Whether or not he killed US Army Medic Christopher Speer, the crime for which the scion of an al Qaida family pleaded guilty, is immaterial to why most Canadians are revolted by the Trudeau government's $10.5 Million payout and apology to Omar Khadr. Having taken up arms against a coalition, of which Canada was a part, that fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, and building IEDs of the type that killed scores of Canadian soldiers, Khadr is without question a
terrorist and traitor.
But as his defenders try to cast doubt on this element of the saga, let's address whether or not Omar Khadr is in all probability a killer.
Khadr's advocates say his confession and guilty plea were extracted by torture and coercion.
Khadr certainly endured forms of mistreatment while incarcerated. But after returning to Canada, where he was no longer fearful of abuse, Khadr said, not as his proponents claim, that he did not throw the grenade which killed Speer, but
that he's unsure if the grenade he threw was the one that ended the medic's life. But Khadr does admit having thrown a grenade at the Americans. So at the very least he tried to kill Speer and his comrades. But the evidence becomes more conclusive.
In 2002, in the Khost Province of Afghanistan, US forces engaged with an al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold. After an attempt to negotiate a search of the building was met with gunfire from the stronghold, a firefight broke out and then the Americans called in a airborne bomb strike.
Following the bombing raid, Speer a media, and other US Delta Force soldiers approached the building to search for dead and wounded. As the approached, a grenade was lobbed from within the building which fatally wounded Speer.
Now here's the easy logic to follow. Khadr said he threw a grenade. From reports of the post-bombing conflict,
only one grenade was thrown. It therefore follows to reason that the grenade thrown by Khadr was the one which ended Speer's life.
Khadr would have been in custody and treated by Americans the same regardless of whether Canadian officials had failed to inform him of his rights during questioning. It is not Canada's fault that Omar Khadr became a terrorist. It is the fault of his reprehensible family, in particular Khadr's father Ahmed, who was al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's bag man and who took the young Omar along with him on on his nefarious exploits. It is therefor not Canada which owes compensation and an apology to Khadr, but his own awful progenitors.
An Egyptian/Palestinian family, the Khadrs have a lengthy history of exploiting Canadians, with the assistance of Liberal Prime Ministers. Ahmed Khadr was was incarcerated in Pakistan in 1995 for his involvement in a terrorist attack on the Egyptian Embassy in that country. Following advocacy on the senior Khadr's behalf by the Canadian Arab Federation, Prime Minister Jean Chretien intervened and secured his release.
Following his return to Canada, Ahmed Khadr embarked on a campaign of fundraising and assistance for Osama bin Laden. To what extent he helped raise the funds that were used in the 2001 9/11 terror attacks that resulted in the murder of three thousand Americans is unclear. But it remains a distinct possibility that Canada's Liberal government was an unwitting accessory to that atrocity.
It was at the time of the 9/11 attacks that Ahmed had brought his son Omar to Afghanistan, later abandoning him there as he went off at bin Laden's bequest. Two years later, Ahmed would be killed in a shootout with Pakistani security forces.
Is Omar Khadr a victim? Certainly. of his family,
and very possibly, he was a victim of rape and sexual abuse by al Qaeda commander Abu Laith al-Libi. Charlie Manson also was an abused child, but that doesn't mean he deserves a get-out-of-jail free card and a multi-million dollar payout.
Perhaps the only benefit to this episode is that it has revealed the wide fissure between Canada's dinosaur mainstream media and the people in whose interest they purport to act.
The media is almost uniformly supportive of the Trudeau/Khadr payout and apology. This places them at odds with
71 percent of the Canadian public, from all political stripes, who are disgusted with the deal. Despite a media so invested in the Khadr stakes that they
condescend to and insult those who disagree with them, they have remained
entirely unconvincing. At least there's some comfort in seeing that the average Canadian refuses to be told what to think by posturing nitwits in the media.
Khadr is not, not has he ever been a victim of Canada. He and his family have done nothing but exploit Canada and been a burden on the country since their arrival. Yet he has legions of useful idiot supporters here
who have formed a veritable cult around him.And with
payout money from the Trudeau government,
likely in part to buy silence in their complicity with events surrounding that family, Canadians continue to pay the price for admitting that clan of
terrorists. Even if Khadr had been awarded funds from a Canadian court for violation of his Charter rights,
the notion that it would be more than a small fraction of the ten and a half million hush money he received from Trudeau is absurd.
Meanwhile, the family of Christopher Speer continues to feel the loss of the husband and father who
Omar Khadr took from them, and now whose memory he continues to insult.
