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Reflecting on the Early Days of Guantanamo

By possum

The full story of Guantanamo may never be known with real certainty, but by bits and pieces the tales are being told.  In an opinion piece yesterday, Karen Greenberg relates the story she found over the years by interviewing dozens of involved people.  Greenberg comes to us as somewhat of an expert as the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law.  She was coeditor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib with Joshua Dratel.
Greenberge begins her reflection noting the future deserves a real look at the past.

It may be too late for these revelations to help redeem Guantanamo in its waning days. But those crafting U.S. detention policy in the years ahead could still benefit from learning about these small initial efforts at decency.

The sordid tale beging with the landing of Marines at Guantanamo Bay in the first week of January, 2002.  The unit was given a 96-hour deadline to set up a detention facility for a planned 300 detainees already in route to Guantanamo.

The task force had to help build hundreds of cells and the massive tent city needed to house the U.S. troops coming in to guard them.

But that was not the major issue in the mind of the commander, Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert.  Lehnert recognized the lack of guidance as to prisoner care and treatment.  No specific orders were given in advance.

Lehnert said he had been told by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Geneva Conventions would not technically apply to his mission: He was to act in a manner "consistent with" the conventions (as the mantra went) but not to feel bound by them.

Being the marine he was, Lehnert felt bound to abide by the only rules at his disposal, the UCMJ, the body of legal rules applied to all U.S. military personnel.  As the troops set to work examining the detainees, administering medical care as needed, and providing general care trouble set in early.

(Lehnert's) request to bring representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to Guantanamo - something international law requires for all prisoners being held in war-related situations - was, as he heard it, shunted aside somewhere up the chain of command.

Rumsfeld and associates were at work from the very first days.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had warned the Gitmo task force that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office opposed getting involved with the ICRC.

Given the lack of direction Lehnert built his own facility including Red Cross oversight and an Islamic chaplain.

But Rumsfeld wanted something else: He expected to get valuable, actionable intelligence from the detainees.

Rumsfeld had no interest in the conditions of detention or the rules of the Geneva Convention.  Rumsfeld installed a second command in charge of intelligence.

initial expectations of orders to build a courtroom began to fade.

A prisoner hunger strike brought the removal of Lehnart and his men.

Once Lehnert's troops departed, a new Guantanamo took shape - the Guantanamo that an appalled world has come to know over the past seven years. Inmates were kept in isolation, interrogation became the core mission, hunger strikers were regularly force-fed, and above all, the promise of a legal resolution to the detainees' cases has eluded hundreds of prisoners.

Today we face the closure of Guantanamo and the relocation of the detainees.  One site offered as a new detention facility is Camp Pendleton now commanded by the same General Lehnart of Guantanamo's early days.  At least if the detainees are returned to Lehnart's control they will enjoy the rule of law this time around.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 02, 2009 (boomark / email).