The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GITMO), located in the Oriente Province in southern Cuba, is the oldest standing U.S. military installation outside of its territory. The 45-square mile area first came under U.S. control in 1898, towards the tail end of the Spanish-American War.
Recognizing the strategic advantage that Guantanamo Bay offers, the United States signed a 99-year lease with the newly independent Cuban government as a condition for the withdrawal of American forces from the mainland. A then princely sum of 2,000 gold coins, equivalent to a little over four thousand dollars today, was the agreed annual rent. Article VI and VII of the agreement, the Platt Amendment, stipulates that,
VI. That the Isle of Pines shall be omitted from the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the title thereto being left to future adjustment by treaty.
VII. That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its defense, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.
In 1934, the Treaty of Relations was signed between the two governments to replace the Platt Amendment. The new treaty saw significantly reduced extra-constitutional American control over the Cuban government, but in return, they were granted the use of Guantanamo Bay for perpetuity.
Excerpts from Article III of the Treaty of Relations
“… So long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station of Guantanamo or the two Governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits, the station shall continue to have the territorial area that it now has, with the limits that it has on the date of the signature of the present Treaty...”
In the aftermath of the Fidel Castro-led Revolution of 1959, the Cuban government attempted to rescind the treaty, but the United States contends that Cuba had no legal basis for such a move. When the two countries formally broke off diplomatic ties on January 4, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower issued the following statement,
“The termination of our diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba has no effect on the status of our Naval Station at Guantanamo. The treaty rights under which we maintain the Naval Station may not be abrogated without the consent of the United States.”
The decision proved to be a correct one at the time, as Guantanamo Bay proved to be an invaluable strategic asset during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In the words of Rear Admiral M.E. Murphy of the U.S. Navy (January 5, 1953),
“Guantanamo Bay affords a valuable operating area for the Construction Battalions of the Atlantic Fleet to a degree rivaled by no other naval installation in the world. Here, except for an occasional hurricane and a short season of rain, ideal weather permits a well-planned operating period - usually about six months in length - virtually uninterrupted.”
The United States continues to make their annual rent payment to Cuba to this day. A popular urban myth tells the story of how Cuban President, Fidel Castro, refuses to cash American rent checks for the last five decades as a matter of principle. In reality, Castro never had the chance to make such a symbolic statement as the United States Treasury has been making the rent payment to an account in the name of the Cuban people, inaccessible to the current Castro administration. The 2001 conversion of the naval base into a detention facility has led Cuba to charge the United States of breaking the terms of their lease. During a United Nations assembly on June 14, 2002, Cuba demanded that the United States return the territory to their control.
The Detention Camp
The 9/11 al-Qaeda organized jetliner attacks on the World Trade Center that claimed almost 3,000 American lives precipitated the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In the subsequent War On Terror, the Bush administration believed that the United States was handicapping itself as terrorist groups do not follow the norms of conventional warfare.
As such, the only way to level the playing field was to play the game on their terms. The immediate incarceration of these terrorists and the intelligence gathered would justify the extreme measures taken. Furthermore, the expected detainees were deemed to be the “the worst of a very bad lot” and considered by some as among the most dangerous terrorists in the world. In the words of General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, these terrorists would “chew through a hydraulics cable to bring a C-17 down” - such were their threat.
The Guantanamo Bay detention facility, located outside of the United States territory, ensures captured terrorists receive neither the legal protection nor take advantage of the time-consuming process of the American criminal-justice system. It also protects members of the American armed forces from charges of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Title 10, U.S. Code Chapter 47). The United States, in addition, did not recognize the captured terrorists as enemy combatants, and in doing so, deny them the rights accorded for prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. The Bush administration claimed that these decisions were made with the safety of American citizens in mind.
The conversion of the GITMO into a detention facility was completed on October 7, 2001, and operational command fell under the Southern Command Joint Task Force Guantanamo. The first batch of detainees, twenty of them, arrived on January 11, 2002. The total number of detainees incarcerated during its decade-long existence remains unclear, but WikiLeaks documents released in 2008 suggest there have been at least 780 prisoners.
Owing to ongoing operations, actual counter terrorism success using intelligence obtained from GITMO prisoners remains a closely held secret. Nevertheless, supporters of GITMO assert that it is a crucial tool in the ongoing War On Terror (or Overseas Contingency Operation). Former Vice President Dick Cheney recently claimed that the death of Osama Bin Laden should be credited to intelligence obtained from Guantanamo.
