User:Geo Swan/questions for Guantanamo GIs

See User:Geo Swan/Stale drafts#Scaffolding

I told a contributor from Guantanamo that there was a policy on responding to questions from the public, but that if they thought it was okay, I'd like to ask them some questions.

Just a day or two ago I was wondering how long a shift the GIs who patrol the cell blocks have to do. It is their job to look in on every captive at least once every three minutes, to make sure they haven't tried to kill themselves. I read that Guantanamo tripled in size, to 10,000 individuals, to support the detention camp. Guards and interrogators and their support staff outnumber the captives about ten to one. At US prisons for felons prisoners outnumber the guards by the opposite ration. I assumed that the guards cell-block patrols would be limited to four hours at a go, because the patrols would be so boring they could no longer be relied upon for longer shifts than that. The GI said their shifts were 12 hours long, with a further hour devoted to after-action reports -- five or six days a week.

Off duty time?

So, what kinds of things do GIs have to do during their free time?

1. Do they have to do their own laundry?
2. Are GIs free to have all their meals prepared for them?
3. I've read that some of the junior ranks live in refurbished shipping containers. From pictures it seems that these shipping containers have no windows. Are they insulated? Are they air-conditioned?

The GI was willing to acknowledge that torture may have taken place in Guantanamo during its first year or so.

retaliation, and the number of captives who killed a GI...

I watch the BBC News on PBS every night. A few years ago, not when the camp was first opened, the BBC were able to interview an ordinary guard at the camp. Paraphrasing from memory, he said something like:

It is really frustrating being a guard here, because we aren't allowed to retaliate in kind when a captive does something wrong. (pregnant pause) Half the detainees here killed a US soldier you know!

I found what he said disturbing for several reasons, including his second comment showed that he had no idea who the captives really were. It was still bugging me a couple of months later, and I looked up how many GIs had died in Afghanistan at that point. IIRC the GIs KIA at that point stood at 192. Even if every single GI who died in Afghanistan had been KIA by a different Guantanamo captive it still wouldn't have amounted to half of them killing a GI, because the camp population stood at over 500 at that time. Those of us who read the Summary of Evidence memos for ourselves can see only Omar Khadr stands accused of killing an American soldier. These summary memos only support the general claim that the captives were all captured on the battlefield in a few dozen cases. Most of the captives were turned over by bounty hunters, or captured, unarmed, by Pakistani border guards or police. A couple of dozen captives went directly to the first Pakistani Police Office they could find, and told the desk sergeant, "Please help me. I am a distressed foreigner, who was working as an aid worker, who found himself in a war zone, and barely escaped with his life. During my flight I lost my passport and money. Please contact my embassy, so they can help me get home."

It is tragic when an honorable soldier dies, or receives crippling wounds

Let me say up front, I think its tragic whan any soldier, who has behaved honorably, suffers death, or crippling wounds. They and those who know them have my full sympathy. But your twelve hour shifts aren't torture, even if you have feces thrown at you, just as comparisons between what the captives were forced to go through, and what frat boys go through during their initiations are bogus. Your frat boy is being initiated by choice. And you are a volunteer. If your frat boy really can't take his initiation, he can quit the frat. If you thought you really couldn't take another twelve hour day when you might have feces thrown at you, couldn't you go to the doc, and say something like: "Doctor, I can't take another day when I might have feces thrown at me. If I get feces thrown at me one more time I know I am going to snap. I don't know what I might do." You can get out of this duty, at less cost than this guy. You could get out of this onerous duty, if you really had to -- which the captives can't -- so your 12 hour shifts are not torture.

When is brutal force-feeding torture?

Consider recently released hunger striker Ahmed Zaid Salim Zuhair. He had been on a hunger strike for 1450 days -- since June of 2005. I've read accounts that the remaining hunger strikers meekly allow themselves to be escorted to the infirmary for their feeding tubes to be inserted, and once there meekly cooperate while the tube is inserted. Zuhair, on the other hand, routinely declined to leave his cell, and the riot squad was routinely called upon to perform a "forced cell extraction". Included in each forced cell extraction is a brutal beating. And Zuhair is now allergic to the nutrient solution, and they left him violently ill. Does a daily brutal beating, followed by forced administration of a fluid that left one violently ill, constitute torture?

Convicted felons in a

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