Lying liars in the pursuit of indefinite detainment for innocent people:
Another fighter was still alive inside the Afghan compound where Omar Khadr was captured at the time a grenade killed a U.S. soldier, casting doubt on allegations that only the teenage militant could have been responsible for the soldier’s death.
It has long been assumed by many that Mr. Khadr was the only combatant alive during the firefight, and so must have been the one who threw the grenade.
The revelations, mistakenly released in never-before seen documents, came during a military tribunal hearing for Mr. Khadr Monday at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Documents that were supposed to be censored in their entirety were accidentally handed out to reporters in the courtroom, taking both defence and prosecution lawyers completely by surprise.
I bet it did surprise some people. I really don’t know what to say, other than it is imperative we get to the bottom of all this crap once the current filth is swept out of Washington.
Zifnab
This would never have happened if we’d just gotten rid of trials in the first place. Of course, maybe we could just short-circuit the whole deal and get rid of journalists. If only we could just arrest them for no reason and hold them indefinitely? Ah, to live in such a world.
Dennis - SGMM
Think about this: we have been told for years that the threat of terrorists is so great that the government must monitor all of our communications, must suspend habeas corpus, must kidnap, must torture, must strip American citizens of their Constituional rights.
Back in 1992, Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammed staged sniper attack from a Chevy Caprice using a $400 semi-automatic rifle. Can anyone realistically believe that the terrorists are so dedicated to a concerted attack, or so disciplined, or so devoid of resources that not one of them has duplicated Malvo and Muhammed’s feat of killing fifteen infidels and throwing large segments of the East Coast into fear?
We’ve been sold a bag of magic beans.
MNPundit
1992? It was 2002.
Dennis - SGMM
MNPundit, you’re right. Fingers were in front of my brain. ’92 was stuck in my head head because Muhammed/Malvo used a ’92 Caprice in the commission of their crimes.
Dug Jay
The referenced news article makes no claim that Kadhr was not present at the site in which a US soldier was killed. The latest assertion is that an associate of Kadhr’s MAY have thrown the grenade that killed the soldier. In most US jurisdictions Kadhr would be as exposed to prosecution for the crime as would the other party.
Anonymous
Nobody said that the article claimed that Khadr wasn’t at the site, and in most US jurisdictions for commiting a similar crime Khadr would have an open trial where evidence could be presented and heard by both sides and judged by 12 peers. That’s the point, and Mr. Kadhr would be presumed as innocent as the other party until proven guilty, not the other way around.
Jake
Meanwhile, after a few feeble attempts to tie McVeigh to islamoabortionfascists you never hear shit from the fRighties about the All American Bad Boy.
Actually, you never hear shit about Allen, which surprises me because he did convert to his fucked up little version of Is-blam and they were both tried as Tarrists.
Oh wait, that’s it. They were tried in American courts and sentenced and there was no need to call Jackalope Bauer in to rip out finger nails. Boooring!
scarshapedstar
Um… why were all the facts of the case censored?
Bush-Stalin ’04: The gift that keeps on giving…
Zifnab
You are stuck in a very pre-9/11 mentality.
Explain. If I am to understand this correctly, US law dictates that if you throw a hand grenade that kills a US Soldier when I am in the room with you, I am equally culpable in the crime?
Is this the same logic that assumes bombing an alleged terrorist hideout is ok, even if it kills half a dozen civilians, because the citizens are guilty of associating with alleged terrorists?
I assumed that the President was just allowed to kill you for looking at him funny anyway. Why are we even having these proceedings?
Zifnab
If we let you know how the legal system works, the terrorists can use it against you. Ergo, quit siding with the terrorists.
Xanthippas
I fully expect Paul L to now concede that this is why secret tribunals with no legitimate due process protections are a recipe for injustice.
Or not.
Xanthippas
That’s not true. Being in the same room with someone who commits a crime does not make you an accomplice to that crime. Helping them to commit it does. But again, as long as you can come up with any post hoc rationale for why this person should be locked away, then it’s all good right? Who cares what an actual fair trial would discover, if there are possible (no matter how implausible) circumstances in which the person could be guilty, right?
PaulW
Why be surprised? It’s called INCOMPETENCE! We’ve been seeing it from the Bush Brigade of Buffoons since Day One! Sheesh!