Some have pointed out the high rate of recidivism among released detainees as another reason for the facility, citing Abdullah Mehsud as a prime example. Mehsud was the purported mastermind of a 2007 bomb blast in Pakistan that took 31 lives - four years after his release from the GITMO facility.
Critics, however, charge that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility has done irreparable harm to America’s international standing and moral authority in the eyes of the world, and in the process, damaged the country’s leadership in human rights causes and heightened anti-American sentiments, especially among Islamic countries.
It began in the wake of the controversial 2004 case of Rasul vs. Bush (542 U.S. 466). The Supreme Court judged in favor of the petitioners, who had alleged that they were bystanders caught in an indiscriminate dragnet by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and were subsequently denied legal counsel, the right to habeas corpus and contact with their family and friends. In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court judgment, there was a marked increase in the contact between inmates and legal counsels, triggering an avalanche of first hand stories about the facility into the ears of a disbelieving American public.
This coincided with the resignation of the former chief prosecutor of Guantánamo’s Military Commission, Colonel Morris Davis, and its lead prosecutor, Lieutenant Darrel Vandeveld, who left their position under duress after being gradually sidelined for refusing to use evidence obtained through ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. It also came in the wake of revelations of CIA- supervised prisoner abuse in the Baghdad Correctional Facility in Abu Ghraib, Iraq.
The enhanced interrogation techniques used in the GITMO camp includes,
Sensory deprivation and overload
Sleep deprivation
Electrocution
Induced hypothermia
Sexual degradation
Indiscriminate beatings
Religious Persecution (Interrogation conducted by a female contractor wearing bra, miniskirt and thongs; threats of smearing prisoners with fake menstrual blood; groping)
The extent of the abuse prevented an open trial for Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi national and al-Qaeda operative who is believed to be the 20th hijacker for 9/11 (he was turned away by immigration officials at the Orlando International Airport five weeks before 9/11). The Convening Authority of the Guantanamo Military Commission, former judge Susan J. Crawford, ordered the charges against al-Qahtani to be dropped in May 2008, fearing the furor it would generate, as well as the inadmissibility of his confession should his torture became public. Al-Qahtani’s torture took place over a period of several months, sometimes stretching to 20 hours a day. It includes forced administration of an enema, leashing, beatings and enforced self-urination; all which eventually landed him in the hospital.
The same WikiLeaks documents revealed that 150 released prisoners were ordinary civilians, with absolutely no ties whatsoever to any terrorist groups. Some of them were captured because they were wearing fake Casio watches, thought to be the watch of choice for al-Qaeda operatives.
A number of the remaining detainees were tribal soldiers, farmers and herdsmen who were sent to U.S. garrisons in return for a $5,000 bounty. A few were handed to Pakistani and Afghani authorities as punishment for personal or tribal disputes, sweetened by the same $5,000 reward.
The GITMO camp detainees also included an 89-year old man suffering from dementia and a 14-year old kidnap victim who was initially detained to provide intelligence on his captors’ modus operandi, only to be imprisoned along with the other prisoners. Also detained was Sami al-Hajj, a reporter with Qatar-based broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, which drew furious reactions of journalists worldwide. All three were eventually released without charges being brought.
These allegations were corroborated in a sworn affidavit filed by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the Chief of Staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of a suit brought by former GITMO camp detainee Adel Hassan Hamad against the U.S. government.
Excerpts from Colonel Wilkerson affidavit:
“The people who ended up in Guantanamo were mostly turned over to the US by Afghan warlords and others who received bounties of up to $5000 per head for each person they turned in. The majority of the 742 detainees had never seen a U.S. soldier in the process of their initial detention.”
“… that the likelihood was high that some of the Guantanamo detainees had been turned in to U.S. forces in order to settle local scores, for tribal reasons, or just as a method of making money...”
“… there was no real method of knowing why the prisoner had been detained in the first place…”
“… there was no meaningful way to determine whether they were terrorists, Taliban, or simply innocent civilians picked up on a very confused battlefield or in the territory of another state such as Pakistan...”
GITMO camp critics contend that the United States should not condone these blatant transgressions that go against everything the country stands for and the government should immediately charge the remaining prisoners for war crimes in an open court of law or return them to their country of origin.
Gingrich strongly opposes any plans to close GITMO.
