Teen terrorist?

CNN asks the bold question:
Teenage terrorist or confused kid?
-- Gitmo's youngest prisoner [More at CNN.com...]

Several facts seem to be in dispute. Here is what is known.

• Omar Khadr is a Canadian.
• He had nothing to to do with 9/11.
• In the Spring of 2002 after having fled the UN invasion to take down the Taliban government, then 15 year old Omar returned to Afghanistan with his father's blessing to work as a translator.
• In July of 2002, Omar was severely wounded and an American soldier was mortally wounded after a firefight broke out between Omar's employers and US troops.
• Omar is being held as a war criminal.
• A month after his 16th birthday, Omar was transferred to Guantanamo where he remains 6 and a half years later.

Turning the corner, an American soldier shot the lone surviving gunman and then spied the young Canadian teenager with his back to the noise, kneeling in pain against a shrub. Raising his rifle, he fired two shots into Omar's back. [More...]

It is quite possible that Omar was a terrorist in training. It's even more probable he was just a pawn. It's certain that the United States looks more like the old Soviet Union with its present gulag in Guantanamo.



A teenage Omar Khadr sobs uncontrollably as Canadian spy agents question him at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a brief video excerpt released via the internet

Goodbye Gitmo

Finally, some good news to report. After beginning to waver on his commitment to close the American concentration camp in Occupied Cuba, President-elect Barack Obama said today he would call for the immediate closure of the site where war crimes were perpetrated on the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President-elect Barack Obama plans to order the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay as early as his first week in office to show a break from the Bush administration's approach to the war on terror, according to two officials close to the transition. (More...)

Dick Cheney, himself a war criminal/profiteer, achieved a generous payback for the company he oversaw as CEO before George W. Bush tapped him to be his runningmate/babysitter. In one of the most agregious examples of scandalous quid pro quo, Cheney continued to rake in of $200,000 a year from Halliburton, even as he lied to Americans that he no longer had a financial interest in company he ran in between his most stints in government.

“Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest," the Vice President said. "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years.” (RawStory: More...)

In return, Halliburton has been awarded over $21 Billion in government contracts, including including the gulag in Gitmo.