Guantanamo Bay Naval Base Guillory. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (), officially known as Naval Station Guantanamo Bay or NSGB (also called GTMO because of the abbreviation of "Guantanamo" or Gitmo because of the common pronunciation of this word by the U.S. military), is a United States military base and detention camp located on 120 square kilometers (45 sq mi) of land and water at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which the U.S. leased for use as a coaling station and naval base in 1903. The lease was $2,000 in gold per year until 1934, when the payment was set to match the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp Mail privileges of Guantanamo Bay detainees). "The New York Times" and other newspapers are critical of the camp; columnist Thomas Friedman urged George W. Bush to "just shut it down", calling Camp Delta "... worse than an embarrassment." Another "New York Times" editorial supported Friedman's proposal, arguing that Guantánamo is part of "... a chain of shadowy detention camps that includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other secret locations run by the intelligence agencies" that are "part of a tightly linked global detention system with no accountability in law." In November