THEY CAN GO WHEN THE JIHAD ENDS

In the Land of Guantanamo (TED CONOVER, June 29, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

It feels surreal to be on an American naval base inside the territory of a Communist country. And it feels doubly strange -- like a parody of a David Lynch movie -- to cruise slowly by little town-house subdivisions, past batting cages and even by a rocky outcrop where high-school students spray-paint their names, then come suddenly upon a prison camp in the ''war on terror'' wreathed in razor wire.

Prisoners from the Afghan war first arrived at ''Gitmo,'' as locals call the base, in January 2002. The first 110 men were brought to a makeshift set of cages called Camp X-Ray and were made to kneel, shackled and blindfolded with special blacked-out goggles, while soldiers trained rifles on them, an image captured in the first news photographs of them. Then, last spring, they were all moved to a newer, larger facility, Camp Delta. Unlike X-Ray, Delta has running water, indoor toilets and plenty of unused capacity. (There are 680 prisoners housed there now, with room for about 1,000.) Soldiers call Camp Delta ''the Wire,'' and it has plenty of that -- rows of chain link and concertina. Rising behind them are plywood guard towers, some draped with American flags, and an array of lights for night.

At the camp's main gate, a 4-foot-by-8-foot sign attached at eye level says ''Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.'' This is the slogan of J.T.F./Guantanamo, the joint military task force -- 2,000 strong -- that runs the detention-and-interrogation operation. It is printed on handouts and official documents and signs and is constantly recited, soldier to soldier, at the camp's checkpoints. As I arrived at the main gate for the first time, I turned to the first lieutenant who was escorting me. ''Isn't that a little strange,'' I offered, ''a slogan about freedom on the gate of a prison camp?''

He looked at me flatly. ''Doesn't seem strange to me,'' he said. ''Does it seem strange to you?''

What a lovely reference to the slogan over the gates of Auschwitz: "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Will Set You Free). Mr. Conover was on NPR talking about this piece today and was followed by Anthony Lewis who was complaining that he was unfamiliar with any instance in our history of our holding "prisoners of war" indefinitely. One would have liked the interviewer to ask: did we really send captured soldiers back to Nazi Germany before the end of that war? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 27, 2003 9:05 PM