Moving right along - eyewitness account of the "torture" inflicted in Camp X-Ray - and no, it's not what you think.
Excerpt: >Sillier still were protestations from such humanitarians as Saddam Hussein and the government of Malaysia
(Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has made some of the loudest noise, though Amnesty International dings
him for arresting the speechwriter of a political rival, who was then blindfolded, stripped naked, punched,
verbally abused, and forced to simulate homosexual acts--none of which is alleged at Camp X-Ray). About the
only foreign leader who has supported the American detainee camp, ironically, is Fidel Castro, who is either
angling to end the embargo or inching ever closer to dementia. (He declared January "Americans' Month" and
invited Jimmy Carter for a visit.)
ALL OF THIS has made Camp X-Ray personnel a sensitive lot. On the ferry crossing over to the windward
side where the camp is located, I sit next to a now-mellow Lt. Col. Costello, who has decided to patch things up
with the reporter he snapped at, and who, after getting the sign-off from Southern Command, has cleared us to
stay through Rumsfeld's visit. Costello, like many Gitmo types, is baffled at the uproar over the prisoners'
treatment. "Soldiers and Marines that are guarding the detainees at Camp X-Ray have worse conditions than
the detainees," he says. Much has been made over their being kept in outdoor cells, invariably called "cages,"
which are covered by corrugated tin-covered wooden roofs that keep what little rain Gitmo gets (six inches a
year) off the prisoners. Costello says their eight-by-eight cells contain about twice as much space as soldiers
have in their crowded, unventilated tents a few hundred yards away.
"They're getting warm showers, clean laundry, hot chow," Costello says of the prisoners. "They're getting
2,600 calories a day. I'm not getting 2,600 calories a day. I'm running my ass off chasing you guys around."
(One of the medics treating detainees claims that a full quarter of them were suffering from malnutrition when
they were captured.)
But we don't have to take Costello's word for it. We can see for ourselves, sort of. After a quick stop at
McDonald's (the only one in Cuba), our white school bus transports us past beautiful seaside vistas and
brownish cactus-infested scrub, past ramshackle housing and up a hill, which features an abandoned auto
yard that the locals used to call Sears. It's where they'd strip old junkers for parts then used on jerry-rigged
jalopies called "Gitmo specials."
Across from Sears is Camp X-Ray, a teeming hive of concertina wire, canvas tents, guard towers, and newly
constructed plywood interrogation shacks with window-unit air conditioners. The chain-link cells themselves
don't need air conditioning, since a comfortable Caribbean breeze (temperatures range from the low 70s at night
to the low 80s during the day) continuously circulates through the encampment.
Restricted to an area about 150 yards away from the open-air cellblocks, we observe the camp from a slight
elevation that CNN's John Zarrella calls "Heartbreak Ridge," so named "because if you're a journalist, it breaks
your heart that you can't get closer." Gitmo has actually been the site of a lot of heartbreak over the years.
It broke Christopher Columbus's, when he stopped here on his second New World voyage. He left after failing
to find gold, threatening to cut off the tongues of his crew if they didn't agree to pretend they'd reached Asia.
It also rankles Castro, who has wanted to throw us off the island for four decades, but can't because of a
pre-Revolution lease agreement. Likewise, when thousands of Cuban rafters were detained here for months in
the mid-'90s, many grew so unhappy with Gitmo's ghostly desolation that they'd do anything to leave,
including inject diesel fuel into their veins, drive tent stakes into their limbs, even swim back to Castro's Cuba.
By comparison, the al Qaedans look pretty fat, if not happy. They laze away in the shade of their cells. They
sleep on inch-and-a-half-thick isomats, the same ones that are issued to our military. With the assistance of a
Muslim Navy chaplain, they pray five times daily. (Quick studies, the al Qaedans didn't need arrows painted on
their cell floors. A single signpost next to an American flag points the way to Mecca.) And while American
prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton often spent years in solitary confinement and received no medical care (John
McCain to this day can't comb his own hair), X-Ray detainees get daily sick calls from all manner of doctors,
from optometrists to podiatrists. The prisoners (who represent about 25 different nationalities but mostly are
Saudis) can also freely chat with each other about God knows what: prison uprisings, the demise of Talk
magazine, trades of Fruit Loops for garlic bagel chips.
