I Disagree With The Supreme Court Here

The Supreme Court of Canada decided not to order the Canadian Government to repatriate Omar Khadr.

There is a problem here. The court has acknowledged that the government has violated Mr. Khadr's rights time and again throughout this whole sordid business. The government - especially under Mr. Harper - has been exceptionally rigid in its refusal to act on Mr. Khadr's behalf. It is disappointing indeed that the Supreme Court is unwilling to order the government to take effective action on Mr. Khadr's behalf.

The argument that the Supreme Court has no business dictating foreign affairs policy to the government is flawed in my view. This is not merely a matter of foreign affairs policy - it is in fact a situation where the government has been an active participant in the violations of Mr. Khadr's rights under Canada's existing laws. This is where the Supreme Court has, in my view, missed the point entirely.

Further, it does not recommend any kind of remedial or compensatory actions to be taken by the government to amend the situation that it has created with its mistreatment of his file.

In the bigger picture, this is an example of the Canadian government telling its citizens that they have NO standing with the government - within or without the nation's borders. Consider this carefully the next time you find it necessary to travel.

The Harper Government Pays Homage To Their Masters

Having been repeatedly ordered by various levels of Canada's courts to actively pursue repatriating Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, the Conservative government has decided to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada...

The government has decided to appeal a Federal Court of Appeal decision made earlier this month to the Supreme Court, unnamed sources told CBC parliamentary reporter Julie Van Dusen.

The Justice Department has filed a motion for stay pending appeal, Van Dusen said.

So...in spite of being told that the government had acted to this point in contravention of Omar Khadr's rights as a Canadian citizen, the Conservatives have decided to grind this through the Supreme court - deferring any need to act on behalf of a Canadian who has been held abroad in arguably illegal circumstances.

Never mind that the Charter of Rights in Canada is quite clear on this matter:

6. (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

So, once again, we see the Conservative government acting in a manner that is contrary to the interests of its citizens, but also in contravention of Canada's own laws. The longer this bunch is in office, the more they act like the Bush/Cheney crowd - with none of the charm of either of those two.

No Big Surprise Here

The HarperCon$ continue to dodge their duty to Omar Khadr - this time by appealing the court verdict of a few weeks ago.

“The Government of Canada has consistently stated that Omar Khadr faces serious charges,” said a statement from the department of Foreign Affairs.

“After careful consideration of the legal merits of the ruling from the Canadian Federal Court issued on April 23, the Government of Canada has decided to appeal the decision.

“As the matter is currently under litigation, we will provide no further comment at this time.”

Ummm...no Khadr is not facing serious charges. At most he is facing a bunch of "charges" that only stand up in a faux court concocted by the Bush II government to get political convictions.

You couldn't put Khadr into a criminal court in either Canada or the United States and have the charges stand up for more than about thirty five seconds - you know, about the length of time it takes to point out that he was underage at the time and that most of the "corroborating" evidence was extracted under torture. (Oh wait - they didn't "torture", did they? It was "enhanced interrogation" - by means of such helpful techniques as near drowning people)

If Khadr is in fact chargeable with "serious crimes", then repatriate him, and try him in Canada's courts. But then, I'm pretty sure that any sentence he might receive has been more than made up by his incarceration in Guantanamo Bay.

And then there's the latest bunch of idiocy to be tabled regarding Mr. Abdelrazik:

He should get himself off the United Nations's 1267 list, Elizabeth Richards, a Justice Department lawyer, replied, referring to the Security Council's list of terrorist suspects, named after UN Resolution 1267, which created it.

“But how are you supposed to respond [to the secret allegations] when you don't know why you are on the list?” the judge asked.

There was no answer from Ms. Richards.

