I certainly won't miss Mr. Margolis... not in the least.

Eric Margolis always struck me as somebody who is certainly intelligent but unfortunately also willfully blind to facts in order to maintain his well-documented position.

Case in point, last week I was listening to the John Oakley show on AM640. Mike Stafford is presently sitting in for John and was interviewing Eric about the whole Omar Khadr/Guantanamo Bay affair. Eric was certainly well-informed about many aspects of Omar Khadr's path to imprisonment. He even claimed to have met Omar's father Ahmed Said Khadr while Ahmed was still very much involved in aid-related projects.

Margolis sited Ahmed's relief work as being the primary reason he didn't believe that Omar Khadr could possibly have been involved in any resistance movement or military activities. However, anybody who has spent time looking at the news surrounding Omar would most certainly have seen the now famous images of Omar with an AK-47 assault rifle in the background or Omar assembling an improvised explosive device.

You can even watch the episode of 60 Minutes that demonstrated this quite clearly.

Now, I have a hard time believing that Margolis with his well-informed positions would have missed this bit of information. So, the question really is, why does he ignore it?

The same as anything else when it comes to political posturing: ideology

Eric certainly has a right to his opinion. He certainly has a right to believe that the war in Afghanistan is a sham or some kind of shell-game devised by George W. Bush to get control over the Middle East in order to lower oil prices. He has the right.

But, truth is a... well... we know what it is. And obvious facts are obvious facts. Eric can claim all he wants that Omar Khadr is a victim that would never have been involved in military activities. However, I've never been convicted with drug dealers. I've never been shot at as part of a gang. And I've never been arrested at violent G20 protests. Why? Because I don't associate with those groups.

Omar was arrested in a structure where resistance fighters had gathered. And when the dust had settled, he was one of only two people who could have lobbed the grenade that killed US Sgt Christopher Speer. Video shows him playing with detonation cables and land mines. Can't say that any of those situations would be something your average Canadian would be a part of.

As such, I can hardly cry for Mr Margolis as he says good-bye to the opinion column he wrote for the Sun media. He's cried that his ouster is simply a matter of right-wing zealots trying to hush him.

I simply call it quality control.