On a week in which Pte. Robert Costall died fighting the good fight in Afghanistan, I feel like a moral leper writing about a couple of granola-munching, rhetorical rock-throwing slugs.
It seems massively unjust that Robert Costall, the 22-year-old Princess Pat hero, isn’t getting as much ink as James Loney, who held a news conference this week to tell us that he is now enjoying the little things in life like washing dirty dishes and watching his dad feed the cat.
While Loney was in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., feeding newshounds this warmed-over Puppy Chow, one of his Christian Peacemaker Team mates was in New Zealand at another news conference serving up his own brand of low-protein pet food.
Freed Canadian hostage Harmeet Sooden, who is a student in Auckland, is quoted as saying he feels that the rescue of the Canadian and British hostages was “contrived.”
The 30-year-old who was holed up somewhere in Iraq for four months with fellow Canadian James Loney, offers yet one more slap to the military men that liberated him.
He implies that the British, American and Canadian forces who were responsible for his freedom, were all pawns in a political chess game motivated by money.
Credit the New Zealand Herald for reporting honestly. “Asked if he thought a ransom was paid, Mr. Sooden said it was ‘highly probable’ though he had no evidence for that.”
Thank you New Zealand Herald for pointing out Mr. Sooden has no evidence.
But my guess is that some reading this column feel Mr. Sooden doesn’t need evidence.
He is entitled to leaping to conclusions, since he was a victim of violence, and since he sticks to his guns in saying that it’s the mean nasty foreign policy of Bush and Blair that has created violence and criminality in Iraq.
Mr. Sooden seems to much prefer the Iraq where you always knew precisely who was responsible for all the kidnaps, tortures and executions.
All dirt roads led to the throne of Saddam Hussein in Mr Sooden’s version of the good ol’ days.
Damn those Americans and Brits for dethroning the biggest kidnapper of them all.
Mr. Sooden also said that he didn’t want ransom to be paid for his release and that he didn’t want any blood to be shed.
Question to Canadians: Do you find yourself asking, “Was the release of this man and his Puppy-Chow-spewing mate a waste of our time and money?”
How do you react when you read, “Mr. Sooden saw his captors as ‘victims’ who had suffered at the hands of the American-led invasion of Iraq”?
If Mr. Sooden believes that his captors were simply victims of the Americans and deserve our sympathy, why does he think they were out to make money on their capture?
Were they going to give the money to sick children or sick seals or sick trees?
Hundreds of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the day Loney and Sooden and others were taken.
Have they all been abducted by altruistic men looking to help the sick and wounded of Iraq?
There was one piece of very good news coming out of New Zealand this week. Sooden wishes to become a citizen of that country.
If the Kiwis are silly enough to take him, it will be up to them the next time he decides to go into a war zone whether or not to bother saving him from himself.
- “Le Petit Green Machine” stumbling - Monday February 19, 2007 at 9:49 am
- A sour note on CanCon music regs - Wednesday May 17, 2006 at 7:36 am
- Liberals are now officially ‘scary’ - Wednesday May 10, 2006 at 12:43 pm
