The plush comfy couch:

From an amazing Weekly Standard essay: (excerpts, emp add)

Club Gitmo
What it's really like behind the wire.
by Jacob Laksin

• Of the camps currently in use, none come close to justifying the concerns of the Gitmo's critics ...     Visiting Camp 4, Gitmo's medium-security compound, one can see detainees walking about freely.
  
  Detainees can ... check out DVDs--nature documentaries and international soccer matches ...
  
  A kit of provisions issued to Camp 4 inmates includes not only bare necessities like a toothbrush and a uniform, as well as luxuries like prescription glasses and electric razors on selected days ...
  
  
• Less hospitable conditions might be expected in camps 5 and 6, Gitmo's maximum-security complexes. To some extent, that is the case. With a narrow bed, a metal sink, and a small slit for a window, the cells in Camp 5 are no one's idea of paradise. Within those confines, however, the detainees are granted substantial privileges. Climate controlled, the cells come equipped with a communications system that allows detainees to talk to the guards. Beneath the beds, one finds stenciled arrows pointing to Mecca ...
  
  Perhaps the most curious room at Camp 5 is furnished with a plush blue couch for the detainees. Were it not for the leg restraints at its foot, one might never guess that this is where interrogations take place. Of the steel-floored cells where detainees are alleged to be beaten for information there is not a trace of violence.
  
  
• Out of consideration for the detainees' religious practices, interrogations cease and Gitmo's guards honor a silence throughout the camps during prayer times.
  
  
• This is not to deny that abuse is a problem Gitmo. It's just that most of it is done by the detainees.     ... many of the detainees have been here for five to six years, more than enough time to discover the best way to harass their captors, many of the guards are just weeks or months into their post. "For a while there, it's an unfair match" ...

Those who know their history are familiar with other glowing reports about how nice it was for camp inmates.


posted by Quiddity at 3/20/2008 08:39:00 PM