We substituted good grammar for intellect

The flight was in an 8-seat Air Sunshine plane, equipped with none of the usual buffers that serve to suspend the sensation of hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour. Sitting in the front seat, I was practically flying the plane, or at least close enough to see that the sun-cracked dashboard with its analogue buttons looked very, very old -- except for the pilot's small prayer plaque, which was in Arabic. He had nicely covered his seat in a large swath of gray fake fur. It went well with the overall ambience of protruding foam, cracked pleather, toxic fumes and deafening machinery. There was an Igloo mini-cooler with drinks on the floor. Due to the demands of bathroom scheduling, these were left untouched. When we landed they told us to look out for the propellers on the way down the ladder.

Then Gitmo: cacti, woodpeckers, and iguanas lounging in the shade. Much prettier than I thought it would be -- everything brown and pink and light blue.

Lots of new vocabulary words to learn and cages to visit. In one large cage: "The detainess co-recreate two at a time." Or in an old Camp X-Ray interrogation shack: "They are not interrogated Pavlovianly."

We look at lots of sample cells with little piles arranged on the beds. "Non-compliant detainee" pile includes orange jumpsuit and flip flops. "Very compliant detainee" gets prayer oils and backgammon. I have lots of pictures of small cots with boxes of soap, checkers, chess, and backgammon neatly laid out. These are called "comfort items." In some places, the detainees themselves sat in the shade, looking fairly bored, in spite of the basketball hoops and elliptical machines where they can co-recreate.

We are treated like babies: well-hydrated, air conditioned, transported, housed in little suites stocked with comfort items. The tour ends Thursday, when I am exiled Leeward. There are very few comfort items Leeward. Breeze, dust, cacti and sea. But there's a bar, it's quiet, I will be unescorted. And the NGOs arrive Monday for the commissions. But I keep hearing Demi Moore's voice in A Few Good Men. "Are you going to investigate at all?" she asks Tom on his visit to GTMO, "Or are you just here for the tour?"

I take it back though. Because it's different than that. We know that they messed up. They know that they messed up. But we pretend we're confident journalists, and they pretend they're proud soldiers. Not one person here has been here longer than eight months anyway, that we've met. The relationship of the journalists to the soldiers, and the soldiers to the detainees, is a lot like The Bluest Eye, the part Black Star quoted...

"We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength. And fantasy it was for were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave..."

etc. etc. Thieves in the night, etc. Pore old Pecola... Genius Toni Morrison. I probably can't put that in any sort of article but that's all this seems to be. Embarassment disguised with Orwellian language and trumped up ceremony.