. In other words, he’s going through the motions.

The third point raised by Welner is Khadr’s continued ties to al-Qaeda. Not only has the young terror apprentice never apologized for his actions — save the seemingly insincere one to the widow — he has a family in Canada that is also unrepentant for their militant views.

His mother and sister, famous for going on the CBC and complaining that Canada is a horrible place full of homosexuals and drug addicts, have yet to admit culpability in the poisoning of the minds of the male children in the family. That the family continues to have connections in Pakistan and Afghanistan is doubtless, though the Canadian government would likely never issue him a passport again.

Welner said Khadr has “been marinating in a radical jihadist community.”

This is no doubt true as well. And because of his myriad supporters here in Canada who will convince him he is a victim in the entire equation, it’s likelier he will come to see himself through the eyes of the sympathizers who will surround and shelter him during the repatriation process here.

It should at least concern people that Omar Khadr has never sought out the psychological services offered to him in Guantanamo Bay. In most criminal cases this is a red flag of remorselessness, and often weighs in the decisions of parole boards.

Before Khadr is released back into Canadian society — though that may be nearly a decade from now — I hope he is forced to undergo a psychiatric examination. If not for his own sake, then at least for ours.

…where will he end up? Norman does some serious spectating on possible US repercussions, esp. should there be a Republican-controlled House:

U.S. Republicans will be salivating at Khadr testimony
…
A report in today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal illustrates the challenge that Mr. Doer [our Ambassador in Washington] – and Canada – will be facing after next week’s election in the matter of Omar Khadr. And it could also help explain why the Government has been so reticent to show its hand this week on the question of repatriation:

“Republicans who have blocked the Obama administration from closing the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects are now questioning its moves to transfer some detainees to Europe.

Republican staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee recently traveled to Spain, Germany, France and other countries to dig for evidence of lax oversight of former detainees transferred there, according to people familiar with the matter.

The trip is an indicator of the next phase of the fight over the Guantanamo prison, a frequent flashpoint in debates over national security and the war against al Qaeda terrorists. President Barack Obama ordered it closed on his second day in office, but quickly retreated after opposition from Republicans and some Democratic lawmakers.

The transfer of detainees has been the administration’s most successful strategy to reduce the Guantanamo population. It has resettled or moved 66 people, mostly to European countries.

In moving detainees abroad, the Obama administration is following in the footsteps of the Bush administration, which released hundreds of men from Guantanamo…

Republicans cite an estimate from the Pentagon that some 20% of the detainees released under President Bush have returned to the fight. They say Mr. Obama should abandon the release policy in light of that figure. The Obama administration suspended transfers of detainees to Yemen after the botched airline bombing on Christmas Day 2009 by a Nigerian man who had trained in Yemen.”

As to whether he was a kid…

Mark
Ottawa

Further to Adrian’s post,

Omar Khadr Is A Murderer, A Terrorist And A War Criminal

I simply do not see how Khadr, at 15, qualified as a “child soldier”.  From the “Convention on the Rights of the Child“:

…
Article 38

1. States Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child.

2. States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years [emphasis added, Khadr had attained that age] do not take a direct part in hostilities.

3. States Parties shall refrain from recruiting any person who has not attained the age of fifteen years into their armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age of fifteen years but who have not attained the age of eighteen years, States Parties shall endeavour to give priority to those who are oldest.

4. In accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population in armed conflicts, States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict.
…

Moreover the “Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict” hardly seems to cover Khadr:

…
Article 1

States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities [Khadr was not fighting for the US but for al Qaeda--hardly a state party to the Protocol].

Article 2

States Parties shall ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 18 years are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces.

Article 3

1. States Parties shall raise the minimum age for the voluntary recruitment of persons into their national armed forces from that set out in article 38, paragraph 3, of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, taking account of the principles contained in that article and recognizing that under the Convention persons under the age of 18 years are entitled to special protection.

2. Each State Party shall deposit a binding declaration upon ratification of or accession to the present Protocol that sets forth the minimum age at which it will permit voluntary recruitment into its national armed forces and a description of the safeguards it has adopted to ensure that such recruitment is not forced or coerced.

3. States Parties that permit voluntary recruitment into their national armed forces under the age of 18 years shall maintain safeguards to ensure, as a minimum, that:

(a) Such recruitment is genuinely voluntary;

(b) Such recruitment is carried out with the informed consent of the person’s parents or legal guardians [emphasis added, see the irony?];

(c) Such persons are fully informed of the duties involved in such military service;

(d) Such persons provide reliable proof of age prior to acceptance into national military service…

I think we’ve been sold a bill of goods.  Though I really don’t see how Mr Khadr could be charged with murder for an action in the heat of combat.  In war soldiers kill soldiers legally–unless a soldier has clearly surrendered in which case he must cease fighting, or unless, on the other side, a soldier kills a PoW.

