Khadr was held for seven years in Guantanamo where he was tortured into confession. At his trial, his confession became a plea bargain.
What Khadr's trial was about is establishing that "enemy combatants" who resist US aggression are war criminals. The assumption is that only "terrorists" resist American invasion of their countries.
None of this information was revealed by the NPR report. Instead America's "alternative voice" was thoroughly neoconservative. NPR presented its listeners with the self-righteous celebration of the US soldier's widow, who, the Guardian reported (Nov. 2) "pumped her fist and cheered "yes.'" The widow said that now, finally, that justice was done she could get on with her life. NPR followed up with a retired US military officer, who said that Khadr's sentence was equivalent to freeing a murderer.
Khadr's prosecutor, Jeffrey Groharing, declared that Khadr's sentence "will send a message to Al-Qaeda and others whose aims and goals are to kill and cause chaos around the world." The irony in this assertion escaped the tamed NPR. The deaths that can be attributed to Al Qaeda are tiny in number compared to the deaths inflicted by gratuitous US and Israeli naked aggression against Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan,Yeman, and Somalia. Groharing declared the 15-year old Khadr to have been "an accomplished terrorist" who committed the offense of resisting American aggression.
Now, really, what kind of idiot would interpret NPR's report as "the liberal media."
What message did Khadr's sentence send? To insouciant Americans only that finally a terrorist got his comeuppance despite the liberal media. To the rest of the world the message is: the US is a morally bankrupt, self-righteous country that believes that might is right. The American claim to world leadership is discredited.
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