National Geographic's Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

The National Geographic Magazine for April 2005 has an article on Guantanamo Bay. You can easily look at this in a newsagents, as it is only 3 double page photographs and 3 more pages of mixed text and photographs. If you buy it, you get a free map of the American Civil War, and articles about the newly discovered hobbit fossils from Indonesia, and about tsunamis.

They calmly tell us that their prisoners are enemy combatants not prisoners of war, and thus exempt from the Geneva Conventions, and that each cell measures 8ft by 8ft6ins (2.44 x 2.59 metres). There is a picture of an interrogation room showing the bolt on the floor to which the enemy combatant is shackled. Amusingly, we are told that marines "speak lock-jawed so Cuban soldiers watching them through binoculars cannot read their lips". And much more ....

I think it is only fair to say that this article is as critical as it reasonably can be, given the necessary co-operation of the American government and the readership of this American magazine. But YOU can have your say !

"Share your thoughts" on www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/0504

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