It's not often I see a headline that turns my stomach, but 9/11 Families Outraged by Obama Call to Suspend Guantanamo War Crimes Trials did the trick. But of course this Fox News story quotes only three 9/11 Family members. Here is a sampling:
"To me it's beyond comprehension that they would take the side of the terrorists," said Peter Gadiel, whose son, James, was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. "Many of these people have been released and been right back killing, right back at their terrorist work again
This opinion is countered, not by other 9/11 family members, but by an ACLU lawyer with a scary sounding name (Jamil Dakwar--yikes!)
Here are the other two 9/11 family members that Fox uses to make the case that "9/11 Families Outraged by Obama Call to Suspend Guantanamo War Crimes Trial":
"I see no reason why we should delay these proceedings. Let justice be served," said Jefferson Crowther, whose 24-year-old son Welles Crowther was killed in the Twin Towers after he saved dozens of lives.
and later in the article we get
"The safest place to have these trials is Guantanamo Bay. If they were to move to the homeland it would endanger all of us," said Lorraine Arias Believeau of New Jersey, whose brother, Adam, was killed on 9/11.
So let's say conservatively that each of the 3000 victims of the 9/11 attacks had four people who could claim family member status. That would be 12,000 opinions out there on the Gitmo situation. Fox talked to three in order to make its claim that "9/11 Families Outraged by Obama Call to Suspend Guantanamo War Crimes Trial."
Now here is where Fox gets extra foxy. To flesh out the article they rely on the opinions of Cmdr. Kirk Lippold who lost fellow sailors in the 2000 USS Cole attack. Despite the headline, Fox included him, as the artcile explains:
Family members of people killed on September 11 and in other terror attacks say they are outraged...
Okay, so despite the terroristically specific headline, Fox is actually casting a wide net and including Lippold, who did not have a family connection to 9/11. But wait, turns out Lippold does have a connection to detainee treatment though:
Lippold, who helped determine detainee policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a strategic planner, said he feels he has a large investment "in making sure that these guys do not return to the fight, that they do not kill again."
He said moving the cases to civilian courts was primarily a political act and could make it difficult to proceed with cases without compromising vital intelligence sources and methods.
So Lippold is not a 9/11 family member and was involved in detainee policy, but ""9/11 Families Outraged by Obama Call to Suspend Guantanamo War Crimes Trial."
Turns out too that detainees at Gitmo agree with Lippold, if you can believe Fox's interpretation:
Some of the accused terrorists, meanwhile, were impatient to have their trials proceed.
"We should continue so we don't go backward, we go forward," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks told the judge in their case. He is among five detainees accused in the attacks who have asked to be given the death penalty, believing they will become martyrs if they are executed.
Last random point. When Sen. Brownback questioned Eric Holder last week, he said that the Gitmo detainees would not be welcome in Kansas, home to Leavenworth. Let's see what Jack Murtha has to say about such a stance:
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said he would take the detainees in his own district, which lies just miles from the field near Shanksville, Pa., where United Flight 93 was crashed by terrorists on Sept. 11, killing all 44 people aboard.
"Sure, I'd take them. They're no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo," he said, calling the military prison a "sore in the United States' moral standards."
"There's no reason not to put them in prisons in the United States and handle them the way they would handle any other prisoners."