...
Mr. Abdelrazik, the only Canadian on the UN blacklist, was added by the Bush administration in 2006. But no reason or evidence has ever been made public. He has denied any links with al-Qaeda and, before the Harper government agreed to ask the UN to delist him in 2007, he was cleared of criminal and terrorist links by both the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Last month, two hours before he was to fly home – 200 Canadian chipped in to buy him a ticket – Mr. Cannon rescinded previous promises of a one-way travel document and designated him, without giving reasons, a national security risk.

“The refusal of a passport on national-security grounds does not violate the Charter,” Ms. Richards told the court yesterday.

Ms. Richards and her Justice Department colleague, Anne Turley, insisted that the whole long litany of promised one-way travel documents that were never delivered – because the government kept changing what Mr. Abdelrazik had to do to get them – was no longer an issue that they need to consider.

Canada's Conservative government has apparently become a bunch of apologists for the worst aspects of the Bush II regime. Still more evidence that Canadians should be embarrassed by Harper and Co.

It's Called Responsibility, PMSH

So, in the wake of getting thoroughly spanked for failing to carry out its responibilties, the HarperCon$ are plotting an appeal of the court ruling which obliges them to actually take steps to repatriate a Canadian citizen that has been allowed to rot in Guantanamo Bay for the last several years.

A day after a federal judge ordered the Harper government to seek Omar Khadr's repatriation, Canada's foreign affairs minister went on the offensive by telling the House of Commons that young terror suspect stands accused of "building and planting explosive devices" that killed soldiers in Afghanistan.

Uh huh. I'm sure the evidence for this is so amazingly reliable.

I'll give Canada's politicians a hint - the issue is not what Khadr did or did not do in Afghanistan. It's about Canada's obligations to its citizens, at home and abroad. It's about the international conventions that Canada is signatory to - such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ... among others.

... and lastly, it's about truth and justice. Holding someone illegally for 7 years, subjecting them to torture and putting them before a faux court system is hardly just - and we all know how relaible testimony from torture is.

I don't have to like the Khadr family's past to recognize the grave injustice that has been done to Omar Khadr. That Harper's government wishes to prolong this farce is a condemnation of conservative ideology in Canada.

The Law Applies To Government As Well...

I see that once again, it's taken a judge to get Harper to actually obey the law in Canada, and in particular with respect to Canadians held abroad.

What is it with Conservatives that make them think that their ideology renders them exempt from the moral and ethical obligations that a government has to its citizens?

Good Lord ...

If you can read this in its entirety (without walking away in anger), one has to wonder just why it is Harper refuses to do anything on behalf of Omar Khadr.

Mr. Vandeveld also discovered that, after Mr. Jawad's transfer to U.S. authorities at the Bagram detention facilities in northern Afghanistan, he was subjected to several forms of abuse, including “linguistic separation” and the “frequent flier program,” which involved moving detainees constantly from cell to cell for weeks at a time as a form of sleep deprivation. It emerged last year that Mr. Khadr had been subjected to the same program.

“I couldn't bring myself to believe Americans could do this,” he said. “This was just sadistic mistreatment of a kid.”

Or does Mr. Harper actually believe that abuse and torture are acceptable ways to treat people?

Or perhaps, you'd like to consider the following bit about evidence:

Mr. Vandeveld travelled to Kabul to interview the Afghan security officers who detained and questioned the suspect. The Afghans produced a written confession with Mr. Jawad's thumbprint at the bottom. The only problem was, the confession was in Dari – Mr. Jawad speaks Pashto, and is functionally illiterate

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's going on here, does it? To anyone with even a modicum of respect for law and due process, this is beyond the pale. For our government to be complicit in such activities is repugnant indeed.

Harper Ignores Khadr ... Still

Even with the US government putting the world on notice that the Guantanamo Bay prison that Omar Khadr is being held in will be closed down in the next twelve months, I see that Harper is continuing his 'head-in-sand' approach to the whole business.

Despite the plea, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper reaffirmed there will be no change in policy regarding Khadr unless the U.S. changes its position and dismissed the plan as a "PR stunt and nothing more."

