Ok. SO my husband is such a fantastic story teller he’s starting to make me self conscious of my blogging abilities. 
I highly encourage you to read HIS blog BEFORE you read this one if you haven’t yet. (it’s right after this one) I second EVERYTHING he said.
The prison tour was by far one of the most memorable parts of this trip and just about any other trip. They had told us early on that we would get to tour the prison, but I had NO IDEA we would actually see the detainee’s walking around. That blew my mind.
The detainees (not prisoners… they have not been tried yet… but their countries want nothing to do with them) have it about as well as they possibly could. For guys that were caught doing unimaginable things… they really have it good. However, they want everyone (including their families and friends at home) to think they are being mistreated. They KNOW the media and others (like ourselves) are taken on tours of the facilities…. and just like a high school gymnasium…. they make posters for us to read in hopes that people will feel sorry for them.
It’s funny. As we were sitting in the briefing room watching slides and listening to the General talk about the abundance of things they make sure the detainees have (movies galore, a 22 channel flat screen tv, a wide variety of meal options, art/language classes, 24/7 medical attention, etc) I was thinking, “Wow. We sure do treat them well.” But it turns out… anything we can do to keep them busy is a good thing. For many of them, their whole objective in life is to make the guards’ lives a living hell. And nothing is above some of these guys. They will take their own feces and urine… rub themselves in it and also use it to throw at the guards. And you know what the guards can do about it? NOTHING. Not even react. Their training teaches them that the less they can react – the more it defeats what these guys are trying to accomplish… which is get a rise out of them.
We spent a lot of time talking to the guards after our shows. And one thing that James and I both noticed was how they didn’t complain about it one bit. Many of them talked about the verbal abuse they had gone through that day. Or the feces and/or urine cocktails that have been made and thrown on them…. but they get cleaned up (many times the uniforms have to be burned… some of the detainees have hepatitis) and return to their jobs as quickly as possible. And they are proud to do so.
This is not to say it isn’t psychologically trying. And some of these men and women have had a really tough time. A female guard even fell in love with one of the detainees a few years back… quite the scandal. But for the most part, these young men and women just take it in stride as part of their duty. They may not have ever envisioned this as part of their service… but it IS part of their service. And they are proud to serve.
And let me tell you. It is inspiring to be around.
They can’t force the detainees to do anything – not even eat. And they use hunger strikes as a way of defiance often. But when they don’t eat, we have to get nutrition into them somehow. So they are given 2 Ensures (through a tube in their nose) 3 times a day. One of the detainees is on such a mission to make life hell for others… he takes his own feces and puts it up his nose. Yes. You read that right. But when he does this, it means the medic putting the tube up his nose and down his throat must clean out the feces first. And the detainee feels this will demean him.
It’s interesting to me that he has such little respect for himself that he will go to such lengths. Isn’t he demeaning himself MORE by being the guy that will put his own feces up his nose to spite someone else? Isn’t HE the one that suffers the most? I guess he overlooks that part.
And the detainees can also offer to be interrogated or “talk” to us. Now… why would they do that? Well… they get a private room with a nice comfy chair… meal of their choice and movie or conversation. (Or maybe it is just a break from the other 8 guys they spend every waking hour with) Many are ego-maniacs and once they get to talking… they may or may not reveal pertinent information. But it’s interesting because if they are on a hunger strike – they may offer to be interrogated, order a large pizza, eat the whole thing and then go back to their “brothers” and brag about how hungry they are, but how they would never eat the meals we provide.
More than one person also mentioned that they will notice cracker crumbs in the beards of the so-called hunger strikers. And apparently there is a universal love for “Shrek” among the detainees. They can’t get enough. And when they heard there was a Christmas special? Forget it! They were chomping at the bit to see it. Yes. The Christmas Special.
They are also given the option to shower daily but most of them wait at least a week or so. The record for one guy was 62 days with no shower. Mmmmm….
That tour opened my eyes to things I had never even thought about or would have ever thought about. And I just can’t believe what some of our servicemen and women go through.
More to come tomorrow.
Peace. Love. Fiddle.
~natalie
hi
Shame on you for that Post about Guantanamo. You never thought that they just showed you what they want and not how it is.
You should not be so naive. But in Fact you are. That Post is enough to see that.
Shame on you. I was a Fan now im just shocked about youre innocent View.
I Hope you get informed and that one day you will see what kind of naive things you wrote.
