US faces construction quandary at ageing Gitmo camp

February 04, 2013 - 4:16:06 am

GUANTANAMO BAY: The US failure to shut down the detention camp at Guantanamo has Captain John Nettleton in a predicament.


“I haven’t gotten any guidance on it whatsoever, so everything I’m doing right now is kind of just speculating on what’s going on,” Nettleton said. “From a resourcing standpoint, it’s kind of frustrating to not know if they’re going to be permanent residents or not.”

The prison camp holds 166 men captured in counterterrorism operations after the September 11, 2001, attacks and costs $114 million a year to operate. It is run by a military joint task force that is considered a tenant on the Navy base, which the United States opened in 1903 as a coaling station.



“We have to build a new galley but are we going to build it as a permanent galley or are we going to replace it with another temporary thing?” said Nettleton, a Navy pilot who has been the base commander since June 2012. He would like to build permanent barracks for the guards, who are strewn in housing all over the base, many in beige metal trailers that look from the outside like self-storage lockers.

“There’s a lot of projects we’d like to do that involve making life better for the soldiers and sailors that are over there,” Nettleton said. But without knowing when the mission will end, “it doesn’t make a lot of sense to ask for permanent buildings if they’re going to be gone.” “When does it quit being a temporary place?” he asked. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

The message from Washington has been mixed. On taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama ordered the detention operation shut down within a year. Many Americans balked because of security concerns and Congress passed laws making it harder to transfer prisoners out, even though about half of them have been cleared for release.

Obama signed a defence budget bill extending those restrictions last month, despite insisting Congress had no authority to exert “unwarranted interference” in decisions traditionally made by military commanders and national security professionals.

Obama said he remained committed to shutting down the detention camp that “weakens our national security by wasting resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and strengthening our enemies.”


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