An excerpt from an article written by a journalist who visited Cuba:
"...By comparison, the al Qaedans look pretty fat, if not happy. They laze away in the shade of their cells. They sleep on inch-and-a-half-thick isomats, the same ones that are issued to our military. With the assistance of a Muslim Navy chaplain, they pray five times daily. (Quick studies, the al Qaedans didn't need arrows painted on their cell floors. A single signpost next to an American flag points the way to Mecca.) And while American prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton often spent years in solitary confinement and received no medical care (John McCain to this day can't comb his own hair), X-Ray detainees get daily sick calls from all manner of doctors, from optometrists to podiatrists. The prisoners (who represent about 25 different nationalities but mostly are Saudis) can also freely chat with each other about God knows what: prison uprisings, the demise of Talk magazine, trades of Froot Loops for garlic bagel chips.
Their restroom arrangements are pretty spartan. They get a white bucket for emergency squirts, while they are instructed to hold two fingers up for the alternative. At that time, a guard shackles them and takes them to the port-o-loo. While the military has spared no expense in construction costs (in three weeks, they built a completely operational field hospital staffed by 160 medical personnel--two more than there are prisoners), they've saved a fortune in toilet paper. It's the detainees' cultural preference not to use any. "We don't shake their hands," says one camp guard.
In addition to the aforementioned amenities, detainees also receive two towels, a Koran, a shortened toothbrush (still long enough to file into a shiv), a canteen, a bucket of water, fluoride toothpaste, and shampoo. Not just any shampoo, but "Lively" salon anti-dandruff shampoo--a "luxurious shampoo in a gentle formula that restores moisture, shine, and body to your beautifully clean hair." Those who think the prisoners are getting coddled (Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, visited the camp and said it's "too good for the bastards") will be happy to know that the shampoo is not jojoba-enriched.
WHILE public affairs officers these days are going to great lengths to talk about how docile the prisoners are, detainees have been reported biting a guard, spitting, and threatening to kill Americans. When I skirt away from my minders and visit the Marine snipers' tent, I learn it went well beyond that.
The snipers, of course, are the camp's deadliest sharpshooters, ropy young bucks (21-23 years of age) who seem largely culled from the western or southern United States, where firearms are often regarded as extra appendages. Their tent looks like a Marines-issued college dorm room: Skoal-juice bottles, laundry hanging everywhere, and a spade-like sniper insignia banner tacked to a tent wall. If there is a prison uprising, it is these gentleman who will man the guard towers and introduce the rioters to their 72 black-eyed virgins.
At some point, that might become necessary, they tell me, as plotting is obviously afoot. Sgt. Matt Lampert of Montana says the other day one of the prisoners was caught "with a piece of cloth stuffed with rocks that was tied off at the end." Sgt. Rodney Davis says that during chowtime, he sees them through his scope "making terrain models out of their food." And unlike say, Afghan prisons, where starving detainees are reportedly begging to be sent to Gitmo, there's plenty of food to play with. "They get fed better than us, sir," says Lampert. When I ask the Marines if they've seen anything weird, they laugh sheepishly, looking at each other. Finally, Sgt. Josh Westbrook, who sports a forearm tattoo of flaming baby heads, steps up. "They know they're being watched," he explains, "so they'll stare at you, and while they stare at you, they'll, uh, masturbate."
According to these Marines, they don't just pleasure themselves to freak out the snipers, but also to embarrass the female Army guards in the camp's interior. The weirdness doesn't end there. They've also eaten their toiletries and urinated on equipment. "The other day," says Westbrook, "one of the guys tried to do a naked cartwheel." In the most bizarre twist, Lance Corporal Devin Klebaur says a few have also been known to "put toothpaste in their ass." "What's the purpose?" I ask. "I'm not sure," he says, puzzled.
