Michael Coren, Toronto Sun
I have to be blunt. I'm disappointed. Perhaps the sequel will be superior and I suppose we have to be generous to a fairly inexperienced director and cast, but I thought the Omar Khadr video would be better than it turned out to be. A little like the latter Star Wars -- unfulfilled promise.
Actually the whole thing backfired, in that it was supposed to break our hearts and make us angry at the awful Americans who dared to keep a sort of Canadian in prison on suspicion of terrorism and of throwing a hand grenade that killed one of their medics.
Problem is, it showed a well-fed, well-nourished, obviously defiant and healthy young man blubbing and moaning and claiming, rather absurdly, that he has no feet or eyes.
"You do have feet" replied a tolerant Canadian agent, "they're on the end of your legs."
The only valid criticism of the United States is that this young man should have faced a trial by now. If, however, he had been in prison just a few miles away from Guantanamo on Cuba he would have been beaten to death in one of Castro's death camps. If he had been captured by friends of his family in Afghanistan or Iraq he likely would have been raped, tortured and then slowly decapitated. Irony's a funny old thing.
If there has been any abuse over the years it is clearly at the hands of Khadr's own kin. As the highly respected clinical psychologist Dr. Marty McKay told the Children's Aid Society back in 2004 when Omar's mother, Maha Elsamnah Khadr, came to Canada, "I am sure that you would agree that counselling one's child to become suicidal or homicidal constitutes emotional child abuse, leading to physical abuse when the child acts upon these feelings."
And this is precisely what the good woman has done, often and in public.
More...
