Whoopsie ... this is going to put a crimp in someone's bloodlust:
New witness account shows Khadr charges should be dropped: lawyers
Say what? Let's read on:
Lawyers for Omar Khadr called on U.S. authorities Monday to dismiss a murder charge against the Canadian, saying a newly revealed eyewitness account that had been covered up by the Pentagon casts doubt on the official version of events.
Khadr, now 21, is charged with hurling a grenade that killed American Sgt. Christopher Speer during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. He's been in custody at a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since then.
According to the original U.S. military version of events, Khadr ambushed American soldiers with a grenade following a four-hour fight at a mud compound in Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials later backtracked slightly after it was revealed nobody witnessed Khadr throw the grenade. Pentagon officials said an eyewitness wasn't needed, because Khadr was the only al-Qaeda fighter left alive and the only person who could have thrown the grenade.
Sounds pretty clear cut to me. So what's the problem? Oh ...
However, a classified document, inadvertently released to reporters at the military prison by a Pentagon official Monday, provides a different eyewitness account of the events.
A U.S. soldier at the battle said in sworn testimony that two al-Qaeda fighters were alive after the fatal grenade attack.
Oh. Dear. Yeah, it has to be annoying when that top-secret, classified evidence that might clear your detainee accidentally gets out. Who the fuck let that happen?
In any event, we can now all relax and look forward to an animated round of the Blogging Tories explaining how all this doesn't make any difference. After all, when you've invested that much spittle and fleck pronouncing someone guilty and calling for his head on a stick, having to admit you might have been wrong just ruins your whole day.
And, besides, it's not the Blogging Tory thing to do.
15 comments:
What you omitted was that one fighter had a gun and leetle Omar didn't. So my bet is on Omar tossing the grenade. At any rate, I'm sure Omar will prove his innocence any day now, and return to Afghanistan where he can visit friends, relatives, and Osama bin Laden.
My bet is on a child soldier being held against all conventions of military and civil justice as adhered to by civilized nations and signatories of the Geneva Conventions. Held without habeas corpus, fair or timely trial, held without reasonable access to representation and disclosure of information necessary to mount a proper defense. Held in an extra-legal concentration camp, in judicial limbo, by a government that is committed to repealing the very rules of law and freedoms that it claims to be defending.
If young Mr. Khadr committed a crime, charge him, bring him to trial and give him the opportunity to make his defense. Find him innocent or find him guilty and allow justice to be served. Raphael, your bet is worth as much as piss in a puddle. After spending his youth in the clutches of his fanatic family and their insane mission in Afghanistan, then the latter part of his adolescence and early adulthood in a torturous gulag, the young man will likely need significant therapy.
Either way, his continued imprisonment is a disgusting stain on the reputation of America. The failure of our government to petition for his repatriation is a filthy stain on the spirit of Canada. America, the land that lies about the children they capture, imprison and likely torture and Canada, the land that allows that to happen to one of their own, a citizen and a minor.
Raphael, you don't have to love Omar Khadr but you bloody well should love the rule of law and justice. That is the thin line that separates us from the brutality we contend against. For every shrug of the shoulders and blind eye turned we become that which we pretend to despise.
Raphael....I see you WON'T be joining Steve Janke's Dog Detective Agency any time soon. What the new evidence tells us is that there was another survivor in the rubble who was capable of firing a rifle...and was therefore capable of throwing a grenade. Omar Khadr had been severely injured during the repeated bombing and strafing runs. He had serious shrapnel wounds to his head, and one piece had sliced through his eye blinding him. He was also sitting up facing away from the action as a blinded disoriented person with blown out ear drums might might do. And he was a small 15-year-old boy. Now Raphael put your thinking beanie cap on again and tell me who do you think was more likely to have thrown the grenade? Omar or the other guy?
But of course none of this matters. The fact is he was a victim of his crazy parents...he had no choice in what he did in Afghanistan...and he was by every definition a child soldier. So he never should have been sent to Guantanamo and tortured. As for your snarky little comments at the end they are simply PATHETIC.You wretched right-wingers must feel like really big men for ganging up on a Canadian kid who has gone through all of that.
But actually you should just be ashamed. I thought you were one of the better BT mob. But now I know you're not...
PSA and Simon have done an excellent job of taking you to task so I won't belabour your complete lack of simple human compassion, Raphael. What I will stress is the fact that you seem to have no problem with this heinous fuckery being committed in your name and mine.
At the end of the day, we're supposed to be better than this but thanks to Dubya and Big Daddy, we're not. And that alone should make you outraged over these kangaroo court proceedings. Instead you shrug your shoulders and make snotty comments. Bravo, Raphael, bravo.