Mark
Ottawa

Photo: Toronto Star

Not even a guilty confession by Canada’s most notorious poster boy for child soldiering can coax his ardent supporters to admit the now 24-year-old Omar Khadr is a terrorist and a war criminal. They still imagine him as the baby-faced teenager still splashed across the pages of some newspapers, led astray by a father who also, at one time, lay rotting inside a prison for charges of terrorism.

As Norman Spector reminds readers today, had Canadians not been playing the same game with the elder Khadr in 1996, all of this might have been avoided. Then, as today with Omar, the media shone a light on a dark hole that should have been the home for Ahmed Said Khadr until the end of his days. Reluctantly, Pakistan opened the prison doors and let the al-Qaeda operative return to Canada, where it is said he kissed the ground upon arrival.

What terrorist in his right mind — or as right as is possible for a deranged adherent of militant Islam — wouldn’t be enthralled to have Canadian citizenship? As I wrote in the National Post in August, Ahmed Said Khadr depended on the protection of the same laws of western civilization he aimed to destroy. He understood the fatalistic tendencies of our liberal society would also afford the strongest possible defence against the accusation.

Now that Omar Khadr is an admitted terrorist, his ticker tape homecoming to Canada may have to be subdued until he has served out his time in a federal penitentiary here. The Canadian government has agreed to the plea deal that hinges on Khadr’s admission he is everything he was accused of being: a murderer, a war criminal, and most relevantly a terrorist.

The media has consistently accused the government of refusing to intervene in the Khadr case, though it has been inconsistent in its condemnation of who is responsible. The attention on Khadr did not occur until well after the Liberals had left office, having done nothing to petition a cause they would later champion in opposition. Politics is nothing if not situationally convenient.

Nor did Khadr become a rallying cry for the anti-war movement until Canada’s role in Afghanistan escalated with its move to Kandahar province. The kinetic requirements of engagement with the Taliban resulted in the civilian casualties necessary to build a strawman of moral equivocation. Khadr is a mere extension of that fallacious argument.

You’ve heard the argument. It says he isn’t a terrorist who smilingly and willingly planted IEDs, terrorized locals, and attacked U.S. soldiers with the Taliban. It says he’s a victim of his father’s hateful ideology as much as the third world African child plucked from a village whose parents had been murdered, and forced into violent slavery.

Not that anybody ever discusses the hateful ideology of the elder Khadr. It’s something of a nebulous construct used to describe Omar’s psychology, but never taken to the logically proximate discussion on immigrants teaching their Canadian-born children seditious contempt for Canada. The conversation is brushed aside, often with a sneering rebuke directed at those who even suggest that any analysis of Canadian-born terrorist Omar Khadr should include an introspective on multiculturalism’s failures.

Such failures are self-evident in the prolific “Toronto 18″, with the latest sentencing of Fahim Ahmad for his role in the 2006 plot to attack Ontario’s capital city. His sentence seems commensurate with Omar Khadr’s: 16 years in prison. By the time Khadr is finished his 9th year in Guantanamo Bay he will be repatriated to Canada to serve out the seven remaining years of his sentence. 16 years.

Those who claimed that Omar Khadr’s incarceration was unjust need only look to the final analysis. The admitted murderer, war criminal and terrorist will serve only 16. Even if he does serve all seven in Canada — and nobody believes he will — he would emerge from prison a 31-year-old. He will still have two thirds of his life remaining to make amends for his terrible betrayal of his country.

Omar Khadr has admitted he was an “alien, unprivileged, enemy belligerent,” unqualified to engage in combat hostilities with U.S. or other coalition forces in Afghanistan. He has also admitted guilt for “murder in violation of the laws of war,” and his membership in al-Qaeda.

Let the child soldier misnomer die today, and hereafter let the man be known by his admissions. And let the adult Omar Khadr begin the post-confessional part of his penance.

A warning note from Norman Spector:

Canada must not con U.S. Congress on Omar Khadr

According to news reports, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to speak to Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon Wednesday night [Oct. 20] about a proposed plea bargain in the case of Omar Khadr. The two countries, according to the same reports, will exchange diplomatic notes as early as Friday that would allow Mr. Khadr to serve part of his sentence in Canada…

Mr. Obama has an interest…in presenting the plea bargain deal in as harsh terms as possible; as the New York Times reported earlier this week, even he is not above shading the truth in an election campaign, as PolitiFact and FactCheck.org have been pointing out for some time.

