Rear Adm. Buzby was the commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo from May 2007 until last week. In part, he writes today in the Wall Street Journal this:
All detainees receive three-meals per day, a 4,000-calorie diet selected from six different menus that meet the halal cultural dietary requirements, and which provide for special needs such as low sodium, vegetarian or diabetic. We provide comfort items including sheets and bedding, uniforms, shoes, prayer beads, prayer rugs, toiletries and bottled water. Each detainee is issued a Quran in Arabic and one in his native language. An ever-expanding, 5,000 volume library is available for a weekly choice of reading material.
Detainees sent and received more than 27,000 pieces of mail last year. In addition to humanitarian phone calls, which have long been permitted, we allow annual phone calls to family members. Last year, more than 1,200 attorney visits were conducted. Suggestions that detainees are being held “incommunicado” are simply not true.
Medical-care standards afforded to detainees are the same that my troopers receive. Access to treatment is 24/7, with a detainee-to-medical-staff ratio of three-to-one that far exceeds Federal Bureau of Prison standards, and is frankly better than what most Americans enjoy.
Joint Task Force doctors have performed more than 370 surgeries, including restorative eye procedures, and a recent back surgery that restored movement and avoided possible paralysis for a detainee. Shortly after, that detainee sent me a note saying “Thank you, I have been wrong about Americans.”
No wonder so many countries refuse to accept back nearly a hundred of their citizens. If those detainees reached home and spread rumors, their neighbors might revolt over why they don’t have it as good as the jihadists did at Guantanamo.