"We are not interested in what Mr. Khadr's lawyers have to say or opposition leaders or, frankly, the media," Kory Teneycke told the Canadian Press.

The arrogance of this position is beyond belief. The only thing about it we can take away is that the HarperCon$ are nothing if not consistent. So far, the Harper government has dragged its feet for months (and longer) on every case where a Canadian citizen is held in questionable circumstances abroad.

Like it or not, Khadr is a Canadian Citizen - he was born here. Canada has a responsibility to its citizens, and the Harper government refuses to carry out its responsibilities in this area.

If Khadr really did something criminal, then bring him home and make him stand trial. The sham courts of the 'military tribunals' are not legal courts, and President Obama has already made it quite clear that they are about to come to a grinding halt.

What I think of the Khadr family is immaterial here. This is, like the Brenda Martin situation, a matter of rescuing a Canadian citizen who is being held illegally by a foreign power.

Ideology cannot be allowed to trump responsibility in our government.

Dear HarperCon$:

So ... a Canadian citizen lies in legal limbo. Held not to face charges in the recognized courts of the country holding him, but rather to be subjected to a questionable, if not outright illegal, tribunal system prepared to accept evidence from such reliable sources as torture.

Never mind that he was a youth when captured. Nor is it significant to the Con$ that it was his father who dragged him over there. Nope. None of that seems to matter here. Neither does the fact that there is essentially no appeal beyond the tribunal itself.

Your stated position on this?

"Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges," Cannon said Thursday from Lima, Peru, where he was attending APEC ministerial meetings.

"He is being held and it's our government's intention to follow and respect the process that's in place and, of course, to respect American sovereignty on this issue."

Of course, throwing Canadians onto the trash heap has been pretty much standard fare for Conservative foreign policy since day one. Khadr is but one of a growing list of Canadians rotting in foreign prisons because the Harper government will not lift a finger to intervene.

Why should they pay any attention to George Bush's little kangaroo courts designed explicitly to get him one conviction in Guano Bay before he leaves office in January? Perhaps because it would be the right thing to do. If Khadr actually should face charges, repatriate him and charge him here - where at least the legal system has a modest degree of transparency and accountability.

Remember The Concept of Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

Apparently, Peter Worthington thinks it doesn't apply in cases like Omar Khadr - after all look what happened with Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

I'm afraid that Mr. Worthington has fallen into the same trap as Nigel Hannaford over at the Calgary Herald - he's spouting talking points without even really thinking things through.

Okay, Worthington doesn't like the Khadr family - fair enough. But that doesn't mean that we can simply convict Omar Khadr of anything on that basis - except perhaps, having the misfortune to be born to parents with questionable judgment. Claiming that he's going to be another al-Bashir is to convict him of someone else's actions, which he might mirror in some future. (Kind of an evil combination of Orwellian thought-crime and Minority Report-esque conviction in advance of crime)

Canada, as a nation, needs to consider whether the pseudo trial that Bush is inflicting upon detainees at Guantanamo Bay is in fact representative of the concept of 'due process', or whether it is a political ploy that is ultimately in violation of both US and International legal standards.

The second thing Canadians need to do is consider whether the Canadian government has lived up to what we expect of it when a Canadian citizen is held by a foreign government. Has Canada, under the Stephen Harper Party, provided any kind of support or backing to Mr. Khadr? Should it?

I claim that the Stephen Harper Party has been grossly negligent in its handling of Canadians held abroad - assuming that they "deserve" whatever is inflicted upon them - until the public outrage reaches a boiling point. This is unacceptable negligence on the part of the Harper government.

What Part of "Citizen" Do You Not Understand

Jeepers - if I read one more dolt columnist start blathering on about how the awful Omar Khadr should be rot in an American gulag, I'm going to scream.

For crying out loud, what does it take these morons to get their heads around the fact that Omar Khadr was born here, and is every bit as much a citizen of Canada as they are?

