After having just paid for a subscription to The Weekly Standard, I was thrilled to see an article written by Thomas Joscelyn about his recent tour of the Guantanamo Bay facilities. One of his opening remarks is the following:
"The iconic images of Gitmo are not photos of Camp 4, however. The pictures that have captured the world's imagination are of detainees shackled on bended knee in bright orange jumpsuits with their eyes and ears covered. Those pictures were taken more than seven and a half years ago at Camp X-Ray, in the long corridor that runs down the middle of the camp."
Sure enough, when I googled images of Gitmo, those are exactly the pictures that first come up (as pictured above.)
Joscelyn proceeds then with an updated image of Guantanamo in his article. Here are excerpts (emphasis added):
Again, the above only provides excerpts from Joscelyn's article. I highly recommend going over to The Weekly Standard to read the piece in its entirety.
Today that corridor is overrun with weeds and unruly grass, and the rest of the camp is in no better state of repair. Camp X-Ray housed "war on terror" detainees for just four months, from January to April 2002. It has long since been abandoned. Banana rats, which look like some mutant combination of possum and rat, now hang from the cages that once housed the detainees. Gone, too, are the orange jumpsuits. They have been replaced by tan, white, and other neutral-colored clothing. During my multi-day tour of Guantánamo Bay, one official tells me that some journalists from Turkey wanted to take pictures of the detainees in their bright orange jumpsuits. When this official explained the detainees no longer wear those outfits, the Turkish reporters asked if a detainee could be dressed up in one for the photos as that is what their readers expect to see.
The story is emblematic of the disconnect between life at Guantánamo as it is today, and the Guantánamo of popular mythology. It is the latter that is the basis for the Obama administration's decision to close the detention facilities there.
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Guantánamo has simply never been a major part of al Qaeda's recruitment strategy. But even if it were and we closed it, the terror masters would simply find the next pretext for justifying their acts. After all, if we are to close Guantánamo because al Qaeda objects to it, then why not abandon America's entire foreign policy agenda?
Nonetheless the White House presses on with closing Gitmo--even in the face of substantial controversy.
This past week, the administration confirmed that it had selected an underutilized correctional center in the town of Thomson, in northwest Illinois, as the new home for up to 100 Gitmo detainees. A letter to Illinois governor Pat Quinn announced the administration's plan for the federal government to buy the prison in Thomson and rebuild one section of it to make the facility even more secure than America's "supermax" prison in Colorado--where several convicted terrorists are currently housed. This assurance is intended to assuage any concerns over the government's ability to safely detain the Gitmo detainees on U.S. soil. Ironically, however, most of the roughly 210 detainees still held at Guantánamo are not in supermax-type facilities at all. At least 70 percent live in communal settings like Camp 4. They can play soccer, basketball, or foosball; exercise on elliptical equipment; and consort with their fellow detainees for up to 20 hours per day in the outdoor recreation area. They can take art classes or learn English. And while tensions flare every now and again, life in Camp 4 is generally calm. Camp officials prefer that the detainees live in this type of setting. It's easier on the guards and everyone else involved. As the commander of Camp 4 explains, the detainees have to "do something really bad" to get locked up in one of the more secure facilities.
The detainees have access to several satellite television channels and, as one DoD handout notes, a library consisting of "more than 14,000 books, magazines, and DVDs in 18 languages." During a visit to the library, I noticed a few copies of the poetry of Rumi--a 13th-century Sufi mystic whose writings explore deeply spiritual, ethereal topics. Rumi's view of the world is diametrically opposed to that of al Qaeda's jihadists. He searched for the universal deity who he believed resided in us all, regardless of race or creed. Jihadists, on the other hand, believe they are compelled to war against anyone who dares to oppose their intolerant beliefs.
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Oddly, the detainees are interested in many aspects of Western culture. Harry Potter is very popular, and with each new movie that comes out the detainees request more of J.K. Rowling's books.
"Everything you know about out there, they know about in here," the librarian says. That includes news events. In addition to satellite television, most of the detainees have access to three newspapers--two from the Muslim world and USA Today. The papers are censored, but only to remove any material that the detainees may find lewd, such as advertisements showing a man and woman kissing.
