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I am not in any way above or outside this problem. I was dragged into reporting on the great Khadr matter in 2013, quite late in the saga, when he made his first Canadian public appearance in the prisoner’s box of an Edmonton courtroom. This happened mostly because I live four minutes’ walk from the Edmonton law courts, and the notice given to the national media was extremely short — a matter of a few hours. This call of duty as a reporter (ugh, I have to do my job) forced me to undertake a review of an issue I had only followed casually.

Have you heard anyone confess to having a total change of heart on the subject of Khadr, either way?

And that probably makes a difference. If I had developed an informed opinion on Khadr when he was freshly captured and in the hands of the U.S. military, with 9/11 still fresh in everyone’s imaginations and the distasteful secrets of Guantanamo Bay still undisclosed, it is probable I would still be grinding the same axe now, whichever axe that was.

Have you heard anyone confess to having a total change of heart on the subject of Khadr, either way? We have learned a lot since he was captured and became a name in the news. From the point of view I formed in 2013, the evidence that Khadr killed U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher Speer seems pathetic. It is not so much that there is a taxonomic question over whether he can be classified as a “child soldier.” It is that it would be hard to show, applying the evidentiary standards of any court that was primarily interested in questions of fact, that he was ever a combatant at all.