Book Shines Positive Light On Guantanamo

By Annie Berman – Talk Radio News Service

Most books about the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay concentrate on the detainees and their interrogation. Karen Greenberg’s book, “The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days” focuses instead on a group of U.S soldiers who tried to stop the Pentagon from bypassing the Geneva Conventions and implementing harsh policies, including torture policies.

Greenberg, the Executive Director of the Center of Law and Security
at the New York University School of Law, spoke today at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

“There’s a lot of talk about was this a systematic torture policy? The way that people have gone about answering the question is to focus on Washington, the Pentagon, Bush, Cheney, Paddington…Now we know [orders to torture detainees] came from the top,” Greenberg said.

In her research, Greenberg interviewed troops stationed at Guantanamo who worked at the detention facility when the first detainees arrived in 2002.

Greenberg believes that the 1,700 troops that received the first 300 detainees at Guantanamo followed the guidelines of the Geneva Convention and treated the detainees decently.