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The Khadr Thread

This whole thing just confirmed why I have no faith in our society. Who really wants to put on a uniform and go to bat for this country when your leaders will throw you under the bus and give 7 figure payouts to enemy combatants.
 
Spectrum said:
This whole thing just confirmed why I have no faith in our society. Who really wants to put on a uniform and go to bat for this country when your leaders will through you under the bus and give 7 figure payouts to enemy combatants.

This is one of my main issues with this. For one it won't help recruitment for us, but I'm sure this could be spun by terrorist organizations as a positive recruitment drive for them.
 
http://nationalpost.com/g00/news/canada/omar-khadr-describes-firefight-that-killed-u-s-soldier-im-just-going-to-throw-this-grenade/wcm/b1a0b60f-7871-4764-92bc-b1a526053b80?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.ca%2F

This is an older article from 2015... but one quote from Khadr here pisses me off.

'“I was thinking, ‘What should I do…?’ I didn’t know what to do. So I thought, I’m just going to throw this grenade and maybe just scare them away.”"

So a guy who was making IEDs felt a grenade would scare people away.



 
Wookilar said:
It's not so much the payout that bothers me, or some of the recent opinion pieces coming out stating opposition/support of said payout...
What bothers me is some of the language used, repeatedly, when this was announced. It was the right thing to do....oh and we saved a metric-buttload of money as well :nod: see aren't we S-M-R-T?
I've been thinking about that. Previously I was grudgingly onboard with the logic that it's better to pay him 10 million rather than 20 but what's 10 more? Aren't we about to donate 20 million dollars to the Clinton foundation? How much money did the Liberals piss away in their orgy of mad spending when they hit the office?
In hindsight I'd rather see the government blow 50 million fighting tooth and nail to deny him $1.00

Yea we might lose.  Sometimes fighting a losing battle is still the right decision to make.
 
Agreed. $10-20-30M is nothing in the world of government finance. That kind of money is gone in a blink of an eye in the federal world. Don't get me wrong, that's a lot of cash for an individual, but for a government, it's nothing. With the proper written SOW, I can spend well over a million in a heartbeat and probably sole-source due to "technical specifications."

The spin might be that it was a "good deal" but I'm not buying it. I was with Jarnhammer at first, until I put my budget hat on and thought about it. The feds (all of them) care about $10M like I care about $10. Actually, I probably care far more about $10.

I was speaking to my MP last week about this. Told him I'd be very happy with a settlement that just covered my wages until the end of my contract that was cut short....it's only about  $1.4M. Pocket change, right?

I see in the news this morning that Khadr's US lawyers are waiting on a US SC decision to rule on a similar case that hinges on whether or not what he did should be considered a war crime in accordance with the US constitution. All the other crap aside, I am quite interested in what happens to these charges of "war crimes" from these US military tribunal hearings and how that might shape the risk management side on the part of governments sending their troops into other countries.
 
[quote author=Wookilar]
The spin might be that it was a "good deal" but I'm not buying it. I was with Jarnhammer at first, until I put my budget hat on and thought about it. The feds (all of them) care about $10M like I care about $10. Actually, I probably care far more about $10.
[/quote]

Probably deserving of it's own thread but yes the government has some weird ethics when it comes to money.
This guy saved the City of Toronto $50'000 for an over inflated estimate to build a stair case and instead of saying thank you city officials are pissed.  Looks like they just got caught with a bullshit over inflated estimate and are embarrassed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40676256

10 million to Kadhr? Agreed, $10 to you and me.
 
Wookilar said:
It's not so much the payout that bothers me, or some of the recent opinion pieces coming out stating opposition/support of said payout...
What bothers me is some of the language used, repeatedly, when this was announced. It was the right thing to do....oh and we saved a metric-buttload of money as well :nod: see aren't we S-M-R-T?

I've been having a discussion with a local journalist, one with a pretty solid rep, on some of the stranger aspects of this whole thing. He pointed me to this opinion piece:

http://www.nationalobserver.com/2017/07/07/opinion/what-if-omar-khadr-isnt-guilty ATTENTION: a few photos in here that some may find disturbing. However, I think they are extremely important to see. Perspective is vitally important and so much of what we have always gotten about this entire affair has been muddied and filtered through so many political screens that the truth, as we all know, lies somewhere off screen.

Thoughts?

Good article. 

To be honest I think we have to look at each issue independently even though they are linked.  I have no issue with the government being held accountable for it's action or inaction.  sadly it ends up compensating an enemy.

