A Guardsman's view of Guantanamo

Star Tribune reported In all the din, one vital voice has been missing -- that of ordinary soldiers who have served at Guantanamo. Most of these first-hand observers have had no way to add their eyewitness accounts to the debate. Second Lt. Peter Hegseth, who grew up in Forest Lake and graduated from high school there, is one such frustrated soldier. Last week, he came to public attention via Power Line, the Minnesota-based blog named "Blog of the Year" in 2004 by Time magazine. Hegseth attended Princeton University on an ROTC scholarship and graduated in 2003. Shortly thereafter, he began a tour of duty at Guantanamo with a New Jersey Army National Guard unit responsible for area security and detainee movements. Hegseth is baffled by the portrayal of Guantanamo in much of the media. He can't understand the eager focus on the base when American soldiers and innocent civilians are being blown to bits or beheaded in Iraq.

The Dumbocrats only know one thing: how to scream, and they are willing to do anything, including endangering America, if they think they can hurt the Bush administration.

Who are the detainees at Guantanamo? According to Defense Department documents, many are members of Al-Qaida or the Taliban regime who were either planning terrorist attacks at the time of their detention or had already perpetrated them. Some are specialists in "improvised explosive devices" or poisons. Others are terrorist recruiters or experts in funding terrorist activities. The Guantanamo detainees are clearly a dangerous and fanatical bunch. Yet during his year at the base, Hegseth never saw one treated with violence or disrespect. Quite the contrary. "We bend over backwards to conform ourselves to the detainees' way of life," he says, "especially when it comes to religion." Some media critics suggest that life at Guantanamo is a nightmare. In fact, says Hegseth, the day starts with a Muslim prayer call, which echoes across the base five times a day. Detainees' rooms have prayer rugs, as well as arrows pointing toward Mecca to indicate the direction for prayer. Detainees also have their own Qur'ans.

I wish Christians in the USA had their faith respected like we respect the Muslim faith at Gitmo.

According to Hegseth, specially designated staff members deliver them, wearing rubber gloves to ensure proper respect. "No other soldier can even touch them," he says. "Photographers sometimes take pictures that make it look like American soldiers are putting the detainees in dog cages," says Hegseth. "That's very misleading." In fact, he notes, in certain respects, life at Guantanamo is more comfortable for some detainees than life in their home countries.

I would be willing to bet it is more comfortable for almost ALL of the detainees.

For starters, the food is good. ("To be honest with you," says Hegseth, "I think their food is better than what my guys got.") Detainees get top-notch medical care, along with dental care -- which some have never had before. Many detainees correspond with family members, and have access to soccer fields and other recreational facilities. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that some detainees don't want to leave the base. But Hegseth says that this is the case. "My men and I once spent nine hours on a runway trying to get a detainee on a plane to take him home. He refused to get out of the van. He was being well-treated, and he knew what torture and maltreatment were like back home."

Does anyone wonder if any of people in the Nazi death camps, the Sovied Gulags, or he killing fields of Cambodia would have been reluctant to leave.

Guantanamo is an intelligence-gathering facility. Interrogators there seek to preempt future terrorist attacks by determining how groups like Al-Qaida organize, finance their operations and communicate among themselves. Hegseth himself did not participate in interrogations and has no personal knowledge of what the base was like before his arrival. However, during his tenure, he saw detainees on a daily basis and never witnessed any evidence that interrogations are inhumane or violent. Hegseth is full of praise for the soldiers he knows at Guantanamo. "I think all Americans would be proud of these guys," he says.

I certainly am proud of them, and I thank them for their service.

Many of the New Jersey soldiers he served with lost family members or friends on Sept. 11. At Guantanamo, they come face to face with detainees who supported Al-Qaida's attack, including some who may have played a role in it. According to Hegseth, guards sometimes encounter detainees who spit at them, or throw urine or feces at them. "But if a soldier ever appears to be having a problem with this kind of conduct," Hegseth notes, "he's immediately removed from the block."

I did not personally know anyone that died on 9/11, but I guarantee you that if I was a soldier at Gitmo, and the detaineed did that to me, I would have to be removed from the block.

Hegseth is concerned that Guantanamo's most vociferous critics don't see that their words bolster radical Islamists who want to convince the world that America is the Great Satan. "Al Jazeera has already broadcast Durbin's statement -- comparing us to Hitler and Pol Pot in the U.S. Senate -- to the Arab world," he points out. "A short Newsweek story about a Qur'an can lead to the deaths of 15 people. Don't they understand that words like Durbin's hand our enemies a propaganda victory?" In the end, some of the shrillest critics of American defense policy are probably not especially interested in Guantanamo as such, but see it as a convenient opportunity to criticize an institution of which they are deeply suspicious -- the American military -- and to cast doubt on the morality of America's war on terror. If things are this bad at Gitmo, the reasoning goes, the whole war must be wrong. Hegseth puts it like this: "Critics ask, 'How are we to win if we are conducting ourselves this way?' I think the opposite: If we're conducting ourselves this way, it's evidence that our cause is just."

John @PowerLine blogged The Democrats' attack on the military through the proxy of Guantanamo Bay has been a fiasco for them, domestically, at least--abroad, it has contributed to anti-Americanism and made the administration's task more difficult. Here at home, the Democrats are now, to employ their mantra, moving on.

K. J. Lopez blogged I think all Americans would be proud of these guys.