Perry Como
Because facts have a well known truthful bias.
libarbarian
Screw that! This is a process that’s designed to take place outside of view or scrutiny of anyone independent or without a vested interest in seeing everyone found guilty.
1. This isn’t a “crime”, its combat. This is not someone taken in a raid by police in a peaceful area – like Padilla. This is no secured “crime scene” that can be gone over by CSI looking for proof of his guilt. It’s not realistic to expect soldiers, who are neither police nor trained to gather evidence, to be able to “prove” the people they capture in the course of a firefight (who are armed and inside an enemy position from which they had received fire) are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
It is possible that he is “innocent” – but it is unreasonable to presume that he is like we would for arrests outside of a combat zone. Traditionally, any male of that age who taken in those circumstances would be presumed to be a combatant and taken as a POW.
2. The kid isn’t an accused criminal, he’s a POW. He should be treated as a POW. That said, in a “war” which might drag on for decades, detaining him for the duration of the conflict seems a tad …. like overkill. Im not positive of the best way to handle this but I know indefinite detention without recourse is probably not it.
Trying him for murder is just fucking dumb – the purpose of detaining POWs is to remove them from combat, not punishment, rehabilitation, or whatever the hell someone thinks the purpose of prison is. Did we try every German POW who shot a GI?
3. There is a real differences between arrests made by law enforcement outside of combat-zones and detentions made by military personal during the course of combat. It is much more realistic to expect the former to conform to the procedures of a criminal trial than it is for the latter. Combat is fucking crazy and fluid and you can’t call in CSI to comb the place for evidence when its over. When a guy is of military age, armed, and in the presence of multiple enemy fighters who were JUST in combat with our troops … the presumption of guilt (at least of being a combatant) is needed.
Zifnab
Except that you forget one thing, Xanthippas:
They caught these guys on 17 different cameras! 17 cameras! But you liberals are probably already making excuses for the Dallas Duo, ready to cut them some slack because they voted for Hillary Clinton. Guess you liberals don’t care about justice after all.
17 cameras and you guys are still defending them! Where’s your habeus corpus now? You people make me sick.
/Paul L.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
hahahaha love it.
I hope we keep doing that. Documents, numerous and entertaining, showing that there are no real threats, and Bush censors everything down to his list of favorite tv shows.
/that would be Blue’s Clues at top
binzinerator
I wonder if it was in fact incompetence — or was by design. Surely not everyone tasked to carry out these abuses of power buys into the Bushco view of due process.
If it is an example of passive resistance by our civil servants who still give a damn, the beauty of it is that it is just the sort of incompetent fuckup you’d expect of them. Slipping in some truth with the chaff, as it were.
Punchy
It’s censored for the defense lawyers, too? WTF? How the fuck do they defend a client if all the docs are censored?
Is this correct? If so, damn what a sham.
LiberalTarian
There is a God, and he is laughing.
Jake
Where ya been? That’s been one of the many complaints about this fiasco.
Punchy
I knew the client themself had no right to view the evidence. I had no idea their lawyer didn’t, either.
What a fucking joke, if true. Wow.
TenguPhule
There’s only one way for that to happen, unfortunately.
And it’s illegal.
TenguPhule
Killing an enemy soldier in combat is not a crime.
This case is a fucking joke defended by fucking poor ass clowns.
empty
This from Wikipedia:
This is a 15 year old.
Nancy Irving
What I can’t understand is why words like “innocent” or “guilty” should be used to characterize combatants in a war. This kid may be our enemy, but how does that make him a criminal? Are our soldiers also criminals? They kill people too, both armed and civilian.
And making a distinction between legal and illegal combatants appears quite dubious, given the kinds of wars we now fight, and the kind of enemy we now face. That distinction belongs to the ground-wars of the past, like WWII.
Why are we prosecuting soldiers for fighting on the other side, unless their actions are really war-crimes, like killing unarmed prisoners? The present incident happened during a firefight, i.e. an exchange of fire between two opposed forces. How can throwing a grenade in such a context, even if the guy did throw the grenade, be characterized as a crime?
If somebody is actually guilty of real war-crimes, they should be sent to the Hague, not prosecuted in kangaroo-courts at Guantanamo.
