Omar Khadr certainly was fighting on the side of the "worst of the worst" - but he was 15! It is quite clear that he was trained from a young age and brought up to participate in war and terrorism. While I wouldn't hesitate to defend myself from anyone of any age, in the context of a captured prisoner who was brought up into military service, the treatment he's recieved is immoral and dumb.

It is universally acknowledged that the young are not as culpable as adults, and that child soldiers are victims as well as perpetrators. All effort is made, in other cases, to rehabilitate and save these children. Apparently this is another place where the US differs... This child was brought up in a family of terrorists, then captured while still a child. Instead of working to redeem him, they have worked to ruin him.

This was a potential PR coup for the US and its allies - "Child Soldier Saved". Canada could have used this to imprison his mother, who clearly is guilty of gross child abuse along with his dead father for training and allowing this child to go to war. The facts of this case speak for themselves.

Protecting the weak (such as children) is a cornerstone of morality. To add to their wounds is wrong in every possible way. This is the morality we've accepted, the same morality embraced by the family that worked the first stage of his ruin. We are the terrorists now.

Checking wikipedia also garnered some interesting information...it's actually disputed as to whether he was the one who tossed the grenade that killed a US solider. Also, his capture involved him being shot in the back three times while unarmed and blinded in one eye from shrapnel. Luckily for him, he wasn't just shot in the head as a coup de grace like all the other wounded fighters in that skirmish. I'm glad America is being protected by soldiers that fight with honor...

The actions of the soldiers in that firefight were perfectly reasonable. It's beyond the pale to expect soldiers under attack not to attempt to kill those attacking them. Wounded or not, when the enemy has weapons and is trying to kill you, killing them makes sense. They also had every reason to believe that Omar Khadr was a combatant. According to the wiki, he was "crouched on his knees facing away" when he was shot - if I was a soldier, I would shoot him before he had the chance to notice me and attack, which is what happened.

I have no problem with the actions on the battlefield. Killing people is what war is about. If we accept that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are enemies that must be killed, we must be willing to kill them. You don't stop attacking if there is any doubt as to whether the enemy can still harm you.

However, that does not justify the actions taken since then. As a prisoner and child soldier, Omar Khadr was then very different from the Omar Khadr on the battlefield. Beyond that, his treatment as a prisoner looks pretty bad itself, child or adult. Abusing prisoners is simply wrong. We've somehow managed to add abusing children on top of that.

Imprisoning his mother? Is that how you save a child soldier?

Killing someone on a battlefield in self defense is one thing. Finishing someone off after the battle is over and the person is already down...how is that honorable, Adamatari? That is what is meant by a post-battle coup de grace, and there is nothing moral or honorable about it.

I'm guessing you've never been in a firefight. The only thing that matters, really, is surviving, and you survive by fighting for the men on your right and on your left and they survive by fighting for you. You write as if there's a checkered flag that goes down or an alarm bell that goes off when it's "over". The problem is, you never really quite know when it's "over". On one occasion in Vietnam, there was a VC that we thought was too badly wounded to be able to do anything. The medic gave him whatever care he could. We thought the guy was unarmed. He had a grenade hidden that he set off killing himself and the medic. We never made that mistake again. There may be very little moral or honorable about that but when your motive is survival for yourself and your men, you WILL do whatever you have to do. Bottom line, if you expect morality and honor in war, you will, most of the time, be sadly disappointed.

Understood, but what does that have to do with mistreating a 16-yr old who is our helpless prisoner?

There is a difference between what happens in and around a firefight and the disposition of prisoners who are taken to the "rear". My point is that as long as these soldiers felt immediately threatened, this guy was fair game. This is a fine grey line, of course, but I defy anyone who has not been there, done that, to tell me this guy was any more "hapless" than the VC who killed himself along with our medic.

All this changes, of course, once your prisoners are moved to the "rear" or wherever they go when there is no "rear". Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are real stains on this nation. They were avoidable too had the Bush administration not decided it wanted to have its cake and eat it too.

Gotcha. I have heard too many people saying something along the lines of "well this kid killed a medic, what about the medic's wife and kids?" or something along those lines as justification for what happened after the boy's capture. We're on the same page here.