thedrifter
05-17-09, 07:50 AM
baltimoresun.com
Some suggestions for Guantanamo's future
McClatchy-Tribune
May 17, 2009
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba —
This base has a big, deep natural channel that you don't have to dredge, piers and hurricane protection that makes it an ideal refueling port and logistics base for U.S. naval ships working in the Caribbean.
It serves as the finishing school for the Marines' anti-terror training, conducted before their first assignment overseas.
It has housed Haitian rafters and suspected terrorists, hunkered down for the Cuban Missile Crisis and is now the site of a monthly meeting between a U.S. Navy captain and a Cuban counterpart, designed to avoid tensions on both sides of the minefield that marks the boundary between the base and Cuban territory.
No one is saying what the U.S. government will do next with its strategic base along the Windward Passage.
But here are some suggestions that have surfaced in the past year.
•Hold U.S-Cuban negotiations there. Cuba leader Raul Castro called it "neutral ground" in an interview in November with actor Sean Penn. Castro clearly had in mind direct talks with President Barack Obama that would end in a U.S. withdrawal from the base that controls access to the Guantanamo River.
•Base the Navy's 4th Fleet there. The prison camps now operate out of the Intelligence Operations Facility, or IOF. The state-of-the-art building known as the Red Roof Inn was built in 2004 for $13.5 million but is too far from the heart of Guantanamo to be useful as the Navy base headquarters. The Pentagon established the command and control staff of a so-called 4th Fleet in Jacksonville in April 2008, but assigned it no full-time warships.
•Use it as a scientific outpost. Bowdoin College biology professor Nathaniel Wheelwright suggests that the U.S. set up an international research center that lets U.S. and Cuban scientists working side-by-side "to tackle critical environmental issues." Wheelwright, who taught field biology in Cuba last summer, says scientists there are intellectually isolated.
•Establish a biomedical research institute. It would be dedicated to combating tropical diseases of the Western Hemisphere. This is a proposal of Peter J. Hotez, from the Department of Microbiology at George Washington University Medical Center and the Sabine Vaccine Institute in Washington, D.C.
•Set up a training base. Ideas range from setting up a U.S. Marines rapid reaction team there to train for amphibious landings or making it a joint training site between the Marines and U.S. allies in Latin America.
•Install an exhibition in the cellblocks. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently asked the Obama administration to install an animal rights exhibit inside an abandoned cellblock. The walk-through exhibition called the Animal Liberation Project includes photos and films that link human and animal rights abuses through history.
•Give it back. Julia E. Sweig, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, proposed withdrawal in a guest commentary in The Washington Post this month that noted the U.S. Navy has withdrawn from Subic Bay in the Philippines and Vieques in Puerto Rico.
Ellie
Some suggestions for Guantanamo's future
McClatchy-Tribune
May 17, 2009
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba —
This base has a big, deep natural channel that you don't have to dredge, piers and hurricane protection that makes it an ideal refueling port and logistics base for U.S. naval ships working in the Caribbean.
It serves as the finishing school for the Marines' anti-terror training, conducted before their first assignment overseas.
It has housed Haitian rafters and suspected terrorists, hunkered down for the Cuban Missile Crisis and is now the site of a monthly meeting between a U.S. Navy captain and a Cuban counterpart, designed to avoid tensions on both sides of the minefield that marks the boundary between the base and Cuban territory.
No one is saying what the U.S. government will do next with its strategic base along the Windward Passage.
But here are some suggestions that have surfaced in the past year.
•Hold U.S-Cuban negotiations there. Cuba leader Raul Castro called it "neutral ground" in an interview in November with actor Sean Penn. Castro clearly had in mind direct talks with President Barack Obama that would end in a U.S. withdrawal from the base that controls access to the Guantanamo River.
•Base the Navy's 4th Fleet there. The prison camps now operate out of the Intelligence Operations Facility, or IOF. The state-of-the-art building known as the Red Roof Inn was built in 2004 for $13.5 million but is too far from the heart of Guantanamo to be useful as the Navy base headquarters. The Pentagon established the command and control staff of a so-called 4th Fleet in Jacksonville in April 2008, but assigned it no full-time warships.
•Use it as a scientific outpost. Bowdoin College biology professor Nathaniel Wheelwright suggests that the U.S. set up an international research center that lets U.S. and Cuban scientists working side-by-side "to tackle critical environmental issues." Wheelwright, who taught field biology in Cuba last summer, says scientists there are intellectually isolated.
•Establish a biomedical research institute. It would be dedicated to combating tropical diseases of the Western Hemisphere. This is a proposal of Peter J. Hotez, from the Department of Microbiology at George Washington University Medical Center and the Sabine Vaccine Institute in Washington, D.C.
•Set up a training base. Ideas range from setting up a U.S. Marines rapid reaction team there to train for amphibious landings or making it a joint training site between the Marines and U.S. allies in Latin America.
•Install an exhibition in the cellblocks. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently asked the Obama administration to install an animal rights exhibit inside an abandoned cellblock. The walk-through exhibition called the Animal Liberation Project includes photos and films that link human and animal rights abuses through history.
•Give it back. Julia E. Sweig, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, proposed withdrawal in a guest commentary in The Washington Post this month that noted the U.S. Navy has withdrawn from Subic Bay in the Philippines and Vieques in Puerto Rico.
Ellie