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Zimmer sticking to party line

I thought it over for a few nanoseconds whether our member of Parliament, Bob Zimmer, can be as ignorant of the facts surrounding the Omar Khadr case as his letter displays.
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I thought it over for a few nanoseconds whether our member of Parliament, Bob Zimmer, can be as ignorant of the facts surrounding the Omar Khadr case as his letter displays. Then, of course, I immediately recognized his screed as nothing but the malicious party line that his boss, our vengeful and anti-Muslim prime minister, has perpetrated over the years.

Zimmer or whoever penned this tripe, makes much of Khadr having confessed, purposefully ignoring the now well-known utter travesty and illegality of "Guantanamo justice." Whether outright torture or slightly lesser coercion was used to extract the ludicrous "confession" from this desperate teenager, may never be known. But we are all too aware - or should be before we write foolish letters - of the notorious unlawful activities at that outpost, to take seriously any "facts" or confessions extracted from its inmates.

Add to this the indisputable "knowns" of Khadr's "crime" - that he was a child soldier unquestionably pushed into danger by his extremist father; and that if he threw the grenade that killed Chris Speer (and there is uncertainty there) it was as a survivor of a huge air and ground strike against the small group he was part of. Khadr was desperately fighting back against a massive assault initiated by American forces. Such a response has nothing to do with any conceivable definition of terrorism.

Speer enthusiastically took part in this lethal, unprovoked and lopsided assault against a small handful of militants.

If you reversed the roles of that scenario and it was a couple of teenage Americans (or Canadians) fighting back against an overwhelming Islamist onslaught, the surviving 15-year-old kid would be an honoured hero about whom heart-wrenching movies would be made. Instead, a courageous young man's long battle for freedom is being opposed, not so much by the Americans anymore, but by a vindictive minor Canadian politician, spurred on by his like-minded PM and Conservative colleagues. Let us keep Zimmer's mean-spirited and inane letter close by when the election unfolds this fall.

Norman Dale

Prince George