Photo of Gitmo 'Child' Taliban Leaked

[unhappycamper]

Photo of Gitmo 'Child' Taliban Leaked
Miami Herald | By Carol Rosenberg | March 10, 2008

WASHINGTON -- A Toronto newspaper on March 8 published a graphic photo of long-held Guantanamo captive Omar Khadr, a Canadian youth captured during a 2002 firefight with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and severely wounded in his chest.

Khadr was 15 years old in the picture. Now 21, he faces a likely late summer trial by military commission for allegedly throwing a grenade during the firefight that killed a U.S. Army sergeant.

The photo posted on The Toronto Star website accompanies excerpts from a book, "Guantanamo's Child," written by Michelle Shephard, a reporter for the newspaper.

The Star journalist for years has tracked the tale of the Toronto-born, U.S.-held Khadr.

The paper did not say how it acquired the photo, a rare up-close scene of a bloodied, war-wounded captive in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,163633,00.html?wh=wh

[YOY]

1. I don't know what's more messed up

A 15 year old killing in the name of God by an army of Theological madmen.

or

That 15-year-old in a prison camp that has been shown to be less than abiding to human rights run by a country that claims to be the champion of freedom.

[Benhurst]

2. Both are bad; but I'll take door number two.

:puke:

[YOY]

3. Two's better if you have to chose but I don't think one of its goals are "rehabilitation"

or at least humanely "storehousing" said 15-year-old-turned-21.

[Benhurst]

4. I agree. Actually, by choosing door number two, I had meant to imply

that the more evil of the two.

While the behavior of the fifteen-year-old is offensive, it is hard to give it equal weight to that of a nation-state. Therefore, I find the behavior of our government far worse than his.

[YOY]

5. Yeah, that's pretty much what I though you meant

and pretty much what I think as well.

[TahitiNut]

6. Photo ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: ON A BRUTAL IMAGE

He is alive, though appearing near death.

The photo shows a child soldier, at his moment of capture on the battlefield, bleeding. War is ugly.

This is a Scarborough youth, Omar Khadr, only 15 at the time, being assisted by U.S. Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan, where he was fighting for the Taliban, pressed into service by his father, an Al Qaeda fundraiser.

His face yellow with battle dust, his chest agape with the exit wounds of two bullets shot through his back, Khadr looks barely capable of movement. Yet he tried to resist medical help.

You can easily find more violent images on network television or best-selling video games – but reality is more disturbing.

We realize the image shocks. We publish it after deliberation, not to offend, but to help bring home to Star readers something we believe they need to think about – our values as Canadians, our belief in fair trials for our citizens.

Six years after his July 2002 capture, now 21, Khadr is the only remaining Westerner in Guantanamo Bay prison, awaiting trial for murder and other war crimes in a discredited military process. Setting aside issues of Khadr's culpability, maturity or moral responsibility for his actions, we are still left with a question about our national view of justice.

Even more disturbing than such a photo, to certain critics of Canadian policy – including federal opposition parties, Amnesty International, the United Nations and the Canadian Bar Association – is this country’s failure to follow the lead of Britain and Australia, which demanded the repatriation of their citizens to face due process at home. Has this been sufficiently debated here?

- Fred Kuntz, Editor-in-Chief

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/326337

[uppityperson]

7. Sot in the back twice?

Looked briefly at wikipedia, gives links to the changing story of what happened to him.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/02/05/khadr-account.html?ref=rss

(clip)
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.

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. The unidentified soldier says he killed the first al-Qaeda fighter before spotting Khadr, whom he said was wounded, on his knees and facing away from him. For reasons he does not go into, he says he shot him in the back twice.

The Pentagon says American soldiers fired on Khadr in self-defence after he tried to attack them.(clip)

[TahitiNut]

8. FUBAR. Just plain FUBAR.

The entire situation is almost beyond any rational thought and (based on my own limited experience in Nam) is virtually impossible to unravel. The factors I see at play on this total fiasco is junior troops that are either panicking or going "off the reservation" or both, a command and control that's fucking over the troops and acting without accountability, a senior command (general staff and CiC) that have absolutely no comprehension of their own culpability, and (most important) a complete breakdown of the process that relies on centuries-old "rules of war."

We just cannot hope to maintain even the slightest humane control over the behavior of troops in a combat zone when the framework for a last tenuous grasp on moral and honorable behavior has been fractured by an abdication of the principles inherent in the Geneva Conventions. The very precarious balance in attitudes just cannot accommodate the tampering with that "reality" ... especially NOT with people who regard themselves as 'career' military. We FAIL to appreciate how essential it has been, in adhering to 'humane' conduct under the Geneva Conventions, to have a military leavened with citizen-soldiers - people who regard themselves as civilians FIRST and only temporarily in service in an insane world. That's the last thread for many that maintains some fragile contact with sanity and humanity.

[uppityperson]

9. Yup. Sometimes I feel it is just my cynicism, playing games. Then I find something, like that photo

that strikes me in the gut (mixing metaphors) and realize that yes, it is fubar. What is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, what is going on and will go on here when the military returns home PTSD'd, what will happen next everywhere due to all that has happened, torture/Geneba Conventions, etc etc etc,

War is hell and not to be undergone lightly, and needs a whole hell of a lot of planning and backup for all everywhere and yes, FUBAR. For yrs I have been telling people here in the states that no, it's not bad enough yet for change, no it doesn't affect enough of us intimately enough for change, people keep living in horror and agony and it will continue to get worse until it is bad enough for all those who haven't wanted to see hear listen to see hear listen understand how bad it is.

Being cynical, I hate being able to say "told you so". You know?