Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Bullying Omar

The Omar Khadr interrogation is pretty sad, isn't it. First, they try to get Omar Khadr to implicate himself:
"Let's just be honest with each other this one time," said a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent. . . He urged Mr. Khadr to reveal his role in the deadly battle in Afghanistan, saying the teenager should have run away from the fight.
But Mr. Khadr said that at age 15, he was "too young" to quit the fundamentalist fighters to whom his father — an al-Qaeda suspect — had entrusted him.
That prompted an angry retort from the CSIS agent. "You're not too young; you're a man," he said.
He added: "Your dad dropped you off there for a reason … you think it's fine what you did."
"I didn't do anything," Mr. Khadr replied. "What did I do? I was in a house."
Then they try to get him to implicate his family:
When Mr. Khadr breaks down on tape, a Canadian agent is heard telling him that the solution to his pain is talking. "We can't protect you if we don't know what it is you have to say," he said. The CSIS agent added that if the detainee truly cared about his family he would talk, so that "other members of your family … don't end up as the same situation you are in."
The worst part of the article is this:
The last shots, taken after the Canadian agents left the room, show Omar Khadr putting his head into his hands and weeping.
Ooh, scary, isn't he?
So this is what Canada is reduced to in the War on Terror, trying to bully a teenager. Good thing they weren't interviewing him in Alberta.

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