This story line followed one about (no doubt man-made global warming-related) sundry heat-waves and floods in the U.S. on CTV’s Newsnet channel just now:
It’s a “news” story because terrorist suspect and Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr’s appointed military lawyer is in town (Toronto) meeting with Khadr’s Canadian lawyer. And being a defender of the terrorist suspect, whatever he has to say is going to be put on Canadian television news, on a 30-minute repeating schedule all day long.
Let’s review:
“News” anchor Dan Matheson sets up the audience for the piece by including this tendentious remark for our information:
Dan Matheson: ”… officials there say Khadr is being held under a irreparably broken system incapable of giving him a fair trial.”
There now. “Officials”—U.S. “officials” even—are saying that Khadr’s being held under an “irreparably broken system incapable of giving him a fair trial”. Begs the question just a little then doesn’t it? Which is strange for an ostensibly “objective” news outfit. And it makes me wonder: is there a “scientific consensus” re the “irreparably broken system”?
Then in absolutely typical liberal “news” media fashion, he lobbed the softest fluff ball questions in the liberal media guidebook, like these, resulting in some rather seriously astonishing answers:
Dan Matheson’s hard-hitting question: And is it your sense, sir, that he doesn’t trust you because you’re part of the system?
Lt. Cmdr. Bill Kuebler answer: Um, what I’ll say… I mean I think it’s understandable that any detainee who’d been held in Guantanamo Bay under the conditions that uh they’ve been held under, for the past several years, would be naturally distrustful of an American military officer and you know think of it this way: if the British solders who were captured in Iran were taken into custody by the Iranians a couple of months ago, uh had been told that they were to be put on trial and an Iranian military officer had shown up and say “trust me I’m going to take care of you” um, they would have been skeptical and certainly we would have been skeptical and I think that same dynamic is at play in Guantanamo Bay and I certainly understand it, and so Omar has been consistent uh for years now, that as a Canadian, he wants to be represented by his Canadian lawyers and I think he should be able to be so represented and we’re looking for ways to make that happen.
In so answering, he seems to me to be doing what liberals typically do; drawing an equivalence between America, and Iran’s tyrannical, theocratic, extremist, terrorist-supporting regime. The anchor Matheson has nothing to say about that answer. Just lets it slide. I personally believe it’s EXACTLY what he wanted to hear.
Next hardball question:
Dan Matheson: Sir, as an officer of the court and someone who obviously has a vested interest into U.S. ‘justice’ is Guantanamo Bay a good thing or a bad thing?
Seriously. That was his question.
Shocking answer in short: a bad thing!
Next hardball question (they’re getting harder!)
Dan Matheson: And is it almost impossible for you to do your job the way you think you should be doing your job there?
Seriously. That was his question.
Shocking answer in short: Yes! Almost impossible!
Dan Matheson’s response to that: “Mmm.”
Then in answer to yet another such hardball in which Dan Matheson asks if Khadr’s “best chance was if the Canadian government to do more to represent him, to defend him, to get him into Canada, than to leave him to you know to his best devices where he is?”…
Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler replies, in part: […] and enough is enough—and it’s clear that Omar has not gotten a fair trial uh from the U.S. system and the U.S. military commission system, he has no prospect of receiving a fair trial, and so it’s time to bring him home to face—if any justice at all—Canadian justice, where we know he’ll can get a fair trial and he’ll be treated in a manner appropriate with his age… and that’s what we’d like to see happen.
Again that was: “if any justice at all”.
Matheson then thanked him for being so frank.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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