D:Santiago
(Switzerland)
Status Access Denied,
This comments sections doesn’t revolve around you. If you look above and below your original response, you will see a great many one and two sentence posts that “spew”, from people who clearly, “have no balls”. So don’t assume I was replying directly to you response, one of many. I didn’t say your given name, “Status Access Denied”.
Secondly, I just re-read Natalie’s post, and I found no instance where she defended the detaining of children. I didn’t even see the word, “children”. Don’t assume things, just because she is a musician on a USO tour, and that she also supports the work ethic of troops around the world. She didn’t play at a reception honoring Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to open Guantanemo Bay. She played as part of a USO tour where musicians travel the world playing for their countries’ troops. You should be able to tell from her post that she is not an overtly political soul. Your point is taken, you do not approve of GITMO.
While I dont agree with what happened in Gitmo so MANY MANY years ago, they were just “expressing ones feelings” Feelings brought on after hearing about these men killing, maiming, raping the soldiers brothers and sisters in the detainees own country.
Again, it still was not right, but its said and done. Long time ago. Natalie wasn’t there for that. Natalie did not partake in the activities nor did she encourage them. To voice any disapproval towards her is simply foolish.
Furthermore this is not a politcal blog, military blog or law of war blog. It is a good ole country girl living the dream blog. Sharing her adventures with her fans. If you dont like something she does say “Love you Natalie but not a fan of this adventure, sorry kiddo.” and that be all. Or delete her blog from your favorites. Dont attack her directly or indirectly.
Natalie, keep up the good work. And thanks for what you do. For the troops, for the college kids and for the working class. You keep morale up in a world that constantly brings us down.
David, you are absolutely right that Natalie is not a reporter. Besides, she is entitled to her opinion and expressing it – not by some law in some country, but as a human right. I won’t even argue that.
I was merely trying to express where I think she was wrong or didn’t peek behind the PR-curtain. Especially the point about imagining how desperate a human being – do you allow them this status? – must be to stuff feces up his/her nose. Imagination is what, according to some, sets us apart from the animal kingdom. It also is part of the reason why there are religions, why we bury our dead and why most of us find it natural to act in line with how we want others to act (don’t kill, don’t torture etc). I think it might help everyone here who is so seemingly puzzled by the behavior of the “detainees” to play this through in your mind cinema and reconsider whether everything can be as it seems.
But David, I’m not “spewing” my opinion. I’m expressing it. You may have heard of that, too: “expressing ones opinion”. We all do it at times. Sometimes even interspersed with actual facts to give our opinion weight. I don’t just do it in comments on other blogs (like here), I also blog myself. And indeed I have the balls to stand up to politicians and protest or tell them my opinion. However, I doubt a US-American politician would even listen to me, because I have the wrong citizenship (i.e. non-US). Besides, I’m generally not visiting countries with death penalty and/or treatment of guests such as that at the US border – out of principle, mind you. Naturally my chances to encounter a US politician in real life are rather slim this way. So much for your simplification of “growing a pair balls” and standing up for ones opinion.
Let me share one experience I made about fifteen years ago, where the public image of the situation also differed quite a lot from the reality. I was visiting Israel. This was not long after Rabin got killed. We had the chance to talk with all sides back then and so I learned that Arab does not imply Muslim, for example. Back then I had always held the prejudice they were virtually identical. Due to some lucky circumstances and insistence I was able to visit one of the occupied territories. And so I saw first-hand what otherwise does not find its way into the world press. Poverty, misery, but also some bright things. And I saw humans – on both sides of the fence. Ever since that time I take statements from the press with a spoonful of salt rather than a mere pinch
I imagine Natalie’s visit to Gitmo must have been similar. You get “the tour”, but you’d have to make an effort to look behind the scenes. But I agree that it would probably not even have been allowed to look behind the scenes, given the secretive military context. Can’t blame her for that. And I don’t.
But please, don’t tell me that you condone or Natalie should condone incarcerating children. Have you heard of child soldiers? Look it up. They indeed grow up with all kinds of psychological disorders due to the situations they go through. But do you honestly believe a child – being told what to do, being taught some arbitrary meaning of right and wrong – can be held responsible this way?
And it’s not just the children, though only few people would argue their case. Consider the other “detainees”. What’s their legal status (internationally or domestically from your point of view)? Will they ever have the chance to come free? Will they even get a trial? Will it be a fair trial under the jurisdiction of the country these servicemen so proudly serve or some makeshift-jurisdiction where the sentence “guilty” is implied? Why is it that some of them were not even charged with a crime? What about those that were freed? If they were guilty, why free them?