“… The fact is every member of the American government senior leadership believed in the intelligence they were getting at the time. And the question comes right down to, as Vice President Cheney said this week, what's your highest priority? Is it to defend America and protect American lives, or is it to find some way to defend terrorists and to get terrorists involved in the criminal justice system? I can't imagine -- given the fact, for example, that we just picked up four terrorists in New York who had been converted in prison, I can't imagine -- the director of the FBI has said don't put these terrorists in prisons because there'll be an active threat to convert other people. The fact is these, these terrorists -- we're now down to the worst of the worst. These are the -- the Bush administration released over 500 people. One out of every seven actually went back to war against us and is out actively trying to kill Americans today. So I would be very cautious. I think the president made a very big mistake. It was a campaign promise, it is not a national security plan. I think, frankly, they should keep Guantanamo open. Whatever the, whatever things that are wrong at Guantanamo they would fix by moving them to somewhere else, fix them at Guantanamo.
Question: How long should Gitmo remain open?
Gingrich: Until the war is over.
Question: When is that?
Gingrich: We'll -- when the terrorists disappear.”
May 24, 2009; Gingrich speaking to David Gregory on NBC’s Meet The Press
“I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet with President Jiang in the United States and to take part in a candid and direct dialogue about U.S.-Chinese relations. On every issue of concern to our two nations -- from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to the integration of Hong Kong, the status of Taiwan, and the growing inter- dependence of our two economies -- we spoke forcefully, honestly, and without reserve. Most importantly, Republican leaders made explicitly clear our unwavering commitment to human rights and individual liberty. I believe it was vitally important that we used this opportunity to address the basic lack of freedom -- speech, liberty, assembly, the press -- in China. Had we not done so, we would not only have betrayed our own tradition, we also would have failed to meet our obligations as a friend of China. As I said in China this spring, there is no place for abuse in what must be considered the family of man. There is no place for torture and arbitrary detention. There is no place for forced confessions. There is no place for intolerance of dissent. While we walked through the Rotunda. I explained to President Jiang how the roots of American rule of law go back more than 700 years, to the signing of the Magna Carta. The foundation of American values, therefore, is not a passing priority or a temporary trend. We believe in religious liberty and personal freedom because the people who settled our country left the lands of their birth, accepting great danger and uncertainty, to secure those basic rights. I reminded our Chinese guests that you cannot have economic freedom without political freedom, and you cannot have political freedom without religious freedom. You cannot have a system that is half totalitarian and half free. It will not survive. I -- and the rest of the Republican leadership -- will continue to take whatever action we, can to help move China down the path of freedom, democracy, and liberty. As Americans, as political leaders, as free individuals, it is our obligation to do what we can to extend these basic human rights and religious liberties to the rest of the world.”
October 30, 1997; Gingrich released a statement in his capacity as Speaker of the House after a meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
On The Record
Greta Van Susteren : All right, now, waterboarding -- is that torture?
Gingrich : I think it's something we shouldn't do.
GVS : Should not do.
Gingrich : Should not do. I've been very deeply influenced by John McCain, who was a prisoner, by Chuck Boyd, retired Air Force four-star general, who was a prisoner, and by Jim Jones. And Boyd and Jones and I talked about this at length several years ago. I do think the United States should be very careful about the things we do. I think, frankly, releasing the documents last week was a big mistake. Releasing the pictures is, I think, a dumb mistake. But I want to see the United States run the risk, at times, of not learning certain things in order to establish a standard for civilization.
Now, remember, the people we're talking about are criminals. They're outside the law. They're not wearing a uniform. They're not part of a regular army. They're not engaged in anything that's called the law of warfare. Historically, they have been automatically subject to being shot because if you're not in uniform and you're an enemy combatant, you are deemed automatically to be the equivalent of a spy. The same thing goes with piracy, which is historically outside the law.
But I think as a matter of our own self-respect, we historically have been very careful about this. I'm just finishing a novel that'll come out in October about George Washington crossing the Delaware and winning a huge victory on the day after Christmas in 1776. Washington issued very strict rules, to be charitable towards prisoners, to be careful about treating them humanely, to draw a distinction between the way the Europeans mercenaries dealt with our men and the way Americans deal with other prisoners.
And I think Washington was closer to right. So I'm not going to defend any of these practices, but I do think the way the administration has approached it weakens the United States And I think that they have gratuitously done things that were not needed.
April 24, 2009; Gingrich speaking to Greta Van Susteren, On The Record (Source)
Paul has made it clear on repeated occasions that he is in favor of shutting down GITMO.
“Question: Where do you stand on Guantanamo?
Congressman Ron Paul: Shut it down. The current rationale at Guantanamo is based on the false premise that detainees are not entitled to due process protections. I support court decisions recognizing fundamental human rights, such as habeas corpus. Again, this is an issue that flies in the face of our civic and legal traditions as outlined in the Constitution. As such, I see no purpose for continuing the facility.”