Do we not, as a nation, believe that our citizens deserve fair and reasonable treatment under the law, regardless of where they are detained? Surely you can't be arguing that the half-baked "tribunal" process that allows evidence from torture is anything close to what would be considered a fair trial?

I suggest that should one of these clowns find themselves the subject of one of those funky "extraordinary renditions", that they better be prepared to suck up whatever treatment is handed to them by their captors in silence - after all, Washington still claims that those lovely renditions are legal, just as they insist that Guantanamo Bay represents a valid and legal handling of people captured in a combat zone.

... and apparently in Harper's world, once you step foot outside of Canada, you aren't a Canadian any more.

HarperCon$: Sticking To A Post

Apparently, Harper still thinks he's the leader of the opposition:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains unmoved and his spokesman, Kory Teneycke, has accused the Liberals of “revisionism and hypocrisy” for only now adopting the cause.

“This is the process the Liberals chose, and we're sticking with it,” Mr. Teneycke said in an interview Sunday.

In short, Harper is going to stick to his stance on Omar Khadr because he thinks he can pin it on the Liberals politically.

How mature of him. He's willing to throw a Canadian citizen away for points. I have news for you Mr. Harper, politics isn't a videogame. You don't come out on top for having a 'high score'...and I don't think you get any bonus points for being a cold-hearted, unfeeling clod either.

But his new spokesbot can't stop, and comes out in a full out lie:

"This information was in their hands when they made these decisions," he said.

... and then there's the other side of the story.

But today, Liberal Dan McTeague – a parliamentary secretary who had been given a special responsibility for Canadians detained abroad – says he regrets telling Canadians that Mr. Khadr was being treated humanely.

“I said it many times, ‘We've been given assurances by Americans.'… I said it in [media] scrum after [media] scrum, I had to take them at their word,” Mr. McTeague said in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail. But now he says he was not in the loop on a sleep-deprivation program, that, according to a newly released Canadian briefing note, U.S. military officials had used against Mr. Khadr in 2004.

“That information was not made available to me at the time,” Mr. McTeague said. “Obviously I wouldn't have made that statement had I known that.”

Off the top of my head, either Spokesbot Teneycke is utterly clueless about what happened, or he's busy trying to apply as much spin as he can get.

Let's be clear about something here - I wasn't exactly impressed with how the Liberal governments dealt with the Khadr file either. However, we get to work with the facts we have today, and we must assess today's government on the basis of what we know today about that file. Leaving Mr. Khadr to fend for himself in a pseudo-legal "trial" that may or may not be fair is becoming less and less tenable as each day goes by and each new revelation escapes from the guarded worlds of Guantanamo Bay and CSIS.

The Harper government stands on its own actions - or lack of them.

Coren: Citizenship is Conditional

In the right-wing of Canada, it seems that citizenship in Canada is conditional - even if you were born here.

Omar Khadr is a tenuous Canadian at best, unlike most newcomers to the country who love it with pride and passion.

He's not a newcomer, Mr. Coren - Khadr was BORN in Canada. This is one of the points that the right-wingnuts in Canada keep forgetting. Omar Khadr has not renounced his Canadian citizenship to my knowledge, and he was born here - he's not a "tenuous" Canadian - he IS CANADIAN. The double standard that is at play here is revolting in the extreme. Canada's laws are clear enough on the matter.

Naturally, Mr. Coren spends most of his column convicting Omar Khadr based on his parents:

She has also, of course, loudly expressed her hatred for western culture and condemned Canada as a vile place where all children are drug addicts or homosexuals. She said she did not want such a fate for Omar or for her other son Karim, who suffered spinal damage after a firefight with the Pakistani soldiers who killed her terrorist husband.

Wait a second, Mr. Coren. What if others were to assign to your offspring the bigotry towards others you have shown? Surely you would own your own actions as distinct from those of your offspring. Let's not forget that under both American and Canadian law, Omar Khadr was not at what we call the 'Age of Majority' in 2002. Legally, that means that he is not held to the same degree of responsibility for his actions as he would were he legally an adult.