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An Italian journalist who accompanies me throughout much of the tour says that two Tunisian detainees who were recently transferred from Guantánamo to Italy to await trial are probably very upset right about now. They are being held in a maximum-security prison in Milan that he describes as "hell" compared with Gitmo. The Italian gentleman tells me this right after we tour the food-preparation facilities. There we found that the detainees are offered six types of meals, totaling between 5,000 and 6,000 calories, daily. In their more candid moments, the detainees complain to camp personnel that it is difficult for them to claim they have been "tortured" when they have pot bellies.
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For many New Yorkers, it is deeply unsettling to think of these al Qaeda supervillains standing trial just blocks away from where their henchmen killed thousands of Americans. It is more unsettling when you realize that even here at Guantánamo, a highly secure military detention facility in the middle of the Atlantic, they are kept segregated from the rest of the detainee population. I never do get to see Camp 7. The military personnel who escort me around the island all insist that they do not know where it is located. I believe them--that is just how secure Camp 7 is.
The more you learn about the real Guantánamo, the more the Obama administration's decision to move any of the detainees to the continental United States seems entirely unnecessary. The detainees probably can be safely housed on domestic soil, but why take the risk?
What's more: The facilities that are required already exist here in Cuba. Camps 5 and 6--the maximum and medium security facilities that house detainees who refuse to be compliant--were modeled after existing correctional facilities in the Midwest. Both camps (like the rest of Guantánamo) are maintained in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. These camps have more than enough capacity to continue to hold the detainees the Obama administration now wants to transfer to the United States. And even Attorney General Eric Holder conceded after visiting the camps earlier this year that Guantánamo is "well-run" with no sign of detainee mistreatment.
Why, then, is the Obama administration determined to close Guantánamo and reinvent the wheel in Thomson, Illinois? The answer has everything to do with anachronistic perceptions and an anti-military mythology that dates from the four months when Camp X-Ray was operational.
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Even though this was a difficult process, the intelligence that was collected has been invaluable. It has directly supported combat operations in Afghanistan. It has deepened the military's understanding of how terrorists are recruited and trained, and how they construct bombs (including improvised explosive devices that are used to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan). It has shed light on how terrorists are shuttled around the world and how they are financed. This intelligence has contributed greatly to America's overall understanding of the global terror network in numerous ways.
But in the public debate over closing Gitmo, the intelligence garnered has rarely been discussed, even though thousands of pages of documents detailing what the government has learned have been declassified and released online. These documents, consisting mainly of files created during the detainees' combatant status review tribunal and administrative review board hearings, are readily available on both the DoD's and the New York Times's websites. For the most part, the media just ignore them.
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One of the more damaging myths about Guantánamo is that U.S. military personnel regularly and intentionally desecrate the Koran. But only a handful of instances of Koran abuse have ever been verified, and some of those instances were completely unintentional. In 2005, Newsweek reported that interrogators had flushed a -detainee's copy down the toilet. This was not true. Newsweek retracted the story but only after it had sparked riots in the Muslim world. Zak says that while he does not know of any instances of U.S. military personnel disrespecting the Koran in such a manner, he has witnessed detainees doing so. One detainee ripped the pages out of his Koran and flushed them down his toilet in what was probably an act of rage or defiance, Zak says.
Knowing that the U.S. military will be roundly criticized for any hint of Koran desecration, the detainees play games with their holy books. A common practice, Zak says, is for the detainees to put their Korans in the middle of the floor of their cells, create a fuss, and then watch as the military guards try to avoid making any contact with Allah's word.
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The U.S. military may have made mistakes at Gitmo, but it did so in the context of an extremely difficult situation. And it has taken extraordinary steps to rectify them and improve facilities that, as we should never forget, house men who are committed to an extreme ideology that justifies acts of mass terror.
As we leave the part of Guantánamo Bay that houses Camps 4, 5, and 6, we are driven through the security checkpoint one last time. I see a sign displaying the "value of the week." These signs are sprinkled around the exterior of the detention facilities and are a transparent attempt to boost troop morale, which senior camp officials say has sagged in the face of the relentless criticism.
The value this week is "Pride." The troopers who have served here should be proud. And I know that we should be proud of them. They have served their country honorably.
Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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