Prosecuting Khadr instead of Bush -- the supreme irony of the Obama presidency

[JohnyCanuck]

President Obama’s position on war crimes committed during the Bush administration has been defined in American political discourse by rhetoric about “looking forward.” But that only applies to American war crimes.

On the other hand, at Guantanamo Bay, a young man who was extra-judicially kidnapped by U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the age of 15 and illegally transported to almost a decade of legal limbo in Cuba, is now set to stand trial in the first war crimes prosecution under the Obama administration.

Omar Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed one American, apparently based on a confession extracted by sleep deprivation and threats of rape. George W. Bush launched an illegal war of aggression that probably killed more than a million people. The whole world knows it. Even Britain’s deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, recently referred on the floor of the House of Commons to the “illegal invasion” of Iraq.

At least 98 people have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even US investigators and courts martial have agreed that some of the victims were tortured to death. But the harshest sentence handed down in any of these cases was a five-month jail sentence.

snip

George Orwell wrote in 1948, “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral color when it is committed by ‘our’ side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6217.shtml

[msongs]

1. people who may commit war crimes do not want prosecution of war crime perps nt

[sabrina 1]

2. This is probably one of the most shameful stains on the

Obama administration so far. I cannot believe I supported an adminisstration that would violate all the standards of International law and prosecute a tortured child soldier, under the most vile law passed under Bush which was vilified by every Constitutional lawyer and Democrats, Liberals, Progressives across the natione.

And how insane has this country gone when a judge actually rules that testimony taken as a result of torture, from a minor, a child, is admissable in court.

For this President Obama, shame on you. This will go down in history with YOUR name attached to it.