Michelle’s book, “Guantanamo’s Child” is great. It’s well researched, includes interviews with many people on all sides of the issue. It’s well documented and balanced. She’s an excellent and principled reporter and it shows in the book.

The book provides insight into how a young Canadian teenager ended up fighting in the war in Afghanistan, and being accused under Bush laws of “violation of the law of war” and “material support for terrorism” as a result of his two month participation in the insurgency and one combat confrontation with the US military, in the summer of 2002 when he was 15. It also provides insight into the issue of so-called “home grown terrorism” generally.

I’m looking forward to her next book.

Thanks for that. That admission of killing civilians surprised me because the charges were all about targetting the American military. They even said that land mines were placed where the American military were expected to travel. It’s just not consistent with anything in the trial documents, and I’ve read them all, unless they posted something new, or I missed something. But I don’t think so because I looked for anything like that, or anything that would justify the war crimes charge.

It makes me think they threw it in to justify a war crimes charge.

Yes. And they confirmed that position in the Ghailani case. As soon as the civilian court threw out evidence because of torture, the judge said an innocent verdict wouldn’t mean release and the government backed that up.

I read the Obama task force, the part on criteria for declaring somebody dangerous, and I think Omar Khadr fits most of them. It even talks about links to Al Qaeda and specifically mentions this can be through family members. Omar Khadr, was, of course, linked to AQ through his father who knew Bin Laden. He ended up in a battle with US troops, I think the only Gtmo prisoner that did. He was dead in the water, looking at it from a US government point of view.

He didn’t have a hope of getting out Gtmo without pleading guilty. I’m sorry he had to do that, but most sensible people understand it was his only hope for a life as an adult.

Canadian papers are reporting that he confessed to attacking civilians. That wasn’t part of the official charges, last time I looked at the Defense Department web site – Omar Khadr – charges. Did they add that on to make it seem more like a real crime, as opposed to a Bush invented war crime? Does anybody know?

I wonder about that. I’m not familiar enough about American law. His lawyers have a huge civil law suit filed against the Canadian government because the Canadian Supreme Court declared his treatment illegal, and Canada complicit. I assume the Harper Conservative minority government would have sought a promise to drop the civil suit for any cooperation on their part (they are truly hateful), but we haven’t heard if that was part of the deal. The Harper government is saying nothing. Unlike American governments they seem to feel no need to respond to questions from the public, other than their own supporters.

I just hope he can and does sue them and I hope he wins.

Me too. But, at least this way he has a chance to have a life as an adult some day. It’s still very sad for Americans and Canadians who expected better of their countries. There have been times in the past when governments didn’t live up to the ideals and beliefs upon which the countries were founded, but, in time, they were condemned. I’m convinced that will happen some day in regard to this case. A country is much more than the particular government leading it, and certainly more than the whim of the majority at any given time.

I don’t think so, Neil. When the Canadian courts started declaring that Khadr’s treatment at Gtmo was illegal, the former Liberal Prime Minister, Paul Martin, expressed his regret that they had not requested repatriation which had a lot to do with Bush/Canadian politics, and he recommended it, as did the majority in Parliament including the Liberals lead by Ignatieff.

But I don’t see any advantage for Omar Khadr coming to Canada as long as the Harper minority government is in power. He might as well be at Gtmo and I think he’s better off there than in a US jail too. I’m under the impression they improved it over the years. I think he’d be in danger from other prisoners in a US or Canadian jail and they’d have to keep him in isolation.