JTF GTMO

I had the opportunity to visit Guantanamo Bay, Cuba during September. Naval Hospital Jacksonville, where I work supplies up to 75% of the medical personnel who take care of the detainees. They are pulled from our hospital on 6 month deployments to GTMO to be part of the joint medical group. The commanding officer of the hospital tries to visit once during each group's time there. This time he invited me to go along so I would have a better understanding of what our people go through there. So I joined the CO, XO, CMC, and a couple others as we visited GTMO. What I experienced was quite a spectacle. I don't think I can really describe it. It was fascinating and infuriating at the same time. I will do my best to try to convey what I saw and participated in.
Very little of what I saw was confidential. One of the main goals of the Joint detention group there is to make what they do transparent. They have been accused of all sorts of bad things by the media, and many of the people of the nation, who see lots of TV dramas about big cover-ups and scandals are quick to believe that the military is running some sort of secret torture camps. The truth is that the media is welcome to come visit (and many do) to see conditions for themselves. The guards and staff document everything they do (to the point that it is ridiculous) because the detainees will claim abuse over everything. I was absolutely shocked at how open they were about everything that goes on there. It was nothing like the impression I had from the media before my visit. The reporters will visit and be very impressed with conditions in the camps, then go home and write some garbage about GTMO being a scandal in some way because saying that everything is great isn't what grabs attention. Its all about the money.
The island is kind of ugly. It is a desert island with rolling hills, low shrubs and an occasional cactus. It is surrounded by beautiful blue ocean. There are huge iguanas and banana rats everywhere (a banana rat is comparable to the ROUS from Princess Bride). The base is quite impressive with state of the art facilities. There is actually quite a lot to do there. They have golf, Frisbee golf, free outdoor movies, scuba, paintball, etc. It is not at all a bad place to be. Unless you are attached to the detention camps.
When we first arrived we were given a brief, outlining the things we were going to see and telling us a little about the detainees. Mounted on the wall next to me was a display of all the makeshift weapons that had been confiscated from the detainees. It was quite an intimidating assortment of shanks and clubs. Contrary to popular belief, the detainees in GTMO were not just people who looked like they might be enemies who were rounded up after a gunfight. These are the leaders and those who killed innocent people. Many of them are very educated and persuasive in getting people to follow them. There were about 230 when I visited (that is the same number the media is reporting).
The image I had in my mind of how the detainees were treated came from a picture that was passed around the media of detainees kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs and with a bag over their head. It didn't look very humane. I assumed that the detainees were isolated from each other and treated much like that photo whenever they were moved. I couldn't have been further from the truth. (I now understand the reason the detainees in that photo were treated like that--I wil explain later). To my amazement (and honestly a little to my disgust) the detainees are treated almost like kings. It was very much like a prison you would see in the US, except that the detainees were treated much better, but got away with stuff that US prisoners could never get away with. They are given about 20 hours a day of "recreational time" where they can leave their cells and do pretty much whatever they want inside the compound. They have bigscreen TV's with arabic television (including al jazera I believe) and about any other channel they want (If they need a different channel they just tell their lawyers they are being mistreated and deprived. The lawyers then threaten to make a big scandal out of it. Then an article is published somewhere about how the detainees are being treated like animals. Then the politicians come to the military and treat them like they are the problem). They actually get to Skype their families back in Iraq or afganistan. I assume this means that the US has gone to the homes of the terrorists and set up high speed internet for them.
As you may have guessed because of the level of freedom given to the detainees, Al Qaeda is alive and well within the camps. They have a clear structure and have a system for sending messages from one camp to another.

More to come when I have more time....