Former Gitmo guard recalls abuse, climate of fear
Interesting...here is this disgruntled man discussing Gitmo. Scroll down a little in the link for the meat and potatoes.Army Pvt. Brandon Neely was scared when he took Guantanamo's first shackled detainees off a bus. Told to expect vicious terrorists, he grabbed a trembling, elderly detainee and ground his face into the cement - the first of a range of humiliations he says he participated in and witnessed as the prison was opening for business.
Neely has now come forward in this final year of the detention center's existence, saying he wants to publicly air his feelings of guilt and shame about how some soldiers behaved as the military scrambled to handle the first alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members arriving at the isolated U.S. Navy base.
Testimony of Spc. Brandon Neely (By the way this is exactly what I picture usmarine to look like)
Did you get any briefing on who the soon-to-arrive prisoners were?
The only thing I can recall being told about the detainees that would arrive was that they were captured fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. And that they were known terrorists. And that many of them helped in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. We would be coming face-to-face with the worst people the world had to offer. Our mission would be to guard these terrorists so the United States could get more info on attacks and, possibly, stop more terrorist attacks.
As to us, we talked a lot about the detainees before they arrived. About them and what they had probably been involved in. A lot of us, including myself, were pissed off, and many people were out to get revenge for the havoc the United States had been through in recent months by these people.
But, as the months went on, one or two of us would actually question what was going on here, the way the detainees were being treated and if they were actually terrorists or not, but being no-ones, and young, and dumb, we never questioned anything further; just did our time until we went home.
I've always viewed Gitmo as a systematic failure in concept and implementation. To me this is obvious and striking evidence of that. Now, we can hold commissions and inquiries for years (and probably will) regarding where/how the idea of a military prison failed but what do we do moving forward? Where do we house these prisoners while awaiting trial?Just because many of us were guards at Guantanamo does not make us automatically bad people. I know for a fact one or two people, including myself, felt sorry for these people--and very ashamed of what we were taking part in. But what could we say? If we questioned anything or talked out against what we thought was wrong, we would have been ridiculed. And who knows what else we would have had to face. So we kept our mouths shut and went work every day, counting down the days until we could return home to our families and just could forget about this time we spent in Guantanamo.
What realistic steps if any need to be taken to deal with prisoners? If the treatment of prisoners by soldiers is something weighing on the conscious of these people why is that not being addressed?
Last edited by KEN-JENNINGS (2009-02-19 23:19:34)
