Fox and CNN disagree

I found this this morning:

Headline CNN.com:  Poll:  Terror worries at lowest level since 9/11

Headline Foxnews.com:  FNC poll:  War on terror remains major concern

Osama Driver gets much smaller sentence than possible

While 5 1/2 years is certainly a long time, the sentence given to Osama bin Laden’s driver is significantly less than what the military prosecutors were looking for (30 to life, for driving a car), and much less than I expected.  Since he has already been at Gitmo for over 5 years, he will be out by New Years.

The highly anticipated trial, verdict, and sentencing from the depths of a Guantanomo Bay military tribunal has been making  quite the headlines lately, and at least from the sentencing, it gives the appearance of being somewhat fair.

The complicating issue is that the Bush administration believes that they can hold “terror” suspects indefinitely without charge if they are demed a “threat.”  So there is a possibility that leftovers from the Bush White House will try to keep Mr. Hamdan in Gitmo beyond his sentence.

U.S. Rips Off Face/Off, Implements Floating Prisons

From a 2005 article in the Washington Post concerning the legality and post-9/11 implementation of CIA “black sites” around the world:

 

“Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons.”

 

From an article published today in The Guardian:

 

“The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped. ” 

 

So much for security and logistics.  A spokesman for the US Navy claims that prisoners are only held on the ships during “the initial days of detention,” though it seems safe to say that the number of detainees considered “in transport” has been underreported, which might lead one to believe that those prisoners are on those ships a little bit longer than a few days. 

As a side note, I did a Google News search on this story after reading it on the front page of The Guardian’s web site; there were several international papers that picked up the story, but I could only find one U.S. report, from Fox News, interestingly enough.  Nary a mention in the Washington Post or New York Times.  Here’s hoping that they’re fact-checking…