Professional Expert Opinion

Well, certainly we're interested - even fascinated - by the opinion of a well-known and highly-respected psychiatrist who is prepared to divulge his conclusions after having clinically examined the state of mind of Canada's notorious Omar Khadr, son of the country's infamous al-Qaeda stalwart and fund-raiser.

We are interested simply because this is the opinion of a mental health professional experienced in evaluating the state of mind of extremely troubled people.

We are interested because we have heard too much and too often from politicians - from news sources, from left-wing apologists eager to explain that it is incumbent upon enlightened and democratic societies to recognize that certain religions appearing devoted to violence as a means of impressing the imperatives of their ideology - to offer the benefit of the doubt.

We are interested because we understand why it is that the greater majority of the society of which we are an integral portion is uneasy at the very thought of returning an avowed and trained and active jihadist to the country, even to be placed in incarceration to live out his sentence as a war criminal.

For the simple fact is, we would prefer to disown Omar Khadr and the rest of the Khadr clan.

That we cannot, because we must feel obligated toward them on the basis of their Canadian citizenship is our personal tragedy. That they have betrayed the values and customs and traditions and mores of Canadian society in favour of violently fanatical Islam is said to be of no moment in the issue. The issue, Mr. Khadr's supporters fervently claim, is that he was not responsible.

He was trained as a mujahadeen, trained to feel confident in constructing explosive devices, in handling firearms and explosives. He was trained as an Islamist guerrilla, a terrorist, a jihadist. And he was determined to give a good accounting of himself in confronting other armed men, professional soldiers, not that much older than himself, considered a 'child soldier' at age 15.

But Dr. Michael Welner, the psychiatric expert who investigates the deep-seated motivations behind peoples' aberrant behaviour has an entirely other opinion of the now-24-year-0ld Khadr. Doubting Omar Khadr's wish to become a normal, law-abiding individual who can be trusted to take his peaceful place within the society that gave his family safe harbour.

The extended Khadr family, which enjoys defaming the values of this country, along with all other Western countries, which, according to them, are dens of iniquity, of irreligious shame, but whose social benefits in welfare opportunities and free and excellent health and medical care are not to be shunned by principle.

"When one leaps to the conclusion about Omar Khadr's future because he is friendly, one might recall that Osama bin Laden has always been described as gentle, likeable and charming", Dr. Welner explained in a media interview. "There is no record of (Khadr's) publicly repudiating al-Qaeda, as civilized Muslims should, not even a letter composed for him by (one of his Canadian lawyers)".

There is "no call ... to radical Islamists to mature, beyond their elemental intolerance", said this man who, if anyone knows the incendiary mind of a psychopath, he might well be the one.

As for the Liberals and NDP slagging the Conservative-led government and the efforts of the bureaucrats at Foreign Affairs on behalf of this sterling citizen of Canada...

"Publicly available records reflect that members of the Canadian foreign ministry have made visits to Guantanamo to check on Khadr's every comfort, and Omar Khadr, not surprisingly, appreciated those visits", said the good doctor-shrink.