Dance of the Reptiles by Carl Hiaasen

Author:Carl Hiaasen [Hiaasen, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-345-80703-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

June 12, 2005

In Gitmo, Diet Rich in Carbs, Lean on Rights

To rebuff accusations that the United States is running a “gulag” at its Guantánamo Bay naval base, the Pentagon last week revealed that it’s spending $12.68 per day to feed each of the 520 detainees at the controversial Camp Delta prison.

The Gitmo Diet includes whole-wheat bagels, fresh fruit, baklava, yams, veggie patties, and nearly 10 pounds of halal-certified meat every month for the Muslim inmates. The menu was made public to reassure the Islamic world and concerned Americans that the Guantánamo facility isn’t such a bad place, compared to other lockups.

Nutritionally, that certainly seems true. The $12.68 spent on each detainee’s daily meals at Camp Delta is about five times what it costs to feed a prisoner in Florida. On the other hand, all prisoners in Florida get a few things that the Guantánamo inmates do not. For starters, they get charged with an actual crime.

Then they get a lawyer.

Then they get a day in court and an opportunity to defend themselves.

In lieu of indictments, the Camp Delta detainees are served bagels and fruit salad. There’s reason to believe that many would gladly trade their healthy breakfast for a good old-fashioned American trial.

Most were rounded up during the U.S. military incursion into Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. Classified as “enemy combatants,” they’ve been sitting behind razor wire in Cuba for more than three years. Few, if any, have been charged with a crime.

That—not dietary issues—was the main reason that former President Jimmy Carter, Sen. Joseph Biden, and the respected columnist Thomas Friedman all recently urged President Bush to close down Camp Delta. Its existence has become an incendiary propaganda weapon for radical Muslim factions—a symbol for what is seen as American harshness and hypocrisy.

Recent allegations that the Koran was being desecrated by military personnel at the prison ignited deadly riots abroad. Only five incidents of “mishandling” of the holy text by Guantánamo staff were confirmed by the Pentagon, but the report has done little to quell emotions in the Mideast.

The administration reacted sharply when Amnesty International described the Gitmo detention facility as “the gulag of our times.” While living conditions are infinitely better than those of the old Soviet labor camps, there’s one ugly similarity: the indefinite and distant imprisonment of persons with no legal recourse.

Siberia is a lot closer to Moscow than Cuba is to Kabul. The Guantánamo prison, said Amnesty’s Irene Khan, “is a disgrace to American values and international law.”

Preposterously, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says our justice system—the most advanced in the world—can’t handle the sort of cases to be found at Guantánamo and other secret military prisons established since 9/11.

It’s all part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to white-out parts of the Constitution in the name of fighting terror. Even the U.S. Supreme Court couldn’t stomach the Pentagon’s position that Camp Delta, being in Cuba, was exempt from judicial review. Last summer the justices ruled that Gitmo inmates can legally challenge their detentions. Since then, more than 550 military tribunals have been held.

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