But, more importantly, we live in a country where the laws devolve rights and responsibilities to the individual. That means similarly that while we must hold the parents accountable for their actions, we cannot legitimately convict the son based upon the words and deeds of the parents.

The only valid criticism of the United States is that this young man should have faced a trial by now. If, however, he had been in prison just a few miles away from Guantanamo on Cuba he would have been beaten to death in one of Castro's death camps.

Talk about a bunch of crap. Not only are there enormous legal, moral and ethical problems with the entire construct that is embodied in Guantanamo Bay, defenders of Khadr's treatment while in custody conveniently gloss over the fact that the Americans were applying adult interrogation techniques to a sixteen year old. For all intents and purposes, he's still an adolescent in many respects. (Please note that the reasoning centers of the brain are not fully developed until sometime around the age of 20)

As for tying it to criminal justice issues in Cuba, I don't think Cuba is an active participant in Afghanistan at all, so that's a completely irrelevant red herring.

I've said this repeatedly. The issue here is not what Khadr did or did not do. The issue is the negligence of the Canadian government where Canadians held abroad are concerned. The HarperCon$ have done absolutely nothing until public pressure reaches the boiling point. Think about this. If you are detained abroad, access to consular services and intervention is considered by most to be a fundamental right. Under Harper, that has gone by the wayside - a warning to all Canadians who travel abroad.

Mr. Worthington: He's A CANADIAN Dammit!

Apparently, Mr. Worthington who writes for the Sun newspapers thinks that citizenship is conditional, especially if you are Omar Khadr.

I have news for Mr. Worthington: It's NOT. Khadr is a Canadian citizen, born in Canada - no less a citizen than you or I.

Of course his parents are to blame for what he became. Of course he had little choice. But he is what he is, and after six years in Gitmo, subjected to whatever indoctrination his fellow detainees have imposed, he may well be beyond redemption.

Khadr hasn't even been tried in a legitimate court of law, for goodness' sake! Do you really believe that anybody except him knows who or what his goals are?

It's hard to see where Omar Khadr has done anything criminal or illegal, despite being charged with murder by the Americans.

In 2002 he was the only survivor in an American attack, in which a grenade killed a sergeant and wounded a medic who then saved Khadr's life. Omar had been shot three times.

Since when is fighting and killing invaders a crime? Khadr doesn't deserve to be put on trial. He should simply remain in custody like a prisoner of war until the war is over, and then freed.

Canada's only concern should be that he is treated decently, which he is.

That said, the pendulum has swung and pressure will increase until the PM will find an excuse to change his mind and request Khadr be sent to Canada.

Well, Mr. Worthington, since you all but admit that Khadr can't justifiably be held, charged or tried by US authorities, why shouldn't he be brought back to Canada? Or do you merely choose to convict him based on his dark skin, and the unsavory acts of his parents? The long and short of it is that Khadr is a Canadian citizen, held by a foreign power, and subjected to a "legal process" that is not legal under US law.

Canadians should be appalled that in order for their government to intervene on behalf of its citizens, the public has to express absolute outrage at the government's lack of action. This is far from the first time that the HarperCon$ have dropped the ball and allowed Canadians to languish in foreign prisons, under questionable circumstances.

Now We're Just Arguing About The Price

We already knew that Harper has prostituted himself to the whim of the Republicans in the USA, and apparently his price is pretty cheap, since he can't even be bothered to express so much as smidgen of outrage over how Omar Khadr has been treated at the hands of the US government, and obviously with complicity on the part of Canadian officials.