I just don’t get this at all.
empty
At some point we decided that we were the definition of good. So whatever we did had to be right and good and beyond question. And if you did question you were an America-hating, terrorist-loving, traitor.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Innocent Taliban bombmaker, marksman, friend-of-bin-Laden and lifelong suicide-bomber-worshipper who maybe didn’t kill anyone while fighting for the terrorists…weep for him.
And retroactively weep for all the poor, innocent Nazis who didn’t get their chance to kill anyone before they got capped by a GI.
Seriously, have you lost your mind, John? Innocent? Death would’ve been too good for this murderous waste of carbon.
TenguPhule
Shorter EEEL: I like to make shit up because I’m a moron.
Imagine that, soldiers killed in a battle. This is a war crime since when? But to try and hide evidence that Supa-military fucked up and then got caught red-handed trying to cheat the system…..
TenguPhule
But that would require actual work involving actual lawyers and actual evidence.
Much easier for the Bush Junta to make it up as they go along.
Prospero
All that at 15? Wow.
Anne Laurie
Shorter Bushjunta: Oh, like you’ve never wanted to waterboard a teenager…
Xenos
What, like my mother-in-law? She was a child in Nazi Germany, and was officially a member of the Nazi Youth. Yeah, lets go send that admitted Nazi to Guantanomo, she might still manage to kill!!!
This is not some ‘islamo-fascism’, this is the real stuff! Six million dead and all that – Osama is a piker compared to Germano-fascists.
Besides, if she were taken into custody, she could get some free treatment for her phlebitis. This is a win-win however you do it.
Kinda similar to how her father was treated humanely by American forces after his tank got blown up in Normandy… There was no maybe there, that guy definitely killed a number of American soldiers, but that is another story.
Lee
As binzinerator pointed out and I completely agree. This was no
boatingaccident.I think good honest people are starting to stage their own little revolts against the corruption and dishonor that has invaded our government and military brought in by the Bush Administration.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Really? On what battlefield was she captured?
Yeah, it’s the same. Moron.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Look, I can’t help your ignorance — I can only ask you to read more. This terrorist was in Al Qaeda training camps since he was 12. His parents were big AQ funders and trained their kids to hate Jews and Americans and to worship Islamic suicide bombers. What did you think — he’s some Canadian high-school kid who made a wrong turn into a firefight with US troops in Afghanistan?
I’ve seen newborn kittens less naive than you guys.
Dug Jay
Boo Hoo Hoo.
Xanthippas
Yeah, and maybe he didn’t actually kill anybody, but what does that matter? Guilt by association. Which interestingly, is probably how the 9/11 hijackers felt about the people working in the towers that day. Hey, how does it feel to share the same paranoid and fact-free mindset that terrorists do?
TenguPhule
So at 12, he’s supposed to have total control over where he goes or what his parents do to him? And that’s even assuming you have your facts correct (always in doubt when EEEL or the US military is involved).
How the fuck you can believe murder charges are justified in a firefight between two armed forces is beyond me.
Or following this chain of logic, do we now prosecute the witness for the defense for killing a wounded man without offering the chance to surrender?
Either you accept that in a battle, people will try to kill the other side or you might as well just STFU because you seem to think this is a video game where US troop kills are okay, but kills on US troops are not.
Xanthippas
Ah, so now kids should be punished for how their parents raise them…and for what they believe! Why wait until their actually terrorists or actually try to kill anybody before we bomb them and lock them up? Oh wait…we’re not. But hey, those kids were hanging out around those terrorists and probably being taught all kinds of anti-American and terrorist-ic things, so really we’re just pre-empting future strikes they were going to carry out anyway.
libarbarian
Xanthippas:
Please clarify. Are you opposing simply charging him with murder or with the more basic idea of detaining a 15 year old as a POW. Are you trying to say that we should treat this kid in exactly the same way as we would treat an accused 15 kid accused of murder in an American city and simply release him if we cant prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was personally responsible for someones death?
James F. Elliott
Look, like it or not, Dug and EEEL, as of 2002 U.S. law prohibits the kind of treatment Khadr has been given because, under U.S. law, he is a child in an armed conflict. The MCA doesn’t override that law (indeed, makes no mention of it), neither does Quinn speak to it. Khadr is entitled to due process and rehabilitation under the law.
The issue here isn’t culpability. The issue is violation of our own rule of law without precedent or authority. Pull your heads out of your asses for a second.
James F. Elliott
Please replace “is” with “was, at the time of capture,” in order to forestall the “But he’s 21 NOOOOOW!!!!” non-rebuttals.