My issue is that no one has been able to explain the pay out effectively.  Why that much? How is it calculated?  Is 10.5 million the going rate for being tortured or is it a psychological number that by adding half a million more than the cost of fighting this a way to show somehow it was worth fighting to start with?

Those that sympathise with Kadhr though should ask themselves this:  If he hadn't been detained or captured or wounded, what do you think he would be doing right now? How many more people would be dead because of him.  I have yet to see anything that merits redemption yet.  There are steps he could take to do that.  Meaningful ones, but I have yet to see those at all. 

I won't blame the Trudeau government for the situation we are in now.  I blame them for not effectively explaining their position on this and I blame them for not justifying the payout amount. 
 
Remius said:
Good article. 

To be honest I think we have to look at each issue independently even though they are linked.  I have no issue with the government being held accountable for it's action or inaction.  sadly it ends up compensating an enemy.

My issue is that no one has been able to explain the pay out effectively.  Why that much? How is it calculated?  Is 10.5 million the going rate for being tortured or is it a psychological number that by adding half a million more than the cost of fighting this a way to show somehow it was worth fighting to start with?

Those that sympathise with Kadhr though should ask themselves this:  If he hadn't been detained or captured or wounded, what do you think he would be doing right now? How many more people would be dead because of him.  I have yet to see anything that merits redemption yet.  There are steps he could take to do that.  Meaningful ones, but I have yet to see those at all. 

I won't blame the Trudeau government for the situation we are in now.  I blame them for not effectively explaining their position on this and I blame them for not justifying the payout amount.

Generally speaking, settlements in civil litigation cases are kept private, and neither party is supposed to talk about it.  Keep in mind that apart from the apology (which was inherently public), most of what we know about the details of the settlement was based on leaks.  As far as I know, no government officials have actually confirmed any details of the settlement. Rather, they just talk around the information already in the public domain without actually confirming it.  In Khadr's interview with CP, he stated that he is not permitted to discuss the details of the settlement either.  The government may wish to provide more information, but they are likely constrained by the terms of the settlement. 
 
Remius said:
To be honest I think we have to look at each issue independently even though they are linked.  I have no issue with the government being held accountable for it's action or inaction.  sadly it ends up compensating an enemy.

I have yet to see anything that merits redemption yet.  There are steps he could take to do that.  Meaningful ones, but I have yet to see those at all. 

There was some talk, can't find it now, where I believe it was a government spokesperson was trying to explain how his actions in A'stan had nothing to do with the actions/inaction of the Canadian government and her agents afterwards, which is what the settlement is about.

Time to get my tinfoil hat on, but I am becoming very curious on what pertinent information the Khadr team has that the government doesn't want coming out?

As for the redemption of Omar, for Omar's sake,.....I'm not sure there is much he could do that would sway my opinion.
 
Wookilar said:
As for the redemption of Omar, for Omar's sake,.....I'm not sure there is much he could do that would sway my opinion.

Giving the settlement to the Speer family and Mr. Morris. Like 90% or more. That would be a good start.
 
Wookilar said:
Time to get my tinfoil hat on, but I am becoming very curious on what pertinent information the Khadr team has that the government doesn't want coming out?

There was an editorial in yesterday's Kingston paper that discussed the irrelevance of the cost to fight this and the potential for Liberal embarrassment if it did go to trial. I have not been able to find it online.

Cover-up is not an outlandish theory, and makes at least as much sense as any other reason given.
 
But I just found this, while looking for the Whig-Standard editorial:

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/terry-glavin-khadrs-payout-looks-to-canadians-like-its-burying-a-liberal-scandal/wcm/3b11fcc4-0561-4c58-9f25-27ad039c07c4

Terry Glavin: Khadr's payout looks to Canadians like it's burying a Liberal scandal

The public mood should not be expected to soften unless Trudeau manages to dispel the impression that the deal was a kind of hush-money arrangement

Terry Glavin

July 11, 2017 8:24 AM EDT

We’re still in the early innings, but it would appear that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pieties about the sanctity of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms aren’t quite a match for the blowback over his government’s decision to cough up $10.5 million and an apology in a secret deal with Guantanamo Bay’s loudly-argued-about former inmate, Omar Khadr.

It turns out that Canadians are so put off by the arrangement - 71 per cent of respondents in an in-depth Angus Reid public opinion survey say it was the wrong thing to do - that three in five Liberals, even, agree with Conservative leader Andrew Scheer that the case should have been fought in court, to the end.

