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Camp Gitmo

A journalist's first field trip to the infamous prison.
Adam Serwer | May 14, 2010

When you visit the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay as a journalist, you're supposed to write about the McDonald's.

The McDonald's means one of two things: It is either proof that Guantanamo Bay isn't the evil place all the human-rights activists said it was, or it is the ultimate symbol of the banality of evil, the way life goes on even in the presence of something intolerable. If you don't feel like looking for a deeper meaning, it's merely the way the military offers comforting junk food to personnel deployed on the base.

The extent to which the McDonald's makes you feel guilty probably has to do with how much it invokes the mental barriers against thinking about what the American government does to Keep Us Safe. As a visitor, I prepared myself psychologically to see something terrible at Guantánamo Bay. But right from the start, it wasn't as rugged as I thought it was going to be. I had imagined flying there with a few people on a military cargo plane -- instead I traveled with a large group of military personnel, translators, and lawyers on a Delta plane with leather seats and lots of legroom. The terminal at Guantanamo Bay resembles one at a regular airport, except it's outside. It still has interminably long, confusing lines. The walls are covered in slogans -- only instead of selling exotic vacation destinations, they say things like "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom." I even lost some of my luggage.

For a journalist, the Gitmo experience can best be described as bizarro summer camp. In fact, the media center is located in a large area dubbed "Camp Justice" -- a heavy-handed attempt to make the circumstances (in this case, the indefinite detention of people on mere suspicion of a crime) more palatable, like slathering ketchup on cold scrambled eggs. A set of military tents are cooled by large, rumbling air -- conditioning units. Across from an airplane hangar is a high-security court facility ringed by a fence covered in opaque green dressing and crowned with barbed wire. It was built to house the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the other September 11 defendants and may still fulfill its purpose should the administration reverse the decision to try them in civilian court.

We were almost always accompanied by one of the gregarious public-affairs officers who were essentially our camp counselors.

[SNIP]

It would look like an oddly austere living room if it weren't for the lack of natural light -- and the shackles still attached to the concrete floor. For all of Obama?s promises of change, this is about as different as things have gotten for detainees at Guantánamo.

[SNIP]

Of course, America can't escape what Guantanamo is -- not by moving it north and not by keeping it off American soil?because Gitmo is already a part of us. The McDonald's isn't a symbol of the banality of evil, and it isn't proof that evil isn't present.

It just means welcome to the USA.

Full article @ Prospect.org
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Pres.G.W.Bush has created an institution that will have a very long life, it seems.