You know, this whole thing really calls to mind something I've been noticing about the hard right in general these days. It's not about decency, or honour, or even basic humanity. It's about winning the argument. An emotional "my team is the best" that has little to do with logic or the common good. It's solely about making the other guy wrong.
That might explain some of the more stubborn Log Cabin types. Being on the "winning team" matters more than basic human rights.
the young man will likely need significant therapy.
Sweet Jesus, I hope we don't have to pay for that. Of course, looking at how Laibar Singh has bled us, I wouldn't be surprised.
What the new evidence tells us is that there was another survivor in the rubble who was capable of firing a rifle...and was therefore capable of throwing a grenade.
Who are you now? Jack McCoy? This isn't Law and Order, and I'm not about to hand the benefit of the doubt to a terrorist.
Omar or the other guy?
Omar.
And your petulant cries for Omar is really quite frightening, given what he and his wretched family have done to Canada.
Instead you shrug your shoulders and make snotty comments. Bravo, Raphael, bravo.
Lulu, that is your damned breakfast, lunch, and dinner, making snotty comments. Glass houses, baby, glass houses.
Sweet Jesus, I hope we don't have to pay for that.
Didn't you just have a child? Didn't you just announce to everyone that you did? Didn't I congratulate you on the birth of your daughter and her lovely name?
Didn't I tacitly inform you, in all of that, that the cost of your breeding was born, in some measure, by me?
What you omitted was that one fighter had a gun and leetle Omar didn't. So my bet is on Omar tossing the grenade.
And that is, after all, how our justice system determines guilt and innocence. You're right, though, this has nothing to do with "law" or "order".
given what he and his wretched family have done to Canada
Ooh, guilt by association, too! You know, next time someone seems a little hysterical about the potential for trouble with the Cons in office, just remember that maybe it's because this is supposed to be the "reasonable" voice of their supporters...
Raphael writes:
"What you omitted was that one fighter had a gun and leetle Omar didn't. So my bet is on Omar tossing the grenade."
Apparently, justice on Raphael's planet involves this strange concept of "betting." Apparently, gathering evidence is too much like work, or something.
"At any rate, I'm sure Omar will prove his innocence any day now, ..."
And, apparently, the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has also proven too onerous for poor Raphael, who prefers to begin with a presumption of guilt and requires the accused to actively disprove that. How quaint.
Thanks for stopping by, Raphael. Feel free to drop by again after you grow up and can mingle with the adults without embarrassing yourself.
By the way, go back through the comments and note carefully how absolutely intransigent is Raphael, utterly uninterested in this new legal development and just as utterly convinced that, lack of evidence notwithstanding, Omar Khadr is a murderous little terrorist, even before the trial, and please not to annoy Raphael with any new facts.
Now go back and read carefully what I wrote in my initial blog post:
"In any event, we can now all relax and look forward to an animated round of the Blogging Tories explaining how all this doesn't make any difference. After all, when you've invested that much spittle and fleck pronouncing someone guilty and calling for his head on a stick, having to admit you might have been wrong just ruins your whole day."
Did I call it or what?
well raphael, you may now put aside all of the pretense of being the reasonable blogging tory. here you show your true colours yet again. you espouse all of the things that mark the bigoted, prejudicial idiocy that diminishes freedom and corrupts the rule of law. you are no better than an ignoramus like neo, you just don a fancier cloak.
congratulations raphael, you are the terrorist now. your tacit approval of the extra-legal abduction, imprisonment and torture of a child soldier, without charges or trial puts you on the same moral and ethical level as those who abduct westerners in a place like iraq.
"Who are you now? Jack McCoy? This isn't Law and Order, and I'm not about to hand the benefit of the doubt to a terrorist."
seems you've declared yourself the jack mccoy here, judge and jury alexander. no trial, no evidence... guilty. no benefit of the doubt, no attempt to even approximate an exercise of justice. case closed. you disgust me raphael, i hope your little one grows up to know a nation with more respect for the rule of law than her father cares to demonstrate.
For some reason, whenever Raphael tries to distinguish himself from the drooling, mouth-breathing minions that are the Blogging Tories but eventually lets the mask of civility slip (as it always does, given time), I'm reminded of this.
But that's just me.
My first thought when I heard this story?
"It's sure clear, now, why so many of these wingnut court proceedings want the defendants to be tried in secret, or have none of the evidence available to view, EVEN BY THE DEFENDANT HIM/HERSELF."
I'm sure the argument justifying having kept this information from being public would be -- as usual -- "national security."
If they mean by that "someone finding out that American soldiers found this child injured and shot him in the back and then charged HIM with murder might make even more people in the world hate the U.S.A. and become its enemies" -- yeah, I can see why they'd be worried about "national security" all right.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with, you know, LAW and JUSTICE.
Notice in how RA's replies, there's no mention of the child soldier issue?
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