After leaving the snipers, I collar other grunts who say they believe the prisoners are more apt to act out whenever they see one of the regular visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross enter the camp. "They're looking to be disciplined," says one, so that any aggressive guard behavior will make it look as if they're being brutalized by the American military in front of international witnesses. ICRC visits, says another soldier, are the highlight of a prisoner's day, since they've been spotted "giving the unshackled prisoners cookies and milk, cigarettes, shaking their hands." Many organizations who haven't been to Gitmo, like Human Rights Watch, have been extremely critical of the prisoners' treatment, while the ICRC has aired no complaints. Still, says another soldier, "They're a pain in the ass. We see them offering them cookies, hugging them like they're best buddies. They're undermining everything we're trying to do."
What we're trying to do isn't exactly clear at this point. We are certainly interrogating the prisoners, though base sources won't divulge any information that's been gleaned. The prisoners will likely be formally charged and tried, though when I called a senior Pentagon source to find out by whom and when, the source said, "If you find out, will you please tell me?"
ON SUNDAY, Rumsfeld visits, and we hope for illumination. Sitting on a bus on the tarmac, waiting for the secretary to emerge from his plane, we pass the time as journalists do, discussing the AP-style spelling of "bin Laden," speculating whether the prisoners will get an Internet cafe (one of them has asked for video games), and making fun of the fresh-meat Pentagon press corps, who are overdressed in heavy wools instead of our much cooler island linens.
One of Rumsfeld's security agents mounts our bus, telling us the ground rules: no photos on the tarmac, no fighting, no hitting Rumsfeld in the head with a boom mike. After Rumsfeld tours Camp X-Ray with four senators and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers (who is so overshadowed by the secretary's rock star aura that one reporter has to ask who he is), Rumsfeld meets the press on Heartbreak Ridge. He gives the sort of hooah performance that has endeared him to both the troops and the press. While he remains as firm as ever that the detainees are "illegal combatants," not "prisoners of war," which would afford them more rights under the Geneva Convention, he nicely avoids plucking the only hair worth splitting--whether the captives' status is his call. (Human rights hawks say the matter should be decided by a "competent tribunal," whatever that is.)
Even if it isn't up to Rumsfeld, the argument seems rather academic. It's hard to imagine anyone who has actually read the Geneva Convention wanting to confer POW status on alleged al Qaeda members. Doing so would not only make the terrorists eligible for repatriation to their home countries, but also would forbid their being punished for trying to escape, allow them to receive "scientific equipment" from home, and even confer upon them the right to dentures--in case they lost their teeth while, say, biting a guard. Most ludicrous, they would be afforded "advances of pay" in an amount "never . . . inferior" to that which we pay our own armed forces. If you're a terrorist from Central Asia, it's not a bad deal: Kill Americans, get arrested, then get a pay raise from America.
With all the global bellyaching about the detainees' right to humane treatment, it's hard to imagine them getting better treatment than they're already receiving. On my last day at Gitmo, all I have time to eat is a stale Ding Dong and a greasy plate of onion rings. My public affairs keepers couldn't care less. By contrast, for breakfast and lunch alone, the prisoners are served oatmeal, an orange, peanut butter, margarine, a "culturally appropriate" halal meal, and a giant snack pack containing Froot Loops, raisins, a Nature Valley granola bar, baked garlic bagel chips, and Bullseye barbecue-seasoned sunflower kernels. Still, the overseers of the prison are concerned that detainees aren't getting enough pita bread with their meals, and they're planning to make the food spicier, just the way the prisoners like it back home.
While we wait, we journalists have to stand in the hot sun most of the day. After hours, we are confined to our Consolidated Bachelor Quarters, sleeping four to a duplex room on cots, some without pillows or blankets. We aren't even allowed to go the beach, a few hundred yards away from our building (though, emboldened by the rum we imported from Puerto Rico, a colleague and I make a mad dash under a guard searchlight for the bathwater Caribbean anyway). Besides drinking, our only entertainment is a pool table--one cue is cracked, the other is missing its tip. The prisoners, by contrast, get to read their Korans, while novels and more "religious books" are on the way.
At the end of their day, they get a good night's sleep in a single cell. At the end of our day, we are told that a C-141 (the same plane that transported the detainees) just became available, and we are prematurely hustled off so the military can dump us in Nowheresville, New Jersey, on a Sunday night after every rental car place in the state has closed.
Complete article :
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/856fcmtf.asp
