Drift: How This Ship Became a Floating Gitmo

[JonLP24]

This is the U.S.S. Boxer. A big-deck amphibious assault ship, the “Golden Gator” displaces about 40,500 tons and provides a working home for more than 2,000 troops. Recently, its brig held a less likely passenger, Danger Room has confirmed: Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali whom the United States just charged with supporting al-Shabaab and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

But if Warsame’s case is the future of terrorism detentions, that’s going to be a problem. The Navy simply doesn’t have enough ships with the brig space to serve as a floating Guantanamo Bay.

<snip>

Problem is, the way the Obama administration is drifting, the fleet is shaping up to be default jailers in the war on terrorism.

Last week, Vice Adm. William McRaven, the next head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, testified that ever since the Obama team effectively barred detainee transfers to Guantanamo Bay, terrorist suspects taken captive outside Afghanistan or Iraq would be briefly held aboard “a naval vessel.”

Much more: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/floating-gitmo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

[RC]

1. Why is it that our "Fight against terrorism" never seems to be on the up and up?

If these terrorists are really as bad as we say they are and we have a real legal case against them, there are plenty of normal prisons around the world they can be held at. Where are the trials? Why are we so against the Geneva Conventions for these guys? Why not try them in the World Court?

Or would that expose too many of our own powerful people to war crimes?