Let me add it up for you:

(a) Khadr is being held on questionable charges
(b) Khadr's interrogations have involved an assortment of torture and torture-like practices applied to him.
(c) He is being subjected to American-created pseudo law for events that took place outside of the legal territory of the USA, and in a "legal" system that ignores the fundamental rights of habeus corpus
(d) Canada's government has been active and complicit in the mishandling of Omar Khadr

Now, Canada's "New Government" refuses to raise a hand to help Mr. Khadr, and its Prime Minister cannot even express a modicum of outrage over the fact that a Canadian citizen has been subjected to treatment that under Canada's own laws would be illegal and abusive.

So, I have to wonder just how much BushCo paid for that little service...

Omar Khadr - The Harper Spin...Then There's Reality

Let me be clear, I don't think Canada's government has ever done "right" in the Omar Khadr affair, but Stephen Harper's pronouncements in the last couple of days have sunk to a new low.

"The previous [Liberal] government took a whole range... all of the information into account when they made the decision on how to proceed with the Khadr case several years ago," he said.

Around about the time I heard this little bit of deflection on the radio, I got quite angry. First of all, the situation when Khadr was captured is quite different from the situation today. Given the petulant, immature behaviour that George W. Bush has shown in office, I'm pretty sure he would have simply ignored any lobbying from the Chretien or Martin governments purely on the basis that they weren't right wing enough for Dubya.

The second point is that in the intervening years, we also have the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay - and it isn't pretty. So, when Harper tries to pin this all on the Liberals, he's full of it. His government is in power today, and his government carries the obligation to review and act upon the situation intelligently.

And then there's the bit that Harper doesn't want to talk about:

In an interview, Gar Pardy, the now retired head of consular programs for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, said that in 2002-03 “we were fighting for Omar [Khadr],” whom he regarded as too young for Guantanamo.

“I wanted to use his age as the largest club we had to beat up the Americans on,” Mr. Pardy said. But he added that Canadian initiatives to protect the prisoner's rights got lost among departments and officials with competing priorities.

So, let me get this straight - Canada's government in fact did take steps to intervene on Omar Khadr's behalf ... but that was BEFORE PMSH. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened - and I think we can guess why - the reason sits in the Whitehouse.

Make no mistake, I certainly do not approve of the actions of Omar Khadr's father, whether his apparently active participation in paramilitary activity in Afghanistan or the fact he took his then young son with him into that situation. However, when it comes down to it, what Omar Khadr is accused of doing happened in a combat zone, and at a time when he was the ripe old age of fifteen. Adults aren't terribly rational in a firefight, what in heck makes anyone think a fifteen year old male is going to be? (Hello, hormones anyone?)

Omar Khadr should have been in a Toronto high school at the time - discovering girls and preparing for his future. If anyone is to be held responsible for what happened in Afghanistan it is his father who took him there, not Omar Khadr.

PMSH is being a petty, petulant ideologue in this matter - and he is trying to make his own government's failings someone else's fault. I haven't seen such immature and stupid behaviour since I was in junior high.

Harper: 'Compassionate Conservatism' At Work

Apparently, advocating for Canadian citizens held abroad in dubious circumstances is a matter of whether Dear Leader thinks that the person involved is guilty of something.

In the case of Omar Khadr, Harper clearly sees no problem with Guantanamo Bay, and the treatment of Omar Khadr.

Never mind claims of torture, or that under some international law conventions he would be a Child Soldier. (Even under the much older Geneva Conventions, he would be on the borderline). Of course, Harper won't pay any attention to the fact that the "judicial process" being created at Guantanamo Bay keeps getting declared illegal even when the Bushites have tried to create a legal fiction to separate Guano Bay from normal US law.

I don't necessarily like what the Khadr family has done in the past, but allowing a foreign government to detain, torture and "kangaroo court" a Canadian citizen is utterly dispicable. If, as is claimed, Khadr is accused of "serious crimes", then let him be tried in a criminal court of justice.

On Thursday, Mr. Harper said Mr. Khadr is accused of serious crimes, and there's no real alternative to the special military hearings he faces – and he has no intention of asking for him to be sent to Canada.