Xenos
Tell me, EEEL, what is the distinction, under the law, or under morality, or whatever, between a fifteen-year old Nazi and a fifteen-year old al-Qaedian?
Zifnab
We know they’re both liberals.
Xanthippas
Actually, when it comes to children, I think they should be afforded the protections that children are afforded at international and American law (though our propensity to try children as adults in this country is quite out of sync with the rest of the civilized world.) If we’re going to detain a kid for blowing up an American soldier, then he ought to get the same trial that a kid would here in the states. For adult alleged terrorists, I’m actually ok with providing them some sort of military tribunal, so long as it affords most of the protections given to a trial in the criminal justice system. Or at least I was, until the Bush administration completely botched that by trying to argue that they could detain captured “terrorists” forever with no due process protections and no resort to American courts, or in the alternative, try them in kangaroo courts using secret evidence. Now I think we ought to just try them all as best we can, since the full protections of the criminal justice system are the only way anyone in the world other than nut-job right-wingers like lambchop would trust the outcome of the trial.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Who said anything to the contrary? All I said is that he’s not “innocent,” he’s a trained Al Qaeda combatant captured on a battlefield, and that he’s a murderous piece of human filth whom I would prefer was dead.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Who cares if he had control? This isn’t Dr. Phil — this is war. He was a trained AQ terrorist, trained to hate Americans and Jews, make bombs, and murder innocents.
You don’t ask why the dog is rabid — you just put it down before it kills someone.
Believe me, I don’t think this scum should be standing, much less standing trial. I’m sure his lawyers will get him off, so he can return to making bombs to kill women and children in markets.
That should make you loons happy.
Xenos
chicken.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
2. The kid isn’t an accused criminal, he’s a POW. He should be treated as a POW. That said, in a “war” which might drag on for decades, detaining him for the duration of the conflict seems a tad …. like overkill. Im not positive of the best way to handle this but I know indefinite detention without recourse is probably not it.
Since when the fuck does anyone fighting in Afghanistan come under the jurisdiction of American law, let alone be subject to capture, interrogation and deportation to the US to stand trial?
Can Iran pass a law allowing them to kidnap and try any US soldier killing Iraqis, even Iraqi soldiers?
Has your judicial system gone completely bugfuck insane?
Xanthippas
And if he was 13? Or 10? Or 8?
Also, advocating the death of children would seem to fit within your very, um, liberal definition of “murderous.”
Xanthippas
Child = rabid dog needing to be put down.
You do realize that even some of the 30%er wackos on your side of the aisle would think you’re a nut, right?
TenguPhule
Human beings do, obviously you wouldn’t know anything about that.
Show me the fucking declaration by Congress then.
Oh wait, there isn’t one.
And make up your fucking mind. If killing the enemy is justified as war, then the enemy killing back falls under the same guideline.
Cute, trying to reduce the enemy to rabid dogs who must die. How quickly your tune will change when American soldiers are treated the same way by foreign forces.
I can understand that EEEL has the morals of a rabid dog, but one would think that the concept of ‘this can be used against us too’ would sink in.
Oh good, be sure to tell the first batch of American troops you find that you don’t believe they should be taken prisoner, they should be killed to the last man because only scum get taken prisoner.
Please EEEL, earn your Darwin Award.
TenguPhule
I’m surprised they haven’t yet.
It is truly sad that Iran has more moral ground then the USA at this point. If they were to capture and torture American soldiers captured in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Bush Junta would find their own fucking stupidity thrown back in their faces should they try to complain.
I pity the troops who will find out the hard way that EEEL’s peers have made their world a much more painful and deadlier place to be.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Why do you oh-so-sensitive poets refuse to call this kid an Al Qaeda terrorist? There’s no doubt that’s what he was. He was captured in a firefight in Afghanistan, thousands of miles from his Canadian home — he didn’t make a wrong turn on his way home from school.
But you prefer to call him a “child” or pose silly hypotheticals like “what if he was an eight-year-old?” Well, he’s not eight, and he is a terrorist. A terrorist who, if he should never see the light of day again, it will be too good a fate for him.
Again, I’m sure you all hope he gets off, so he can return to making bombs to kill women and children in markets. Because that would be a stick-in-the-eye of the Bushies! And you dare to call yourselves human beings…