Guantanamo Bay Case 9/11

In studying the power of a wartime President, a great case study of the expansion of power is the opening of Guantanamo Bay for detainment of foreign suspects. Guantanamo Bay has made many headlines for its practices of the inhumane treatment of detainees, some of whom turned out to be innocent. This negative coverage was well justified as more was learned about the conditions and formation of the camp. This paper will look at the how the expansion of wartime presidential power in response to September 11 attacks led to the formation of Guantanamo Bay as we know it today.
Guantanamo Bay had a relatively quiet history before its detainment centers were open in the early 2000s. Guantanamo bay was granted status as a US naval base in 1902. The base saw regular use during World War II, especially for naval training. Even after US-Cuba relations broke in 1961, the bay remained in US control. Since the mid-1990s, only bare operations were kept in the bay to keep terms on the

Memos circulating the Bush Administration, aptly titled “torture memos” describe a series of internal memos passed around White House officials discussing the legality of torture. The earliest memorandums, occurring in January 2002, discussed the intricacies mentioned above in the Geneva Conventions and argued for the legality of interrogation of “illegal combatants.” In March 2003, a memorandum by the Defense Department legal task force declared the president was not bound by international or federal anti-torture laws. A month later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent a memorandum to General James Hill of the US Southern Command outlining permitted interrogation techniques. This memo appears to take great care to ensure these techniques aren’t technically torture and to point out certain techniques which are commonly seen as