by James Glaser
December 15, 2006

I was looking it up, and I found out that we started bringing prisoners to our Marine Base in Cuba on January 11th 2002. If you remember back to that time, those were the flights from Afghanistan where we had the prisoners in straight jackets, hoods over their heads, and had them chained to the floor of a huge C-130.

I don't know about you, but for me, I think a flight like that, probably the first flight most of these people had ever made, must have been a total freak-out. How uncomfortable do you think it was to fly half way around the world in those circumstances, with no bathroom breaks?

It took until January 21, 2004 before we let the Red Cross take a look at what this prisoner of war camp was like. Think back again. We put these people in wire cages eight foot square out in the elements. Wire cages don't keep out the insects, the cold, or the rain.

Next month many of these people will have been in our prison for five years. Still they have no charges against them, they are in a limbo of torture and confinement. They have no rights, no court date, and no hope of ever being set free.

There have been FBI reports about how these prisoners have been chained to the floor for days, where they have had to defecate and urinate on themselves, and how some of them have gone so crazy that they have pulled their own hair out of their heads.

Five years in a hell hole is a long time, sometimes too long. That is why some prisoners have tried to starve themselves to death. To prevent that we strap those prisoners down to a chair, shove a tube up their nose and down to their stomach, and we force feed them through that tube. Some prisoners have killed themselves, and I can't say I blame them.

We have young kids in prison in Guantanamo, and we had men in their 70s. Some we let go, some we have kept. Today there are still hundreds there.

After five years of life in a cage or even a cement cell, with no hope of ever going home, no hope of ever seeing your children or your wife, I would want my captors to kill me.

We have become part of the terror in the War on Terror.

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