June 28, 2007; Interview with Muckraker Report
“It should be closed because we don't need it. It was unnecessary, the way these prisoners were captured was very questionable. They haven't had really due process. So, the real thugs that need to be tried, they ought to be tried.
They (The Democrats) have deleted the funding mainly because the Republicans have really won the argument… If you don't support the continuation of these military tribunals and you don't support Guantanamo, maybe you support sending these people into your district and they'll be your neighbors… The Democrats were convinced that [the Republicans] won the PR fight, and so therefore, [the Democrats] all became squeamish. And even the president (Obama) backed down. That's why there's no funding for closing Guantanamo, and I guess it will be open for an indefinite future.”
22 May 2009; Paul on The Glenn Beck Show
On Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
Oppose
“Torture is illegal, by our laws and it’s illegal by international laws… Well, waterboarding is torture, and many other (illegible). It’s illegal under international law and under our law. It’s also immoral. It’s also very impractical. There’s no evidence that you really get reliable evidence. Why would you accept the position of torturing a hundred people because you know one person might have information? And that’s what you do when you accept the principle of torture. I think it’s uncivilized, it has no practical advantages and it’s really un-American to accept on principle that we will torture people that we capture.”
Nov 12, 2011; CBS News/National Journal GOP Presidential Debate, Spartanburg, South Carollina
“While Congress is sidetracked by who said what to whom and when, our nation finds itself at a crossroads on the issue of torture. We are at a point where we must decide if torture is something that is now going to be considered justifiable and reasonable under certain circumstances, or is America better than that?
‘Enhanced interrogation’ as some prefer to call it, has been used throughout history, usually by despotic governments, to cruelly punish or to extract politically useful statements from prisoners. Governments that do these things invariably bring shame on themselves.
In addition, information obtained under duress is incredibly unreliable, which is why it is not admissible in a court of law. Legally valid information is freely given by someone of sound mind and body. Someone in excruciating pain, or brought close to death by some horrific procedure is not in any state of mind to give reliable information, and certainly no actions should be taken solely based upon it.
For these reasons, it is illegal in the United States and illegal under Geneva Conventions. Simulated drowning, or water boarding, was not considered an exception to these laws when it was used by the Japanese against US soldiers in World War II. In fact, we hanged Japanese officers for war crimes in 1945 for water boarding. Its status as torture has already been decided by our own courts under this precedent. To look the other way now, when Americans do it, is the very definition of hypocrisy.
…
The government’s own actions and operations in torturing people, and in acting on illegally obtained and unreliable information to kill and capture, are the most radicalizing forces at work today, not any religion, nor the fact that we are rich and free. The fact that our government engages in evil behavior under the auspices of the American people is what poses the greatest threat to the American people, and it must not be allowed to stand.”
May 24, 2009; Texas Straight Talk: Torturing The Rule of Law
Romney is a noted advocate of GITMO and has been on record criticizing former President Bush for contemplating its closure and President Obama for his calls to close it.
“Guantanamo Bay plays an important role in protecting our nation from violent, heinous terrorists…”
June 22, 2007; Speaking to reporters during a campaign stop in Helena, Montana
“ …You said they’re gonna be at Guantanamo? I’m glad they’re at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them at Guantanamo where they don’t get the access to lawyers that they’d get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people say that we should close Guantanamo, my view is we outta double Guantanamo.”
May 15, 2007; FoxNews Republican Presidential Debate, University of South Carolina, Columbia
"Today, the Supreme Court will once again hear arguments on the detention of captured terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay. Some people view Guantanamo as a symbol of American aggression. I view it as a symbol of American resolve.
"Our country is asking young men and women in our military and intelligence services, and their families, to sacrifice beyond all knowing to capture or kill radical Jihadists before they plan and execute another attack on the United States. To win this fight, we must be able to detain and interrogate the terrorists they catch.
"The base at Guantanamo is designed to hold and question enemy combatants who pose a threat to the nation or have intelligence value. Closing and relocating the facility to the heartland of the United States, as some have suggested, would pose an undue risk to innocent Americans and, as today's arguments demonstrate, could have profound legal implications. So long as it remains a vital tool to keep America safe, I will fight to keep Guantanamo Bay open."