Does naming them “detainees” make anything any better than saying “prisoners”? Does naming torture “enhanced interrogation techniques” make it any less cruel? Does naming suicide attempts “self-injurious behavior” make the act any less desperate? Do you really think that filling the contents of a toilet into a vase makes it blossom? These are euphemisms. We’ve seen it in the past elsewhere to make it easier for people to talk about cruelties without feeling all too bad about it. We have also seen how the enemy got demonized in order to justify certain actions to the public. However, human rights are not negotiable. Nowhere! You wouldn’t want yours to be negotiated I wouldn’t want mine negotiated. That’s why we call the respective text “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. It’s only fair we consider their human rights not negotiable, too.
John, are you kidding? The term “enemy combatant” as used by the US administrations in the context of Gitmo is not at all in line with the Geneva Conventions. The US is denying these humans the status as PoW and claims extrajudicial incarceration on the basis of them as being “unlawful combatants”. Please get your facts straight. Interestingly the US also denies them a trial under US domestic laws, which would otherwise be the default for civilians engaging in war activities (aka “unlawful combatants”).
Formerly Gitmo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murat_Kurnaz
Not Gitmo, but still: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_El-Masri … if you rape and torture someone, you better have your facts right.
When people circumvent their principles by the use of loopholes in the law, it show how true they are about their principles.
You people all need to get some perspective. This girl is not a journalist. She’s not a reporter, she’s not an op-ed columnist. She’s an independent musician on tour who saw something most people haven’t seen. Before you spew your inner dysfunctions, just consider who wrote the blog, and why you’re so upset about it. I read her blog, and I couldn’t find an instance where she claimed to have a strongly overt opinion of GITMO, its detainees, their international status, and whether they were being held rightly or wrongly. A lot of people think prisoners are being illegitimately detained. A lot of people don’t. Leaning one way or the other doesn’t make you the devil, particularly when so much of the information comes from cable TV political talking heads. You’re trying to project something on her that is not there. She gave a surface account of what it was like witnessing young soldiers doing their duty. She gave a surface account of some of these prisoners’ conditions. If you want to spew opinions of why you think the situation is right or wrong, grow a pair of balls and try to take it up directly with a politician or two.
From lala to STATUS…you are all full of shit. You are thew ones who need to open your eyes and brain(if you have one)
For everyone who cries foul over international law and violation of human rights at Guantanamo, let me say first: there is no such thing as international law. There may be certain treaties or agreements to which nation states are signatory, but it is up to those signatories to enforce or abide with them themselves. With that said, one of the most wide spread international policies came from the Geneva Conventions and determined the Laws of Armed Conflict.
According to the LOAC (to which the US is the primary signatory and upholder), these are not innocent people detained illegally. They were not everyday people snatched from their daily routines, as some critics would have us believe. These people were all illegal combatants captured on a legal battlefield. They failed to follow the LOAC and essentially forfeited most of their rights when they engaged in illegal warfare. Despite this forfeiture, the US has housed and fed them and provided medical care and comfort items beyond what most US citizens in American prisons enjoy.
Are they frustrated? Sure. Do they act up out of desperation and boredom? Absolutely. Are some still overt in their hostility and intent to harm America and her citizens? Without a doubt. The international community and leftist lawyers in the US have slowed down the legal process in trying to get these people out of here. Indefinite detention was never the intent of Guantanamo Bay. Yet whenever the military who legally captured these illegal combatants tries to press forward with official military courts martial, these lawyers and bleeding hearts around the world say it’s not fair.
I have two words for these people: spare me. These detainees have already received and continue to receive far better treatment at an exorbitant expense than any American prisoner of war has ever received in any conflict. Once everyone gets out of the way and lets the process take its course, they can be tried and either convicted or released.
If they are released, though…Natalie is right – their original countries don’t want these trouble makers back. Let the lawyers house them in their condos in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Paris and see how long that lasts.
Natalie, enjoy that ice cream and keep on fiddlin’.
Thank you for sharing this. You know what you saw and what you experienced. No one can take that away from you. They weren’t there…you were.
People get so caught up in what they think is right. In the end, we have no clue what is actually going because we don’t see it first hand. The public must rely upon the media, which in most cases is severely skewed to on political side or the other.
Keep your head up. Keep playing because your amazing. Keep blogging. And be proud to be an American who has the right to speak freely and voice your opinion. And when you get nasty hate mail, try to take some solace in fact that others have the same right, even if they might be abusing it.