The "Good" Guantanamo?

With the help of Arkansas Hillbilly, I'm proud to say that Wounded Bird scooped the Washington Post on the story that Guantanamo was once a relatively decent place.

When Marine Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert and his unit were assigned to Gitmo to meet the first 300 prisoners, they had 96 hours to draw up procedures and rules. They decided to go with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, other U.S. laws, and the Geneva Conventions.

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.

What the hell does that mean? When Lehnert tried to bring in the International Committee of the Red Cross, his request was turned down. However, the call to the ICRC had already been made, and they arrived at Gitmo. With their help, Lehnert began to improve the conditions of the prisoners. The military, including the head of the JAG group tried to do the right thing, but Rumsfeld had other ideas.

By late January 2002, according to Brig. Gen. Galen B. Jackman, Lehnert's chief contact at Southern Command, the defense secretary told officers on a video conference call with Southern Command that he was frustrated by the absence of such information [actionable intelligence].

A displeased Rumsfeld seems to have decided to create a second command, one that would exist side by side with Lehnert's. It would be devoted solely to gathering intelligence and would be headed by a reservist major general, a former U.S. Army interrogator during the Vietnam War named Michael Dunlavey. Jackman told me that he considered the idea of two parallel commands a "recipe for disaster." At the same time, Navy Capt. Robert Buehn, the commander of the naval base at Guantanamo, recalled, the Gitmo task force's initial expectations of orders to build a courtroom began to fade.

For two years, the reporter, Karen Greenberg, gathered information through interviews, which essentially supports Arkansas Hillbilly's contention:

I believe in due process, and I am ashamed of what GTMO became, but when it started we were trying to sort the bad guys from the good,treat all the wounded and hopefully get information WITHOUT torture. When I was there the mere mention of that word was shunned for fear of being accused of it. I used to be proud of the things I did there... and still am of the accomplishments. But all the allegations of torture after I left, what it became, I am horribly ashamed of the whole mess. You shouldn't be ashamed to serve your country, but there it is. Thank you Mr. Bush and Chaney.

Thank you again, Arkansas Hillbilly.

President Obama ordered that Guantanamo be shut down within a year. Where will the prisoners go?

And there is a final irony on the horizon.

One of the places now being considered as a new U.S.-based destination for the remaining Gitmo detainees is Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base in Southern California. The base's commanding general is none other than Michael Lehnert, now a major general. The detainees might well be returned to his custody. In several senses, we could wind up right back where we started. This time, however, we should have the law on our side -- not to mention a conscience.

You can't make this stuff up. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their minions came together in a perfect storm which resulted in disaster.