December 5, 2007; Press release on Guantanamo Bay
On Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
Supports
“But I do not believe, as a presidential candidate that it’s wise for us to describe precisely what techniques we’ll use in interrogating people. I oppose torture. I would not be in favor of torture in any way, shape or form. As I just said, as a presidential candidate, I don’t think it is wise for us to describe specifically which measures we would and would not use. And that is something I would like to receive the counsel of not only Senator McCain but of a lot of other people. And there are people who for many, many years get the information we need to make sure to protect our country. By the way, I wanna make sure these folks are kept at Guantanamo. I don’t want people who are carrying out attacks in this country are brought into our jail system and be given legal representation in this country. I wanna make sure that what happen to Khalid Sheikh Mohamed happens to other people who are terrorists. He was captured, he was the so-called mastermind of the 9/11 tragedy, and he turn to his captors and he said, “I’ll see you in New York with my lawyers.” I presumed ACLU layers. That’s not what happened. He went to Guantanamo and he met G.I and CIA interrogators and that’s just exactly how it ought to be.”
November 28, 2007; CNN/Youtube Republican Presidential Debate, St. Petersburg, Florida
While Santorum has never made a public pronouncement on Guantanamo per se, he has alluded several times now his support of keeping Guantanamo open. One such occasion was in a commentary he wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer shortly before the inauguration of President Obama while addressing rumors of Senator John McCain being offered a position in the Obama administration.
“Remember, it was this onetime prisoner of war (McCain) who led the charge to open diplomatic relations with Vietnam. If that past is prologue, and McCain's legislative record is any guide, he will not just join with Obama but lead the charge in Congress on global warming, immigration "reform," the closing of Guantanamo, federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, and importation of prescription drugs.
Jan 15, 2009; The Elephant in the Room: McCain may be Obama's secret weapon, by Rick Santorum, The Philadelphia Inquirer
On Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
Supports
Hugh Hewitt: Now did the bin Laden killing cause you to hope that the enhanced interrogation debate returns center stage about whether or not, and when such techniques ought to be used?
Rick Santorum: Well, not only that, but the first thing that should happen, Hugh, was that the President of the United States should have stepped forward and said we are going to stop this, well, potential prosecution of those within the intelligence community who were involved in the enhanced interrogation program. That should have been step one, going to Eric Holder and saying enough is enough, we’re not doing this anymore. We need to give these guys medals, not prosecute them. Number two, he should have stepped forward and said look, I was wrong, the enhanced interrogation program did work, it did produce my greatest foreign policy success. And I’m going to admit when I was wrong, and we’re going to look at how we’re going to redeploy this under obviously different rules and regulations, since of course the Obama administration told the enemy what we were doing in the previous enhanced interrogation programs.
Hewitt: Now your former colleague, John McCain, said look, there’s no record, there’s no evidence here that these methods actually led to the capture or the killing of bin Laden. Do you disagree with that? Or do you think he’s got an argument?
Santorum: I don’t, everything I’ve read shows that we would not have gotten this information as to who this man was if it had not been gotten information from people who were subject to enhanced interrogation. And so this idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, he doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative. And that’s when we got this information. And one thing led to another, and led to another, and that’s how we ended up with bin Laden. That seems to be clear from all the information I read. Maybe McCain has better information than I do, but from what I’ve seen, it seems pretty clear that but for these cooperative witnesses who were cooperative as a result of enhanced interrogations, we would not have gotten bin Laden.
17 May, 2011; Rick Santorum speaking on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show
Snyder’s opines that if a guy like Obama doesn’t close Gitmo, despite campaigning heavily on its closure, then there must be a pretty good reason for keeping it open.
The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GITMO), located in the Oriente Province in southern Cuba, is the oldest standing U.S. military installation outside of its territory. The 45-square mile area first came under U.S. control in 1898, towards the tail end of the Spanish-American War. 
The decision proved to be a correct one at the time, as Guantanamo Bay proved to be an invaluable strategic asset during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In the words of Rear Admiral M.E. Murphy of the U.S. Navy (January 5, 1953), 
As such, the only way to level the playing field was to play the game on their terms. The immediate incarceration of these terrorists and the intelligence gathered would justify the extreme measures taken. Furthermore, the expected detainees were deemed to be the “the worst of a very bad lot” and considered by some as among the most dangerous terrorists in the world. In the words of General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, these terrorists would “chew through a hydraulics cable to bring a C-17 down” - such were their threat.
Some have pointed out the high rate of recidivism among released detainees as another reason for the facility, citing Abdullah Mehsud as a prime example. Mehsud was the purported mastermind of a 2007 bomb blast in Pakistan that took 31 lives - four years after his release from the GITMO facility. 
The same WikiLeaks documents revealed that 150 released prisoners were ordinary civilians, with absolutely no ties whatsoever to any terrorist groups. Some of them were captured because they were wearing fake Casio watches, thought to be the watch of choice for al-Qaeda operatives. 
