Posted on 12/29/2001 12:09:30 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Guantanamo to hold terror prisoners
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@herald.com
The U.S. naval base at Guantamano Bay, Cuba, once a detention center for thousands of Cubans and Haitians seeking freedom in America, may soon become a prison for men with a radically different view of the country.
The Pentagon is planning to house captured al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban fighters for an undetermined time at the base on the island's isolated eastern coast, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday.
Despite the logistical hurdle of moving at least several dozen presumably dangerous men around 8,000 miles from Afghanistan, Rumsfeld called Cuba ``the least worst place.''
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, said she supported the idea, in part, because it would underscore the naval base's strategic importance at a time when some members of Congress have urged returning the territory to Cuba.
``It's an excellent location,'' she said. ``It gives new life to Gitmo,'' as the base is often called.
Because the base is not on U.S. soil, people detained there are not entitled to American residency and eventual citizenship privileges. U.S. officials began using it as an offshore holding station during a Haitian refugee crisis in 1991. During the 1994-95 rafter crisis, 50,000 Cubans and Haitians were housed there in a tent encampment after U.S. naval vessels had picked them up at sea.
The prisoners from Afghanistan are not expected to arrive for weeks, and Rumsfeld said there are no plans to stage military tribunals or trials at the base, which is home to about 1,100 members of the Navy and Marine Corps.
The biggest challenge may be getting prisoners from South Asia to the Caribbean. Some prisoners are reportedly being held on warships in the Afghan region. Others are at a U.S. military compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where U.S. forces built a stockade of sorts to house them.
1999 PLANS
At the Southern Command in Miami, the Pentagon's base for military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, spokesman Steve Lucas said planners had pulled out blueprints from April 1999 -- when the Clinton administration had briefly considered housing up to 20,000 refugees from the Kosovo conflict at the base.
Then, the concern was how to make comfortable traumatized victims of civil war uprooted from a violent, cold climate. Planners scrambled to deploy healthcare workers and Muslim clergymen before the White House abandoned that idea.
In this instance, military sources said, the number of prisoners would be much smaller -- perhaps in the dozens -- and the logistics would focus more on security at the 45-square-mile base and less on the comfort of prisoners who are considered either members of a terrorist network or supporters of terrorists.
As of Thursday, the United States had an estimated 45 prisoners in custody. Guantanamo has detention space for about 100 people.
``All of this is pretty well-planned out because we have used it to house illegal migrant detainees in the past, Cubans and Haitians,'' Lucas said. ``It will be a little bit of a different situation but a lot of the basic stuff is the same.''
SLICE OF U.S.
With an outdoor movie theater, bowling alleys, a McDonald's and a mini-mall, Guantanamo Bay is a curious slice of Americana on the edge of the Caribbean. As of 1999, 2,400 civilians were on the base, including the families of the sailors and Marines who manage the port and patrol the fence line that separates the base from communist-ruled Cuba. No updated figure was available Thursday.
The base is extremely isolated. Visitors can reach it only under strict military escort and with prior permission from the Pentagon, aboard special small shuttle flights that reach the base by a circuitous flight from the United States. On rare occasions, Cuban defectors get there by swimming through dangerous waters or by traversing a Cuban minefield.
There is also a gate between Cuba proper and the base that is sometimes opened for meetings between military commanders, or to repatriate Cubans who have been taken to the base.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro has long argued that the U.S. military occupation of the base is illegal, while U.S. officials say the base exists under a lease agreement that was part of a 1934 treaty with Cuba. Some Washington diplomats consider giving back the land a potential carrot for negotiation with a democratic Cuban government.
Ros-Lehtinen suggested Thursday that the move might raise the hackles of Cuba's government, but Rumsfeld dismissed those concerns.
``We don't anticipate any trouble with Mr. Castro,'' he said.
LOL...!
Somehow I don't think we will be too concerned if those furry-faced terrorists from cool mountain altitudes and thin mountain air don't enjoy hot, humid Cuba and thick soupy air.
Quite sincerely...MUD
Hear, hear, Mudboy. Cuba, after all, is on the State Dept's roster of terrorist states.
Are you speakin' of the Cuban Terrorists who bow at the Altar of the Mass-Murderer, Fidel Castro, or the Afghan Terrorists who kneel before bin Laden or the Lib'ral Enviro-Nazi Terrorists who have deified that War Criminal/Rapist/Mass-Murderer, Osama bil Clinton?!!
FReegards...MUD
THAT ought to get the Castro's shorts tied in a knot!
I LOVE IT!
As well they should be, my FRiend. And just as we went after the Taliban and not the Afghan Sheeple, we should shoot fer the head in Cuba, and then let the Cuban people vote for their next Presidente and forego the whole concept of Castro's heirs retaining control of the "Revolution"!!
If Whorealdo can pull off the dirty work, I'll take him off my "Eternal $#!+ List"...LOL!! Heck, maybe little Dannie Rather-Biased can pull it off the next time those two twits get together.
FReegards...MUD
Imagine how outraged -- OUTRAGED! -- Leaky Leahy will be when he hears of this!
;^)
LOL!
Hey, I know... get SeeBS to send his his buddy, Dan, down there to cover the story and maybe we see them both disappear LIVE and then over and over again in REPLAYS!!
My thoughts exactly =^)
i wish the government would ring MY phone, as i'd love to run that prison camp for them. it would NOT be a "tropical paradise" OR "a country club"!
for dixie,sw
Methinks this Terrorist Storage Compound will not be a fun place to be...still, it'll surely be better than where Dem folks are headed in the next life!!
FReegards...MUD
if i were describing paradise for MOST of them it would be "72 las vegas showgirls", judging how the creeps spent their last night on earth!
i suspect there is a "BAR-B-Q" awaiting them, instead of the virgins!
for dixie,sw
Methinx you are Right!!
FReegards...MUD
Seems like a pretty good idea to me. Thanks for the article, John.
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