Unsurprisingly, Conservative-leaning voters are the most likely to express revulsion about the deal, which was leaked to the news media last week. The agreement settles a lawsuit Khadr’s lawyers filed in 2004 alleging that Canadian officials collaborated with U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo in a way that “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects,” in the words of a 2010 Supreme Court of Canada ruling.

A poll found 61 per cent of Liberals were opposed to the payout

The Angus Reid poll found 91 per cent of Conservative voters said the Trudeau government did the “wrong thing” in settling with Khadr. But 61 per cent of Liberals took the same view, and 64 per cent of New Democrats also agreed that the government “should have fought the case and left it to the courts to decide.” That is precisely what Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has been saying.

The public mood should not be expected to soften unless Trudeau manages to dispel the impression that the deal was a kind of hush-money arrangement, designed to make the Khadr problem go away and head off the scandal that would inevitably emerge from the evidence in a hard-fought court trial.

Khadr’s civil suit was heavily focused on the unconstitutional conduct of the Liberal government in the 2002-2003 Chrétien-Martin period. Liberal heavyweights and officials from that epoch were included in formulating the Khadr settlement. Because of the deal’s convenient confidentiality clause it is not even clear whether or when Trudeau approved it or whether he learned of the deal’s contents only when everybody else did, last week.

Last Friday, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale attempted to fault the previous Conservative government for the mess: “The Harper government could have repatriated Mr. Khadr or otherwise resolved the matter.” But that falls flat, and not just because Goodale was a cabinet minister back in 2002-2003 when misdeeds were being committed by Canadian officials apparently working on the instruction that Khadr’s constitutional rights did not exist.
In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned lower-court orders and agreed with Stephen Harper’s Conservative government that it was perfectly entitled to drag its feet in Khadr’s repatriation from Guantanamo, which was completed in 2013, when Khadr was transferred to a Canadian prison. Now 30, Khadr was released on bail in 2015, pending his appeal of a variety of Guantanamo military-court convictions, and lives in Edmonton.
The Liberals have also been insisting that the deal’s $10.5 million payout should be understood as a cost-saving measure, because Khadr was certain to win his suit — he was going for $20 million, and you never know what a judge might decide. In other words, the government had no choice. Two-thirds of Angus Reid’s respondents don’t believe it. More than half of the poll’s Liberal respondents (56 per cent) don’t believe it, either.

The Liberals have been insisting that the payout should be understood as a cost-saving measure

Also, that Ontario Superior Court injunction application aimed at heading off any payout to Khadr, filed June 8 by the widow of Delta Force Sergeant Christopher Speer, the U.S. soldier Khadr may or may not have murdered in Afghanistan in 2002? Just an astonishing coincidence, we are told to believe.

The main talking points the Liberals are sticking to like syrup are all variations on the theme Trudeau articulated in his first proper statement on the affair last Saturday, six days after the news broke, in response to a question at a G20 press conference in Hamburg: “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians, every one of us, even when it is uncomfortable. When the government violates any Canadian’s charter rights, we all end up paying for it.”

There’s little in the Angus Reid findings to suggest that Canadians disagree with this eminently defensible but otherwise purposely point-missing, subject-changing piety, or require instruction in the principle that governments should generally make restitution when a citizen’s rights are ignored or trampled. But there is a lot in the poll’s findings to suggest that Canadians are skeptical about the degree of injustice Khadr is ordinarily said to have suffered.

Asked if they believed Khadr had been treated fairly or unfairly, 42 per cent of respondents answered that they weren’t sure or couldn’t say, 34 per cent said Khadr had been treated fairly, and only 24 per cent said Khadr had been treated unfairly. While roughly four in 10 Canadians said they’d have offered Khadr neither apology nor compensation (the view of one in three Liberals, too), another one in four said an apology alone should suffice.

In a commonplace failing of public opinion polls, one question appears to unfairly expect respondents to know things they would have no way of knowing. Asked whether Khadr is potentially a “radicalized” threat to Canada, two-thirds of poll respondents said they believed he was.
Khadr’s notorious Al Qaida family put him in harm’s way in Afghanistan when he was an adolescent, and Khadr spent his post-9/11 time there building improvised explosive devices for the Taliban. In 2002, when Khadr was a combatant in that firefight in which he may or may not have murdered Sgt. Christopher Speer, he was only 15.

In the years since his return to Canada, Khadr has never expressed anything less than remorse about his past

In the years since his return to Canada, Khadr has never expressed anything less than remorse about his past, and he has given every impression of being a rather sad but otherwise hopeful and respectable person who just wants to get on with his life.

