excerpt from ARB transcript, 26-27 (FOIA)
Pages of accounts of sexual harassment by women and men wearing Halloween masks (Taub) and/or clad in the garbs of Arabian women. WTF psyops terrorism stuff. Talk or Treat.
The Diary contains some solid and descriptive prose of the doings South of the Border in Code-Red Land:
Excerpt from Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Salahi. p. 49.
Who needs Homeland or Jack Bauer? This is the real deal. The Horse's Mouth.
The proceedings of discovery and the personal attractiveness of Salahi bring about a partial rejuvenation of Hollander's youthful idealism, back when she believed wholeheartedly in humanism, and as the evidence that she has a client who is innocent - woo-hoo! -- the fire, that once oft in her belly bloomed, returns again to champion the way forward. Couch proves convertible. Seemingly fated to seek revenge and lack circumspection, when he sees what the Brass is hiding in boxes by the sea he comes around to the notion that he may just be a Useful Idiot, a kind of Colonel Jessup who's lost his handle, but a halal version. And, of course, 2016 rolls around, and Salahi is set free. You know, they cue the music, your heart soars, tears issue forth under the new light of freedom felt deeply.
There's even a bonus. Taub relates in his New Yorker piece how Steve Wood, midnight guardsman at Echo Special, journeyed beyond his comfort zone after Salahi's release, and flew to Mauritania to visit his "friend." Well, actually, he also relates how Steve may have gone el tropo, converting to Islam, calling Salahi often after the latter's release and return to Mauritania, in a kind of reverse Stockholm syndrome, leaving the Steve's wife unamused, frightened and filing for a separation. Smitten Steve went to see Salahi -- Prisoner 760 -- in the big M. Taub writes:
Near the airport parking lot, Salahi stood in a light-blue boubou, the traditional Mauritanian robe, with a turban to obscure his identity. "Bet you'll think twice next time about saying you know me," he said, laughing. As they walked to the car, Salahi dug into Wood's personal life. "Man, you've had a really tough time of it," he said. "Like, really stressful." They slept under mosquito nets in Salahi's bedroom, and woke up to the sound of a bleating sheep. Salahi noted that "Steve snores like--how do you call it?--a steam train."
You wonder (or I do) how come this didn't end up in the movie?
More recently, Salahi, and a group of other ex-detainees wrote an open letter to Joe Biden, which ran in the New York Review of Books last January. It called on Biden to keep the promise that other presidents had made and failed to deliver on: CLOSE GITMO. They provide an 8-point plan. They remind the reader that Gitmo makes a mockery of US exceptionalism, and, as if to turn the other cheek, tell how they befriended the "enemy":
Despite the abuses, after detention, many of us befriended and welcomed into our homes former US soldiers who guarded us. We've always believed there was another way.
It gives you something to think about, doesn't it?
It remains to be seen if anything lasting has been learned from the Gitmo Project, other than the Department of Navy now knows how to run fast-food franchises; if they really want to show humanity to the remaining detainees, maybe they will consider going fair dinkum halal with their products. Would it kill them to open up a kebab joint?
And will Gitmo become Camp X-Ray again, as detainees are released or transferred? There's some speculation about the future in The Mauritanian, between Hollander and Crouch, when they first meet:
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