It’s like the Chinese show trials the Cons love to mock.

We sure aren’t who we think and say we are , are we?

Did the Nazis stoop this low?

This whole “War Of Terror” is such a kindergarten mentality save for the dead and tortured.

God bless america, why ?

The Betrayal of Omar Khadr – and of American Justice; Andy Worthington; 10/26/10

[I put most of my thoughts on this fiasco in the last thread. I’ve been obssessing…and now I promise I will stop.]

The only thing missing in Amerika’s rush to become the most murderous country in history is the gulag’s and ovens…will not be long though…soon after the Tea Party idiots and the Repubs take back the false governance of the country, they will, along with the rest of the plutocracy, break out the machinery to grind all the dissenters and poor serfs into grist for the horror mill.

This country has become soulless and degenerate to the point of insanity, and if the populace at large allows this to go on unchallenged, then may the karmic accounting for those deeds come full circle, and crush all of those who most deservedly need to be crushed!

Fix this edit button issue please or get rid of this format!

American Exceptionalism, no doubt! Or to paraphrase Obama: “We are the people we have been waiting for! ( i.e. just another bunch of self-indulging and self-justifying predators!)

From the Jeff Kaye article I linked to @28

By the use of terms such as “elemental intolerance”, Dr. Welner exposes his bias and political animus towards Mr. Khadr. It carries the same whiff of fanaticism as the statements of former Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Guantanamo Bay, Dr. William Anderson, who wrote that Islamic “hard-core zealots” had “brains that are structurally and functionally different from us,” and that 100,000 “zealots” within the Muslim body politic would have to be eliminated, the way “malignant [cancer] cells” are removed from a healthy body.

So many have made the main points, I have only a few others, somewhat scattered, after reviewing much of the material:

1) The primary issues surrounding the illegitimacy of the charges have been summarized by Marcy and Andy Worthington in their two postings.

2) The issue of trying a minor as a war criminal (where else would that happen but in a kangaroo court?) could be fleshed out more. Most rely on the existence of international norms against doing so. I would like to add in the more psychological components, as the Supreme Court did not too long ago in Roper v. Simmons, the case that ended the death penalty for anyone under age 18. Compare the majority opinion re “the diminished culpability of juveniles” quoted here with the government stipulation about Omar Khadr’s knowing identification with Al Qaeda.

Three general differences between juveniles under 18 and adults demonstrate that juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders. First, as any parent knows and as the scientific and sociological studies respondent and his amici cite tend to confirm, “[a] lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.” Johnson, supra, at 367; see also Eddings, supra, at 115—116 (“Even the normal 16-year-old customarily lacks the maturity of an adult”). It has been noted that “adolescents are overrepresented statistically in virtually every category of reckless behavior.” Arnett, Reckless Behavior in Adolescence: A Developmental Perspective, 12 Developmental Review 339 (1992). In recognition of the comparative immaturity and irresponsibility of juveniles, almost every State prohibits those under 18 years of age from voting, serving on juries, or marrying without parental consent. See Appendixes B—D, infra.

The second area of difference is that juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure. Eddings, supra, at 115 (“[Y]outh is more than a chronological fact. It is a time and condition of life when a person may be most susceptible to influence and to psychological damage”). This is explained in part by the prevailing circumstance that juveniles have less control, or less experience with control, over their own environment. See Steinberg & Scott, Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence: Developmental Immaturity, Diminished Responsibility, and the Juvenile Death Penalty, 58 Am. Psychologist 1009, 1014 (2003) (hereinafter Steinberg & Scott) (“[A]s legal minors, [juveniles] lack the freedom that adults have to extricate themselves from a criminogenic setting”).

The third broad difference is that the character of a juvenile is not as well formed as that of an adult. The personality traits of juveniles are more transitory, less fixed. See generally E. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968).

These differences render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders.

3) A bit off the subject but an interesting finding (for me, anyway), was to find in Judge Parrish’s suppression decision a statement that indicates that stress positions are understood by military interrogators to be connected to the “Fear Up” technique.

Interrogator #1 was the lead interrogator for the accused while the accused was at the Bagram detention center. He interrogated the accused 20-25 times….. He used a ‘Fear Up’ technique as a last resort with the accused. It is a technique used to attempt to raise the fear level of the detainee…. The ‘Fear Up’ technique included the use of stress positions on detainees who were healthy enough to endure that technique. Interrogator #1 never used the stress position technique on the accused.

Evidently, Col. Parrish forgot to mention that the Army Field Manual expresses serious caution regarding the use of “Fear Up”. In the 1992 version of the Army Field Manual that preceded the 2006 revision (the one with Appendix M), the manual had a strong warning that the use of Fear Up “has the greatest potential to violate the law of war.”

Matthew Alexander, himself a former interrogator, was the one who pointed out to me that the current AFM had no prohibition of stress positions, and thus, he inferred they still continue as part of at least Appendix M interrogations. With Col. Parrish’s suppression denial decision, we learn now where this technique hides. It is considered part of the Fear Up technique.

4) The question of how Omar Khadr got to the compound where he would later experience the firefight, and perhaps participate (although his family is clear he was sent only as a translator), is an interesting one because it involves, as the stipulation notes, the appearance of “Sheikh Abu Leith al-Libi, a senior LIFG and al Qaeda military commander.” Somehow, Sheikh al-Libi was to absent himself from this firefight, only to be killed as one of the numerous ostensible number threes of Al Qaeda by CIA airstrike in January 2008.

Al-Libi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which the stipulation document noted, with some strained language, “is a designated terrorist organization and was associated with Al Qaeda at the time of Omar Khadr’s offenses. “Is?” “Was?” In fact, the LIFG was not considered a terrorist organization prior to 9/11, and according to numerous accounts in the British Press (based on a document leak and the testimony of ex-MI5 agent David Shayler, had received British funds and arms in an attempt to overthrow Libyan leader Colonel Moammar al-Qadhafi.

Besides Abu Leith al-Libi, another leader of LIFG was Anas Al-Libi, who worked closely with the dubious Ali Mohamed (who worked closely with portions of the U.S. government and military, as a double or triple agent, no one can be sure). It was a raid on Anas Al-Libi’s house that brought us the famous Manchester document, otherwise known as the Al Qaeda manual, including its interrogation component.

Omar Khadr’s link to Sheikh al-Libi isn’t necessarily sinister or anything more than it seems (apparently, Omar’s father was later furious with al-Libi for endangering his son), but it does point to some strange connections. You can’t probe too closely on any of these affairs and not find something nefarious; in this case, the Judge’s reticence to notice that the man who brought Omar Khadr to the compound in 2002 was only a few years before a paid coup plotter, if not assassin, for the British government. And Omar Khadr showed poor judgment?

—— Khadr’s case is one of the more egregious of countless cases of torture, false imprisonment, kidnapping and murder by the U.S. government. The fact this was done to someone who would not even have been tried in an adult court in most of the United States only adds to the special nature of the Khadr case. It speaks personally to many, and says, this is a vulnerable human being. This person should not be used as a piece of propaganda. His fate dehumanizes all of us.

“first child soldier to be convicted . . .”

When the US and Somalia are the only member states of the United Nations that have refused to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child, what should be expected? The Khadr case is an expression of pure, ugly, unchecked power. From the perspective of this power, if it has rendered people who resist imperial force non-entities by the “legal” manipulation of classifying them as “enemy combatants,” whether or not the invented “other” is a child is irrelevant. Hell, according to this dynamic they are not even human.