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Guantanamo's First 100 Days
Oxford University Press
March 2009
On Sale: March 13, 2009
288 pages
ISBN: 0195371887
EAN: 9780195371888
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In January 2002, the first flight of detainees captured in
the "Global War on Terror" disembarked in Guantanamo Bay,
dazed, bewildered, and--more often than not--alarmingly
thin. Given very little advance notice, the military's
preparations for this group of predominantly unimportant
ne'er-do-wells were hastily thrown together, but as Karen
Greenberg shows, a number of capable and honorable Marine
officers tried to create a humane and just detention
center--only to be thwarted by the Bush Administration. The Least Worst Place is a gripping narrative account
of the first one hundred days of Guantanamo. Greenberg, one
of America's leading experts on the Bush Administration's
policies on terrorism, tells the story through a group of
career officers who tried--and ultimately failed--to stymie
the Pentagon's desire to implement harsh new policies in
Guantanamo and bypass the Geneva Conventions. She sets her
story in Camp X-Ray, which underwent a remarkably quick
transformation from a sleepy naval outpost in the tropics
into a globally infamous holding pen. Peopled with genuine heroes and villains, this narrative of
the earliest days of the post-9/11 era centers on the
conflicts between Gitmo-based Marine officers intent on
upholding the Geneva Accords and an intelligence unit set up
under the Pentagon's aegis. The latter ultimately won out,
replacing transparency with secrecy, military protocol with
violations of basic operation procedures, and humane and
legal detainee treatment with harsh interrogation methods
and torture. Guantanamo's first 100 days set up patterns of power that
would come to dominate the Bush administration's overall
strategy in the war on terror. Karen Greenberg's riveting
account puts a human face on this little-known story,
revealing how America first lost its moral bearings in the
wake of 9/11.
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