As for Trudeau’s hopes to get on with his political agenda, this whole sorry business looks like bad news all around. But you never know.
During the 2015 election campaign, public opinion polls showed an overwhelming majority of Canadians supported the Conservative proposition that the wearing of niqabs and other such face-veilings should be prohibited during the swearing of citizenship oaths. In several emotional speeches, Trudeau went out of his way to traduce the proposition, going so far as to compare niqab-ban supporters to the “none is too many” cretins who were content to turn away Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

Trudeau wasn’t punished for it. He was rewarded at the polls for his pluck and obstinacy. If, in place of an honest accounting of what went into the Khadr deal, all we get from Trudeau is another series of florid and extravagant speeches about the Charter of Rights, you never know.
It just might work.
 
This is the editorial that appeared in the Kingston Whig-Standard that I mentioned earlier, courtesy of the Toronto Sun:

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/07/16/khadr-case-about-saving-money-really

Suddenly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of the never-ending federal deficits is worried about spending too much of our money.

POSTMEDIA NETWORK
First posted: Sunday, July 16, 2017 05:13 PM EDT | Updated: Sunday, July 16, 2017 05:30 PM EDT

That was his latest explanation last week for his decision to settle Omar Khadr’s $20 million civil suit against the government for $10.5 million and an apology.

Trudeau says he understands Canadians are concerned about the $10.5 million payout and he is too, which is why the government made the deal.

Otherwise it could have cost up to $40 million, Trudeau said.

Where to begin?

First, there are some court cases the government should defend on principle, which is what many Canadians believed about the Khadr suit.
Second, the $29.5 million difference between $10.5 million and $40 million is the kind of money a skeptic would say the Liberals spill at lunch.
Remember Trudeau’s broken election promise that “modest” Liberal deficits over his first term in office would total $24.1 billion, with a $1 billion surplus in 2019-20?

Current Liberal projections put that figure at $93.3 billion, an increase of 287%, with a $20.4 billion deficit in 2019-20, $18.7 billion in 2020-21, $15.8 billion in 2021-22 and no end of annual deficits in sight.

So much for saving taxpayers’ money.

Third, while it may be accurate, where does Trudeau’s estimate of up to $40 million come from?

And where is the documentation to show Khadr’s civil suit has already cost taxpayers’ $5 million, as the Liberals claim?

Are the salaries of federal lawyers and civil servants who would have been doing other work for the government anyway wrongly included in those amounts?

Did the government hire outside lawyers? If so, let’s see their invoices.

Our belief is the Trudeau government settled because it wants the Khadr case to be forgotten by voters well before the next election in October, 2019.

After all, the trial would have included an examination of how the Liberal Jean Chretien and Paul Martin governments violated Khadr’s constitutional rights in 2003 and 2004, according to the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2010 ruling.

That’s why, we believe, Trudeau’s Liberal government was so anxious to settle the Khadr suit.

Not out of concern for our wallets.
 
With the Khadr case now as a precedence, what kind of can of worms shall we expect from the Trudeau Government when this comes to fruition:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Ottawa may have no choice but to repatriate, prosecute captured Canadian ISIL members: experts
Turning a blind eye to maltreatment of Canadian ISIL members by Iraqis or others could lead to a human-rights claim like Khadr’s, a prof says
Tom Blackwell
The National Post
July 20, 2017  10:54 PM EDT

The oldest are probably just toddlers, innocents born into one of the most reviled terrorist movements in the world.

And very soon, they could be the responsibility of the federal government.

The children of Canadian members of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant form part of a potentially explosive dilemma confronting federal officials. As ISIL teeters on the brink of military defeat, what should the government do when and if Canadian members of ISIL are captured?

Some experts say Ottawa has no choice but to try to repatriate and prosecute in Canada any detained members, ensuring they aren’t tortured or otherwise mistreated by local forces. As for those ISIL children, if they have one Canadian parent, they would be citizens and, lawyers say, deserve help.

“The government has absolutely no choice but to protect the Charter rights of these Canadians,” said Lorne Dawson, a University of Waterloo professor who has extensively studied radicalized youth.

“The embassy, the consulate would have to deal with them, the way they would any Canadian who’s gotten in trouble abroad, and assist them to come home if that’s what they want to do.”

Others note there would be little public sympathy — especially after the controversial payment made to Omar Khadr — for bringing back foreign fighters, even if they were to face justice in Canada.

The French government, for one, has already said that Iraq’s court system, not France’s, should judge one of its nationals captured recently near Mosul, noted Phil Gurski, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst.

