Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)
May 14, 2008
Pg. L3
Its deputy commander tries to set the record straight at Mayport.
By Drew Dixon
With trials coming up for inmates who said they were tortured at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the facility's deputy commander said during a visit to Mayport Naval Station last week that he's trying to resurrect the prison's reputation.
And he knows that public relations effort will be difficult in the face of testimony at the trials.
"The next chapter is opening on Guantanamo Bay. ... It's the Nuremburg trials of our day," said Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti.
"If you're going to hold them, then you have to charge them and try them," he said. "That process is coming at us like a freight train."
Zanetti spoke to about 50 people Thursday night at the Mayport Naval Station chapter of the Military Officers Association of America.
Being a Guantanamo prison commander is "an assignment that's misunderstood by most people. It's reviled by many people and certainly unique to all other missions in the U.S. military right now," said Zanetti, 50. "The disconnect between what people believe occurs at Guantanamo and what actually occurs at Guantanamo Bay is very surprising to me."
Zanetti said there is a perception that Guantanamo Bay has become a notorious holding facility for enemies of the United States. Since the U.S. began battling Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003, charges of torture and illegal detention of detainees have dogged the facility.
But he said that since he took over as deputy commander in January, he's seen no evidence of that.
"The fact of the matter is, it's a very well run facility that emphasizes the safe and humane care and custody of dangerous men," Zanetti said.
"If I were asked to abuse, mistreat or torture another human being, I would hang up my uniform and resign," he said.
Zanetti acknowledged the 2004 public disclosure of U.S. military personnel torturing Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison facility outside of Baghdad continues to weigh heavily on the military and he said that international embarrassment serves as a reminder of what not to do.
"We all took the lessons of Abu Ghraib personally and we will not allow it on our watch," he said.
Zanetti spoke at Mayport to tell the military officers organization directly what's going on at Guantanamo, said Ed Froehlich, the organization's program chairman and a retired Navy captain who was commanding officer at Mayport.
"This is getting a primary source on what has been a very controversial issue," Froehlich said. "All the time, we're individually or as a group or over the Internet discussing these issues. We maintain a silent profile but the debate is extremely intense."
Zanetti said he speaks to the public and the military about Guantanamo Bay.
"It's as if someone came along and wrote on the blackboard and wrote a story and it's a story that's imbedded in many people's mind as true," Zanetti said. "We have to come along and erase the blackboard and write the story of 2007-08, and that's a difficult thing to do."
Meanwhile, the prisoner population is decreasing at Guantanamo, Zanetti said.
"We have taken steps toward closing Guantanamo Bay," he said. The lockup had 780 detainees at its peak in 2003, compared to the current 260.
But the history of Guantanamo Bay is not finished, Zanetti said. To comply with the U.S. Military Commissions Act of 2006, the prisoners will be tried in court.
Military personnel who served at Guantanamo Bay prior to Zanetti's arrival will have to answer to charges of waterboarding and other torture as the prisoners go on trial. Zanetti said the past has not been left behind yet.
May 14, 2008
Pg. L3
Its deputy commander tries to set the record straight at Mayport.
By Drew Dixon
With trials coming up for inmates who said they were tortured at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the facility's deputy commander said during a visit to Mayport Naval Station last week that he's trying to resurrect the prison's reputation.
And he knows that public relations effort will be difficult in the face of testimony at the trials.
"The next chapter is opening on Guantanamo Bay. ... It's the Nuremburg trials of our day," said Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti.
"If you're going to hold them, then you have to charge them and try them," he said. "That process is coming at us like a freight train."
Zanetti spoke to about 50 people Thursday night at the Mayport Naval Station chapter of the Military Officers Association of America.
Being a Guantanamo prison commander is "an assignment that's misunderstood by most people. It's reviled by many people and certainly unique to all other missions in the U.S. military right now," said Zanetti, 50. "The disconnect between what people believe occurs at Guantanamo and what actually occurs at Guantanamo Bay is very surprising to me."
Zanetti said there is a perception that Guantanamo Bay has become a notorious holding facility for enemies of the United States. Since the U.S. began battling Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003, charges of torture and illegal detention of detainees have dogged the facility.
But he said that since he took over as deputy commander in January, he's seen no evidence of that.
"The fact of the matter is, it's a very well run facility that emphasizes the safe and humane care and custody of dangerous men," Zanetti said.
"If I were asked to abuse, mistreat or torture another human being, I would hang up my uniform and resign," he said.
Zanetti acknowledged the 2004 public disclosure of U.S. military personnel torturing Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison facility outside of Baghdad continues to weigh heavily on the military and he said that international embarrassment serves as a reminder of what not to do.
"We all took the lessons of Abu Ghraib personally and we will not allow it on our watch," he said.
Zanetti spoke at Mayport to tell the military officers organization directly what's going on at Guantanamo, said Ed Froehlich, the organization's program chairman and a retired Navy captain who was commanding officer at Mayport.
"This is getting a primary source on what has been a very controversial issue," Froehlich said. "All the time, we're individually or as a group or over the Internet discussing these issues. We maintain a silent profile but the debate is extremely intense."
Zanetti said he speaks to the public and the military about Guantanamo Bay.
"It's as if someone came along and wrote on the blackboard and wrote a story and it's a story that's imbedded in many people's mind as true," Zanetti said. "We have to come along and erase the blackboard and write the story of 2007-08, and that's a difficult thing to do."
Meanwhile, the prisoner population is decreasing at Guantanamo, Zanetti said.
"We have taken steps toward closing Guantanamo Bay," he said. The lockup had 780 detainees at its peak in 2003, compared to the current 260.
But the history of Guantanamo Bay is not finished, Zanetti said. To comply with the U.S. Military Commissions Act of 2006, the prisoners will be tried in court.
Military personnel who served at Guantanamo Bay prior to Zanetti's arrival will have to answer to charges of waterboarding and other torture as the prisoners go on trial. Zanetti said the past has not been left behind yet.