Saving Omar Khadr: ‘We plugged all the holes,’ chopper medic recounts
TORONTO — ‘This is human life’
For years the battle-hardened and decorated American veteran wrestled with his conscience, with whether he’d done the right thing in saving the life of Omar Khadr, seen by many as a terrorist who profited from his crimes.
Now, watching the furor over the government’s $10.5-million payout to Khadr from afar, Donnie Bumanglag wants to tell his story, offer a perspective born of bitter experience — one he admits may not be popular with many Canadians, or even some of his own former comrades in arms.
Bumanglag, of Lompoc, Calif., 36, has spent years coming to terms with his former life as an elite airborne medic supporting U.S. special forces during three missions to Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s been haunted by flashbacks, frequently thrown back to that time in the summer of 2002, when he spent hours in the back of a helicopter frantically working on Khadr, then 15 years old and at the very edge of death.