Written by Montgomery Granger @mjgranger1
The 18th annual Marbella International Film Festival in Spain crowned this year’s Best Actor, a black Egyptian-born man named Sammy Sheik, for his performance as Gamel Sadek in the feature film “I Am Gitmo.”
No matter that no one has ever heard of the festival or probably the actor, the revelation is that Gitmo – or the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – remains, even in the face of horrendous Islamic terror recently perpetrated against innocent men, women, and children—even infants—in Israel, a bludgeoning club against perceived anti-Muslim sentiments.
Gitmo is, in fact, the finest military detention facility on earth. In 2002, I worked with physicians from the International Committee of the Red Cross who told me, “No one does [detention operations] better than the US.”
I served at Gitmo from February to June of that year as the ranking US Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, Joint Task Force 160. I helped write detention medical SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) as the liaison between the command element and the detention hospital, which was busy treating war wounds in those early days. The mission and relationships were intense. I chronicle these earliest days at Gitmo in my memoir, “Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay.”
According to the press release announcing Mr. Sheik’s award, “I Am Gitmo” claims to chronicle the experience of a former Gitmo detainee who was “sold” to the Americans for a bounty, taken to Bagram Airbase, abused and tortured there, and then rendered to Gitmo, where he was again tortured and abused.
The release claims the story was “Inspired by the declassified legal hearings of earlier detainees.” It continues, “the story takes place in 2002 and revolves around Gamel Sadek, an Egyptian man living in Afghanistan with his family who is sold for a bounty, taken from his home, and delivered to the CIA under suspicion of terrorism.”
The film is set to be released in January 2024, so I haven’t seen it, but I can say that there are three sides to every story of torture at Gitmo: yours, mine, and the truth.
Al Qaeda and other terrorists are trained to lie about their treatment in captivity and to “lawyer up” as soon as possible after capture. That said, I have absolutely no personal experience regarding the behavior or activities of corrupt Alphabet Soup Secret Squirrel Shadow Warrior Spooks. My only experience with them was when SPEC OPS guys brought us insurgents at Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq (after the scandal there) when I served there on a deployment in 2004-2005. None of these insurgents ever had anything but battle wounds and never claimed abuse or torture on intake, orientation, or in-processing.
Likewise, at Gitmo, as I witnessed and observed every new arrival at Camp X-Ray for six months, no detainee ever claimed abuse on intake. Nor did I witness any detainee being brought back from interrogation in anything but pristine condition.
Does that mean there was never abuse at Gitmo? No, there was abuse. But it was minor and dealt with swiftly and decisively. Detention operations isn’t for everyone, and we struggled at times with our own identities in the international spotlight on treatment of some of the worst terrorists on earth. I called it an emotional train wreck.
We were duty bound to care for them as if they were US military, even though, as unlawful combatants, they were not entitled to the rights and privileges of lawful combatant POWs. They did not meet the criteria for protected status due to their lack of military structure, behavior, and non-state operations.
That said, 740+ of nearly 800 detainees have been released from Gitmo, and none have been beheaded, executed, blown up, hacked to death, dragged naked and lifeless through the streets, drowned, or burned alive. But these are all things our enemies have done to us and/or our allies.
There is no moral comparison between how prisoners are treated at Gitmo and how our enemies treat their captives. The recent murders and kidnappings by Hamas in Israel illustrate this plainly.
That said, “A handful of detainees [at Gitmo] were waterboarded in order to obtain valuable information that saved many lives,” according to former President George W. Bush in his autobiography, “Decision Points.”
Waterboarding and other Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, or EIT, performed at Gitmo on this “handful of detainees,” were legal and approved at the time and did not rise to the level of the internationally accepted definition of torture.
President Barack Hussein Obama unilaterally added waterboarding to a list of banned “torture” techniques without resolving the discrepancy in the internationally accepted definition. He also signed the 2009 Military Commissions Act, giving detainees accused of war crimes at Gitmo virtually the same rights you or I would enjoy in a US court of law. This was not only unprecedented at the time but totally unheard of.
Contrast this with the 1942 capture during World War II of six German saboteurs, caught dry-foot on US soil, who were denied habeas corpus (due process), tried by military commission (tribunal), and then executed by electric chair, all within eight weeks’ time. They hadn’t hurt a fly nor damaged or destroyed any property, but they had the means and intent to do so, were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and Law of War, convicted as spies, and then executed. What’s different now?
What’s different now is a pervasive attitude toward the poor Muslim (Islamist) caught with his hand in the terrorism cookie jar. It’s not really his fault, you see, because . . . Israel and Jews exist, along with their allies, the “kafir,” or “non-believers,” or “infidels,” or “deceivers,” in other words, the rest of us.
Tens of thousands of unlawful combatants have been captured in the Global War on Terror, but only just under 800 ever made it to Gitmo. Of the 740+ who have been released, over 30 percent, at least, have returned to the fight as foot soldiers or leaders in their terror war on civilization.
Why do we continue to release known or suspected terrorists? Why is it taking over 20 years to prosecute leaders and perpetrators of the attacks of 9/11/2001? Why are there calls for “cease fire” and “proportionate” response in the brand-new Israeli-Hamas War?
Things were so much clearer in World War II.
I will watch the new movie, “I Am Gitmo,” if it ever comes my way, just like I watched “The Mauritanian,” another anti-Christian, anti-US military movie taken from a supposed “real story” of detention abuse and torture at the hands of the immoral Americans.
The bottom line, according to former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, in his autobiography, “Known and Uknown,” is “No DoD employees, uniformed or civilian, were ever trained in waterboarding or EIT.” This leads me to why I’m writing this article: innocent, hardworking, moral, ethical, and honorable US military personnel who have captured, protected, and cared for some of the “worst of the worst,” do not abuse or torture them. We treat them with dignity and respect, as evidenced by their continued existence now and in mostly good health.
Don’t take my word for it. Seek out as much as you can from those who have had interactions with Islamist terrorists. Many will tell you what I am telling you. Some will have a different story. Together, make up your own mind about the truth, but keep an open mind about what exactly is torture and who perpetrated it, when, why, how, and with what consequence. The word “torture” shouldn’t stop thought; it should prompt questions, many of them.
Gitmo is a small piece to the big puzzle of how we eventually win the Global War on Terror. It is an enigma to most, but to some of us who served there, it will always be misunderstood and maligned. 99.9 percent of all who have served there have done so honorably, with personal courage and integrity.
As for torture, ask the corrupt Alphabet Soup Secret Squirrel Shadow Warrior Spooks – the same folks who claim “COVID,” “Russia, Russia, Russia,” “Guilty until proven innocent,” “Insurrection,” and who call those of us who question them “truthers,” as if telling the truth were a crime.