“Does the Canadian government have a legal, let alone a moral, responsibility to act on these people’s behalf? I think the answer is ‘No,’ ” said the head of the Borealis consulting company. “They made a conscious decision to leave this country and to join a group that everyone and his dog knows is a terrorist group … ‘It sucks to be you; live with it.’ ”

Andrew Gowing, a spokesman for Public Safety Canada, said the government would not speculate on what it would do with any captured Canadians, but said all citizens have a right to consular assistance.

The issue is not just an academic one. Unconfirmed reports suggest 20 female foreign participants in ISIL were caught by Iraqi forces in Mosul last weekend. Local media outlets suggested two were Canadians, though Iraqi sources have told the National Post the group included only Russian, French and German women.

Regardless, federal officials have told Dawson they are discussing the prospect of Canadian ISIL activists surfacing overseas, and seem to have come to some firm conclusions about what to do.

“They always stress … ‘We cannot in any way afford to allow our actions to result in a Canadian citizen receiving basically torture, or abuse.

That will never happen again’.”

Turning a blind eye to maltreatment by Iraqis or others could lead to a human-rights claim like Khadr’s, Dawson said. Though accused of killing an American soldier while a teenage member of al-Qaida, Khadr received a $10.5-million settlement recently over Canada’s role in his torture and other rights violations while in U.S. military custody.

Estimates from the government and outside researchers suggest as many as 100 Canadians have travelled to Iraq or Syria to join ISIL, including 15 to 20 women, most of whom have reportedly had children there.

Citizens facing serious charges in a foreign country with a well-functioning justice system would normally be left to that nation’s courts, says Anil Kapoor, a Toronto lawyer who has acted on numerous national-security cases. But given that ISIL members would be detained in a chaotic war zone, Canada should probably try to repatriate them, he said.

Once here, they could face charges under section 83 of the Criminal Code, such as leaving Canada to join a terrorist organization, participating in or facilitating terrorist activity, or committing a crime for a terror group, with penalties of up to life in prison.

If local authorities in Iraq or elsewhere insisted on prosecuting them, Canada should at least provide diplomatic assistance, said Kapoor.

Even if some are convicted of crimes in Canada, efforts ought to be made to reintegrate them into society after their sentences end, argued Barbara Jackman, a Toronto immigration lawyer who has often handled terror-related cases.

“I really think they need to work with the Muslim community in terms of developing plans to assist them,” she said. “They are Canadian kids, we can’t just sort of throw them away.”

Babies born in the Middle East to at least one parent who is a Canadian citizen would automatically be Canadian themselves, Gowing said.

Such children may, though, face an uncertain future, said Gurski.

“This issue of orphans and kids born to people who joined Islamic State is going to haunt us for a decade,” he said. “Who wants to take care of them? It’s not the kids’ fault, but these are the sons and daughters of terrorists.”

• Email: tblackwell@nationalpost.com


More on LINK.


"Watch and Shoot!"
 
George Wallace said:
With the Khadr case now as a precedence, what kind of can of worms shall we expect from the Trudeau Government when this comes to fruition:

There is no way to blame the precedent on the Trudeau government.
 
jmt18325 said:
There is no way to blame the precedent on the Trudeau government.

He ordered the check to be cut, he had them pay it out quickly so the widow of his victim couldn't get an injunction, he didn't have the guts to fight for what was right even though the majority of his citizens didn't agree with the payout I lay the blame and the precedent set by his feet.
 
jmt18325 said:
There is no way to blame the precedent on the Trudeau government.

Where have you been hiding?  Who cut the cheque?  The Trudeau Liberals did. 

Don't try to tell me, or anyone, that the Supreme Court did.  They did NOT.  They only ruled that his Rights were violated.  Trudeau cut the cheque and had two flunkies do the apology. 

Why are so many amoured with a sociopath?  How to spot a sociopath.
 
Chief Stoker said:
He ordered the check to be cut, he had them pay it out quickly so the widow of his victim couldn't get an injunction, he didn't have the guts to fight for what was right even though the majority of his citizens didn't agree with the payout I lay the blame and the precedent set by his feet.

The precedent has nothing to do with the cheque, but rather the court decisions related to people like Khadr and Arar.  The court decisions are what placed an obligation for reparations on the government.  Yes, the Harper government chose Arar's reparations, and yes, the Trudeau government chose Khadr's, but that's not the central issue.  It's about abuse of rights and abuse of process.  If the courts see that, we're in trouble.
 
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