TODDZILLA ASKS: “Where is everybody going to Spring Break? Daytona? Guantanamo Bay?”
Well, there are some similarities, according to this article in, of all places, The Guardian:
Cuba? It was great, say boys freed from US prison camp
James Astill meets teenagers released from Guantanamo Bay who recall the place fondly
Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. “I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great,” said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood.
Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island. During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times – a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah’s answer was always the same – “I don’t know anything about these people” – these sessions were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay. . . .
Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah’s. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family’s mud-fortress home.
The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. “Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don’t have anything against them,” he said. “If my father didn’t need me, I would want to live in America.”
No doubt an apology will be forthcoming, from those who analogized Guantanamo to Buchenwald.
UPDATE: Roger Simon notes that some people are worried about “another Guantanamo” in Iraq.