Bush's War Part1 (35 of 71)

Bush's War

Rumsfeld wanted the military to take the rest and get what intelligence they could.
The president has, as you know, now determined that the Geneva Convention does not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Secretary Rumsfeld called the prisoners he held "the worst of the worst." They would no longer be protected by the Geneva Conventions.
They could be subjected to military commissions.
And Rumsfeld would decide where their interrogations would take place.
They would be held far away from the battlefield, on the backwater naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Officially, it was GTM0, "Gitmo" for short.

Guantanamo Bay appeared to be the ideal place.
Cuba had no control over it.
You would not be subject to a local government's interference, nor would you be subject to the federal courts' interference.
On January 11th, 2002, the first planeload was sent to Gitmo.
The prisoners were strapped to the floor of a C-17 for 20 hours.
Shackled and handcuffed, they wore goggles covered with black tape and ear cups.
The military called it "packaging." It'd be a very excruciating situation.
Many of them thought they were going to their deaths before they got here and were very thankful that they were not killed when they got off the airplane.
They were taken from the airport into the heart of the base, to a place called Camp X-Ray.