Perhaps it is true that Mr. Khadr will spend seven years in prison in Canada – though it seems unlikely given our parole system. However, if the government of Canada allows this statement to pass without any caveat, we run the risk of being looked upon as skunks down the road by Americans if and when Mr. Khadr is granted an early parole. And, if and when that perception emerges, there would be no shortage of Congressmen and women to hold hearings on the affair even if it means damaging the bilateral relationship – as the British and Scottish governments are now discovering to their chagrin in the case of the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Mark
Ottawa

Norman Spector points out things many Canadians, esp. amongst our political, media and academic elites, wilfully ignore:

Khadr trial could be a teachable moment

…an Administration in which Harold Koh, the legal adviser to the State Department — reported to be at the centre of opposition to trying Omar Khadr — has justified the targeted assassination of U.S. citizens in these terms:

“Some have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing. But a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force.”

I don’t know whether Mr. Obama’s standing in Canada will decline in the coming weeks. But the Khadr trial does provide a good opportunity for Canadians to consider differences between our country and the United States — differences that can’t all be put down to the incumbency of George W. Bush, as was the tendency in much of our public discourse for most of the past decade.

Earlier on Mr Khadr and Canadian mental isolationism:

The world needs more Canada?

Plus a recent prime example of misunderstanding the Americans, in our all too typical smugly superior fashion: Incorrigible Koring of the Globe (inside the Beltway, yet!):

American politics: “Reporting” in “Canada’s National Newspaper”

Update thought: Can you imagine our Conservative government authorizing JTF 2 to hunt down and kill a Canadian citizen abroad?

Upperdate: Obama takeout:

Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents

Mark
Ottawa

Photo: Toronto Star

Few things can get the “left” worked up as much as discussing “child soldier” Omar Khadr, the son of an al-Qaeda-trained Egyptian-born terrorist, who decided to raise a family in Canada. Why did Ahmed Said Khadr, who held strong, fundamentalist Islamic views, decide to settle down in Canada and have children here? Because credit must be given where it is due. The eldest terrorist understood that Canada’s laws and liberal protections would offer he and his family the best chance at waging a foreign jihad.

When Ahmed Said Khadr ran afoul of the Pakistani government in 1995, you can be sure that he would have been left to rot there, had he not had his Canadian citizenship. The senior Khadr was in Pakistan to arrange the marriage of his daughter Zaynab to an Egyptian man with terrorist links, when al-Qaeda carried out a terrorist attack against the Egyptian Embassy. Ahmed Said Khadr was rounded up after it was discovered that his son-in-law had purchased one of the vehicles used in the car bombing.

That might have been the end of the Khadr family, except that the Canadian Arab Federation got wind of the imprisonment of the “Canadian”, and began urging Pakistan to give Mr.Khadr a “fair trial”, expressing concerns about Pakistan’s lack of respect for the rule of law.

Sound familiar? It certainly should. The Canadian-Muslim Civil Liberties Association gathered a petition of 800 signatures and presented it to both Canadian and Pakistani officials, and the pressure was put on Ottawa to secure his release. Fortunately for the elder Khadr, a Liberal was sitting in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who happened to be visiting Pakistan at the time, requested that Mr.Khadr be given a “fair trial and fair treatment” to Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan dropped the charges shortly afterwards, and Ahmed Khadr returned to Canada to rest up for his next jihadi assignment.

The end came for Ahmed Said Khadr in 2003, a year after Canada’s most famous child soldier was already in American custody. He was gunned down by Pakistani troops in a raid on al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters he was travelling with. His youngest son, Abdulkareem Khadr, was paralyzed in the firefight, later returning to Canada to seek unlimited medical aid. Though the terrorist mentor had passed on, he had planned well for his children.

The entire Khadr clan has benefited enormously from Ahmed Said Khadr’s plan to raise Canadian-born terrorists. Abdullah Khadr, recently released from detention after 5 years awaiting extradition to the United States, would likely never have seen the light of day again had he been born in Egypt or Pakistan.

And as for the focus of the Canadian media, a man who manages to get more press attention on a daily basis than most politicians in a single year, Omar Khadr, he is also benefiting from his Canadian citizenship. Had he been nothing more than an Afghan Talib fighter, he might already have been released back to the Middle East, or held in detention indefinitely. Not that anybody in the Canadian media would care.