Their restroom arrangements are pretty spartan. They get a white bucket for emergency squirts, while they are
instructed to hold two fingers up for the alternative. At that time, a guard shackles them and takes them to the
port-o-loo. While the military has spared no expense in construction costs (in three weeks, they built a
completely operational field hospital staffed by 160 medical personnel--two more than there are prisoners),
they've saved a fortune in toilet paper. It's the detainees' cultural preference not to use any. "We don't shake
their hands," says one camp guard.
In addition to the aforementioned amenities, detainees also receive two towels, a Koran, a shortened
toothbrush (still long enough to file into a shiv), a canteen, a bucket of water, fluoride toothpaste, and
shampoo. Not just any shampoo, but "Lively" salon anti-dandruff shampoo--a "luxurious shampoo in a gentle
formula that restores moisture, shine, and body to your beautifully clean hair." Those who think the prisoners
are getting coddled (Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican, visited the camp and said it's "too good for the
bastards") will be happy to know that the shampoo is not jojoba-enriched.
WHILE public affairs officers these days are going to great lengths to talk about how docile the prisoners are,
detainees have been reported biting a guard, spitting, and threatening to kill Americans. When I skirt away
from my minders and visit the Marine snipers' tent, I learn it went well beyond that.
The snipers, of course, are the camp's deadliest sharpshooters, ropy young bucks (21-23 years of age) who
seem largely culled from the western or southern United States, where firearms are often regarded as extra
appendages. Their tent looks like a Marines-issued college dorm room: Skoal-juice bottles, laundry hanging
everywhere, and a spade-like sniper insignia banner tacked to a tent wall. If there is a prison uprising, it is
these gentleman who will man the guard towers and introduce the rioters to their 72 black-eyed virgins.
At some point, that might become necessary, they tell me, as plotting is obviously afoot. Sgt. Matt Lampert of
Montana says the other day one of the prisoners was caught "with a piece of cloth stuffed with rocks that was
tied off at the end." Sgt. Rodney Davis says that during chowtime, he sees them through his scope "making
terrain models out of their food." And unlike say, Afghan prisons, where starving detainees are reportedly
begging to be sent to Gitmo, there's plenty of food to play with. "They get fed better than us, sir," says
Lampert. When I ask the Marines if they've seen anything weird, they laugh sheepishly, looking at each other.
Finally, Sgt. Josh Westbrook, who sports a forearm tattoo of flaming baby heads, steps up. "They know
they're being watched," he explains, "so they'll stare at you, and while they stare at you, they'll, uh,
masturbate."
According to these Marines, they don't just pleasure themselves to freak out the snipers, but also to
embarrass the female Army guards in the camp's interior. The weirdness doesn't end there. They've also eaten
their toiletries and urinated on equipment. "The other day," says Westbrook, "one of the guys tried to do a
naked cartwheel." In the most bizarre twist, Lance Corporal Devin Klebaur says a few have also been known to
"put toothpaste in their ass." "What's the purpose?" I ask. "I'm not sure," he says, puzzled.
After leaving the snipers, I collar other grunts who say they believe the prisoners are more apt to act out
whenever they see one of the regular visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross enter the
camp. "They're looking to be disciplined," says one, so that any aggressive guard behavior will make it look as
if they're being brutalized by the American military in front of international witnesses. ICRC visits, says
another soldier, are the highlight of a prisoner's day, since they've been spotted "giving the unshackled
prisoners cookies and milk, cigarettes, shaking their hands." Many organizations who haven't been to Gitmo,
like Human Rights Watch, have been extremely critical of the prisoners' treatment, while the ICRC has aired no
complaints. Still, says another soldier, "They're a pain in the ass. We see them offering them cookies, hugging
them like their best buddies. They're undermining everything we're trying to do."
What we're trying to do isn't exactly clear at this point. We are certainly interrogating the prisoners, though
base sources won't divulge any information that's been gleaned. The prisoners will likely be formally charged
and tried, though when I called a senior Pentagon source to find out by whom and when, the source said, "If
you find out, will you please tell me?" <
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