Since the Bushites have already shown their complete lack of of regard for due process, law or human rights, it is then incumbent upon Canada to act as an advocate for the well-being of her citizens. To blithely disregard someone who is being denied even the basic, and long standing right of Habeus Corpus is unconscionable.

In Harper's World...

It seems that in the world of Stephen Harper and the HarperCon$, citizenship is conditional, and the government's willingness to support its citizens abroad is even more so conditional.

Since Harper came to power, there has been a string of cases where Harper has failed to intervene on behalf of Canadians held in dubious circumstances abroad. Whether we are talking about the Celil case in China, Brenda Martin in Mexico, or Omar Khadr detained in Guantanamo Bay, we have a string of cases where Harper's involvement has been superficial, late and ineffective.

In the case of Omar Khadr, we find the government trying to sidestep providing material to the Khadr defense team. Khadr is charged with some very serious crimes, and worse, Canadian officials have been active participants in interrogating the man (who has been rotting in US custody for six years or so now), and have copies of "evidence" that the US government will only allow access to a highly redacted version of.

Half-baked comments about national security issues are sophistry. The real issue here is whether or not Khadr stands even the faintest chance of a fair trial in Bush's extra-judicial system of show courts set up to handle these detainees. When Bush has gone out of his way to construct a court system that is deliberately stacked against the accused - while still having the ability to avail itself of the most drastic of punishments.

What is at issue here is not national security, but whether or not the HarperCon$ have even the slightest concept of what "fair trial" means, much less just how ludicrous it is to accuse someone of "war crimes" at the age of fifteen - especially in a combat zone! Given the number of attempts that Bush has made at concocting these bogus "courts", he's already in the very questionable game of making criminal law that is retroactive - and that doesn't even address the problems with concurrently claiming and denying military involvement on the part of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

As Canadians, we don't have to like the Khadr family's exploits, but we absolutely should be disgusted and horrified by the cavalier approach that the Harper government has taken towards Canadian citizens held in questionable circumstances abroad.

Guano Bay Reprise

It seems that Bush's second attempt to create extra-judicial courts is collapsing on itself again.

Unfortunately for Mr. Khadr, this doesn't mean that he is likely to see any kind of freedom in the near future. The US government still claims that the people held there are "enemy combatants" - and will be held for the duration of 'The War on Terror'(tm).

Since BushCo refuses to acknowledge these people as POW's (and grant them appropriate treatment and rights), it seems to me that there is little chance of any release for these people until 2009.

A no-nonsense military judge lobbed a bombshell into the Bush administration's controversial terrorist tribunals, dismissing all charges against Canadian Omar Khadr Monday because prosecutors failed to label him an "unlawful" combatant.

Although the reason for dismissal seems to be "mostly semantics", I think there's more at play here than "just semantics". The judge is playing with semantics, but in doing so, he's also sending a signal to the Pentagon and the executive branch of the US government that he's not willing to participate in a charade.

Hours later after the first ruling, another judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, similarly dismissed all charges against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, former driver for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Capt. Allred cited the same grounds, lack of jurisdiction because the government had failed to demonstrate Mr. Hamdan was an "unlawful" combatant.

Oh - this is interesting. I thought we were talking about a declaration of someone being "an unlawful enemy combatant", and it seems that the courts are saying that the government must demonstrate why such a designation is appropriate. That puts the government's case in a deep, dark little world of hurt.

Any appeal must be to the Court of Military Commission Review, created by the act. But it doesn't yet exist and no one has been named to sit on it.

Speaking of charades - notice that BushCo hasn't even finished setting up the overall structure required. Bushco wasn't expecting to have to actually use the appeals process, were they? I'm pretty sure that they wanted to get a couple of quick "slam-bam" convictions out of the way, and then proceed with whatever arbitrary punishments they could come up with.

Now, let's see just how much Harper does to get Khadr released to Canadian custody in the coming months - it will tell you a great deal about just how concerned about your civil rights Harper really is. (and I'll wager it isn't much)