The main objection to Khadr’s detention seems to be one of formality. Though Canada has no official power to repatriate Omar Khadr, it seems that the left want the government to at least make the request. Because the government has not done so, it is often misrepresented in the media that the Conservatives somehow have some kind of jurisdiction over the matter. Which, of course, they do not.

Perhaps what is most unusual about the defenders of the most prolific Canadian terrorist apprentice, is that most simply assume that Omar Khadr wants to return to Canada as a reformed and changed man. Even if we were to grant that he was a “child soldier” at the time he murdered Sgt Christopher Speer, the mistake is in the assumption that life in Guantanamo Bay has at all turned his thoughts against Islamic terrorism.

We constantly hear about the desire to repatriate Omar Khadr, offer him a place to live under supervision, grant him post-secondary education, and an opportunity to adjust to life in Canada again. How fortunate it must be to have a University education offered to a man accused of war crimes, when the rest of us not accused of treasonous acts were forced to ante up our own hard-earned ducats.

But who is to say that Omar Khadr wants any part of his new life in Canada? Who really knows what is going on in the mind of the man who is now 23-years-old? He has never expressed any remorse for his participation in activities with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and never indicated that he bears responsibility for any of his actions. It’s possible that his only true regret is being captured.

Many Canadians talk about the “rule of law” and “due process”, as though these were things that Ahmed Said Khadr cared about. He didn’t. He planted his seeds of terrorism in Canada knowing full well that these protections would be afforded to his apprentices, should they run into the kind of situation Omar Khadr now finds himself in. The last thing that Ahmed Said wanted was to raise them in a place where the state would simply make problems like Omar Khadr “disappear.” Canada, after all, is an easy mark for terrorists.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the disease-stricken tree. Omar Khadr, should he ever be released from Guantanamo Bay, may come to repay his lefty admirers in the same way his father did. We’ll probably never truly understand the ramifications of Omar’s previous antics of IED bomb-making caught on camera, or the picture of him walking with a necklace of hands swinging from a bandage as he makes his way quite gaily along a dusty street in the prime of his youthfulness.

There are many people who argue about Omar’s “rights” as though they are fully willing to trust the Guantanamo inmate with a rusty blade at the nape of their neck. But perhaps they have calculated that the personal consequences to their gamble are extremely remote. They don’t consider the implications of repatriating this “child soldier” to the loving and forgiving bosom of Canada’s welfare state. They understand even less that they are being used in a plan concocted by Ahmed Said Khadr long before anyone associated his name with the unintended consequences to cultural relativism.

So bring back Omar. Repatriate him. Give him an education. Money. A house. Hell, give him the Order of Canada.

But know this: should the darling of the left predictably fail to become interested in filling the role of law-abiding taxpayer, curiously winding up in a Pakistani training camp where he went to attend a cousin’s “wedding”, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This dangerous criminal will sell you a seed if you’re not careful!

Another famous member of the terrorist Khadr family is in the news today, this time because he’s being released from detention pending a court ruling that denied his extradition to the United States. Abdullah Khadr, second eldest child to Ahmed Said Khadr, was wanted by the U.S. government for procuring weapons on behalf of al-Qaeda.

But he is now free as a bird, after an Ontario court judge ordered his release from a Toronto detention centre. Abdullah had been in custody without bail since December 23, 2005. He was originally detained by Pakistani authorities before being arrested by the RCMP upon his return to Canada. The Americans paid a $500,000 U.S. bounty to the Pakistani police to hold him in custody before he returned here.

Superior Court Judge Christopher Speyer granted a stay of proceedings in the case, citing that Abdullah was not granted “prompt” access to Canadian consular services in Pakistan, and cited “gross misconduct” by the government of Canada.

Far be it from me to argue with a court decision, since Judge Speyer is certainly more qualified than I am to make decisions on such matters. But it does prompt the question: why do we protect terrorists and extradite potheads?

Marc Emery, the so-called “Prince of Pot”, was extradited to the United States in May to serve a five year sentence in a federal penitentiary. His heinous crime? Selling marijuana seeds by mail to U.S. customers.

One man procures weapons for al-Qaeda and the other sells a product that isn’t even an illegal substance until it’s grown. But the seed seller is the guy who gets the boot.

This coincides with a recent poll that suggests that Canadians don’t really have much of a problem with pot. A Leger Marketing poll for QMI Agency found that 21% think the federal government should decriminalize marijuana, and even 34% think it can be legalized and controlled.

Compare that to this poll, which suggests that most Canadians don’t really care much for the Khadr family, with 52% of respondents agreeing with the statement that they have “no sympathy” for Canada’s most famous “child soldier.”