Saturday, March 14, 2009

Is Canada Now A Safe Haven For War Criminals? Bush Welcomed As Hero By Canadians ?

J'Accuse
Canada Safe Haven For War Criminals & Torturers ?
Canada the 51st State
Omar Khadr, Canadian Citizen & Child Soldier abused & tortured By US Officials
International Law calls " child soldiers" victims
Is it Honorable for a soldier to abuse and torture prisoners ?
Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram & other Torture.INC. Facilities
Tens of thousands prisoners in Iraq denied legal rights , abused and tortured
but Americans, British and Canadians say that's OK they're not like us- ???

Anyway allowing former President George Bush to enter Canada and for him to then give a speech is a dishonor to our country. Have we too forgotten such values as: honor, integrity and honesty. Does our government like the Bush government have no respect for International Law or The Geneva Conventions will Harper be asking our soldiers to take part in criminal activities such as torture or will we just continue turning our prisoners caught in Afghanistan over to Americans or Afghans or others who will do the torturing for us.

Bush is to begin with a president who lied to his own government, to the American people and to the world. Bush committed various crimes such as permitting torture of prisoners and the invasion of a sovereign nation under false pretenses. He is responsible for the deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq.

Besides torture he authorized the kidnapping of individuals in various countries based upon questionable intelligence that they might have some connection to some terrorist group. These individuals were denied any legal rights were held without being charged and were tortured . According to Seymour Hersh Bush and Cheney also ran an assassination squad which went into various countries and then killed suspects or those whom they just didn't like. Are these really the sort of leaders Canadians think of as heroes and as honorable men. We know that at least up to the swearing in of Obama as President of the United States that our Prime Minister Stephen Harper wanted to emulate Bush and Cheney since he is after all cut from the same Neoconservative cloth or so it appears. He could change that image by refusing to allow George Bush into our country . But I fear Harper likes Bush too much and doesn't see what Bush and Cheney have done wrong. And maybe for all I know many Canadians agree with Harper & Bush and see nothing wrong with abusing and torturing so-called Terrorist Suspects.

Rights of Omar Khadr




Forgive Us Our Trespasses? Child Soldiers at Gitmo and the Rule Of Law By: Christy Hardin Smith Firedoglake.com,Saturday January 17, 2009

The ACLU has worked continuously on the issue of child soldiers being held at Gitmo, in violation of international law and treaty obligations...

...Canadian citizen Omar Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan in the midst of a firefight that seriously injured Khadr and resulted in the death of a U.S. solider. Khadr was sent to Guantánamo where he was been held for 7 years — one-third of his life. He was beaten, subject to painful stress position and even used as a “human mop” after he urinated on the floor during one interrogation. Under these conditions, the prosecution of Khadr raises grave concerns about the rule of law and underscores how unconstitutional the military commissions are. President Obama must end them as he has promised.


The Canadian government did nothing to help Omar Khadr for over six years and his abuse and torture appears to be of little interest to the Canadian Media or the Canadian public.This is also another case of abuse and torture under the Bush administration. In the clip below of Omar Khadr the Canadian official berates the boy for making accusations about abuse and torture.
Guantanamo Bay child soldier CSIS interrogation - Omar Khadr

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 early Tuesday morning.

The 10-minute video is of poor quality and the voices are often inaudible, as it was never intended to be viewed by the public. But it shows Khadr, 16 at the time, being interviewed by Canadian officials in late February 2003.



Bush 's Child Soldiers become Obama's Problem-Jan. 24, 2009

President Obama has temporarily halted the military commission trials at Guantanamo while they are reviewed. But if they aren't disbanded, the U.S. will oversee the first trial of a child soldier accused of war crimes since World War II.

This video shows why President Obama must end the unconstitutional military commissions once and for all, and why he must bring the United States back in line with the treaties it has signed regarding the treatment of juveniles who have been recruited or used in armed conflict.



Cheney Assassination Squads


MSNBC reported that Seymour Hersh has uncovered evidence that Vice President Cheney operated secret assassination squads out of the White House by using military personnel without the knowledge of the CIA. Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC Countdown discussed the report with Jonathan Alter. Alter said that details will curl your hair.




Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh Describes 'Executive Assassination Ring' By Eric BlackMarch 12, 2009 -- "MinnPost" -- Published Wed, Mar 11 2009

At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.

...After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

...“Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference.”

(“Finding” refers to a special document that a president must issue, although not make public, to authorize covert CIA actions.)

------------------------------
Cowtown Bush visit riles protesters By RICHARD LIEBRECHT, SUN MEDIA March 13, 2009

Some Edmontonians have a message for former U.S. president George Bush: Your kind ain't welcome in these parts.

Local peace activists are calling him a war criminal, and are outraged he's even being admitted into Canada.

"We don't admit criminals," said Peggy Morton, an organizer with local peace advocates ECAWAR. "It should apply to (Bush), if not more than to anyone else."




and :

Protesters prepare for Bush's Calgary speech
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 CBC.ca


Peace activists in Calgary are preparing a less than warm welcome for George W. Bush, who will be at a private function next week delivering one of his first speeches since leaving the White House.

A coalition calling itself People vs. Bush has planned a week of protest activities, starting Wednesday at noon with a banner display near the downtown Telus Convention Centre, where Bush is set to speak next week "on eight momentous years in the Oval Office" and "the challenges facing the world in the 21st century."

Group spokeswoman Collette Lemieux said the activists will come from as far away as Vancouver and Toronto to participate.

"I think a lot of people are really motivated by the idea that we have to make it really clear to him that he's not off the hook," she said. "I think it's important to people who think that he has committed war crimes to not just let this go by the wayside."

The group plans to hold a mock war crimes trial for Bush this weekend and stage a peaceful rally outside his speech next Tuesday. Lemieux is asking those who can't participate to send their shoes for a symbolic protest echoing the Iraqi journalist who threw his footwear at Bush.

An estimated 1,500 people are expected at the invitation-only, paid event to hear Bush. Organizers Andy McCreath and Christian Darbyshire reportedly paid former U.S. president Bill Clinton $150,000 for a March 2006 speech in Edmonton, and have hired Lance Armstrong and Colin Powell for other high-profile speaking engagements in the past.


and so it goes,
GORD.

No comments: