The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days [Hardcover]

Karen Greenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2009

Named one of the Washington Post Book World's Best Books of 2009, The Least Worst Place offers a gripping narrative account of the first one hundred days of Guantanamo. Greenberg, one of America's leading experts on the Bush Administration's policies on terrorism, tells the story through a group of career officers who tried--and ultimately failed--to stymie the Pentagon's desire to implement harsh new policies in Guantanamo and bypass the Geneva Conventions. Peopled with genuine heroes and villains, this narrative of the earliest days of the post-9/11 era centers on the conflicts between Gitmo-based Marine officers intent on upholding the Geneva Accords and an intelligence unit set up under the Pentagon's aegis. The latter ultimately won out, replacing transparency with secrecy, military protocol with violations of basic operation procedures, and humane and legal detainee treatment with harsh interrogation methods and torture. Greenberg's riveting account puts a human face on this little-known story, revealing how America first lost its moral bearings in the wake of 9/11.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Book Description
In January 2002, the first flight of detainees captured in the global war on terror disembarked in Guantanamo Bay. They were dazed, bewildered, and--more often than not--alarmingly thin. Given very little advance notice, the military's preparations for this group of predominantly unimportant ne'er-do-wells were hastily thrown together, but as Karen Greenberg shows, a number of capable and honorable Marine officers tried to create a humane and just detention center--only to be thwarted by the Bush Administration. The Least Worst Place is a gripping narrative account of the first one hundred days of Guantanamo. Greenberg, one of America's leading experts on the Bush Administration's policies on terrorism, tells the story through a group of career officers who tried--and ultimately failed--to stymie the Pentagon's desire to implement harsh new policies in Guantanamo and bypass the Geneva Conventions.

She sets her story in Camp X-Ray, which underwent a remarkably quick transformation from a sleepy naval outpost in the tropics into a globally infamous holding pen. Peopled with genuine heroes and villains, this narrative of the earliest days of the post-9/11 era centers on the conflicts between Gitmo-based Marine officers intent on upholding the Geneva Accords and an intelligence unit set up under the Pentagon's aegis. The latter ultimately won out, replacing transparency with secrecy, military protocol with violations of basic operation procedures, and humane and legal detainee treatment with harsh interrogation methods and torture. Guantanamo's first 100 days set up patterns of power that would come to dominate the Bush administration's overall strategy in the war on terror. Karen Greenberg's riveting account puts a human face on this little-known story, revealing how America first lost its moral bearings in the wake of 9/11.

Photographs from the Book

These photographs were taken at Camp X-Ray, a temporary detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The camp was closed on April 29, 2002.

Detention cells surrounded by wire mesh

Interrogation booths

A wooden building called a SEAhut under construction in the U.S. Marine compound

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From Publishers Weekly

This study of values corrupted by the war on terror examines how the Guantánamo Bay detainee camp declined from a relatively enlightened place to a symbol of American brutality. Legal scholar Greenberg (Terrorist Trial Report Card) covers the period from December 2001 through March 2002, when Camp X-Ray opened to house suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives captured in Afghanistan. The story's hero is X-Ray's first commander, Marine Gen. Michael Lehnert, who scrupulously observed the Geneva Conventions; he emerges as an almost saintly figure as he tearfully pleads with detainees to end a hunger strike. The villains are Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bush administration lawyers, led by John Yoo, who advanced specious rationales for stripping detainees of legal protections that would ban harsh and abusive treatment. Greenberg's account is not an exposé of Guantánamo horrors; instead, she draws a lesson on the banality of goodness—that dutiful adherence to international law, not personal integrity, is the ultimate guarantor of humane policy. Unfortunately, her story's restricted scope and its celebration of Lehnert's personal integrity blur her focus on the legal and institutional determinants of good and evil. (May)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1st Ed. edition (March 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195371887
• ISBN-13: 978-0195371888
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,410 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An imprisoned ideology insulting a new generation, February 28, 2009

By 

Phillip Taylor (Richmond Upon Thames, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days (Hardcover)

I come to this book from a very different standpoint to that of Karen Greenberg because I have served in the armed forces, and I am a practising lawyer.

For anyone involved in law enforcement and custodial systems, certain rules must be followed in a civilised society- they weren't here.

Greenberg, from her perspective, outlines (with edge) the initial phase of this 'custodial operation' beginning with the concept of confinement which gives the public a rest from these alleged terrorists' acivities, to outright torture...without trial.

The 'T' word (torture, not trial) must be used sparingly but the evidence which Greenberg assembles from observers and participants between December 21, 2001 to March 31, 2002 is compelling...and damning.

The book makes disturbing reading, especially for Obama supporters who now see some idea of the measure of responsibility and the task set for the new President to make amends.

There is only one conclusion to this book- it mustn't happen again. And how many times have we heard that before?

The title 'The Least Worst Place' is just the start of the twisting and the bending of policies which Allies and supporters had trustingly placed in Bush's administration.

To say the US has lost its moral bearings with this camp is strong but just when Greenberg provides excellent footnotes to justify her assertions albeit it from her left wing perspective which I have no quarrel with here as this is not about 'left' or 'right' wing to me.

This book should be read to remind people of how not to behave when we are the 'good guys' for fear of turning us into the 'bad guys'...which is exactly what has happened with Guantanamo.

As a lawyer, my basic creed, like that of saving life with a doctor, is to try people fairly, telling them what they are accused of- not to lock people up without trial and throw away the key whilst the inmates suffer serious violence. The behaviour at this prison was not acceptable and I find no words in mitigation.

I am glad Karen Greenberg has written this book- she ends it with 'what goes around comes around'- the conclusion of the man on the Clapham Omnibus is that the circle must be stopped in the 21st century, and there are no excuses in a civilised society.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Cutaway of Repression, April 3, 2009

By 

James R. Maclean (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days (Hardcover)

The creation of Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo, was in haste. There was no administrative consensus as to the status of detainees, and hence no standard for how they were to be treated while in detention. Soldiers trained to guard the camp, and contractors employed to build it, were advised only that the detainees would be "the worst of the worst"--hardened Taleban/al-Qaida terrorists, with totally fanatical zeal to kill.

After the logistical achievement of building a maximum security detention center in so little time (2 months) the first detainees arrived from Bagram AFB, Afghanistan: in most cases the staff at Camp X-Ray knew nothing about them: in most cases, even their language was a mystery (few spoke Arabic). The circumstances of their capture or their personal effects were unknown to anyone, and the Pentagon refused to support any policy measures that would pin down their legal status. The staff initially sought to create a detention facility that would comply with the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

After the first few months, the priorities of the Guantanamo Base were changed. Initially left on its own, in legal and administrative limbo, the local staff had struggled to find the appropriate balance of control and humane treatment for prisoners. In March '02, however, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took a direct interest in the center and its ability to validate his narrative of the Global War on Terror. At all times, officers in the chain of command were eager to prove their usefulness to the nation by jumping through whatever hoops Rumsfeld held out.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guantanamo, like it or not, June 4, 2009

By 

M. A. Filippelli "Marc12074" (Roseville, CA, US) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days (Hardcover)

This is a story about Military men and women who tried to make the best out of a bad situation. This is also the story of a Government trying to get information from detainees that may or may not have had any useful information on terrorist plots in the wake of 9/11. This is the story of men who tried to uphold the Geneva Convention only to find out the people high up in Government had a very different idea of how Guantanamo should be run.

The Author Karen Greenberg details the trials and tribulations behind Guantanamo and how it came to be. Guantanamo became Guantanamo because the military didn't want to house the "detainees" on American or foreign soil because there would be some non military oversight and the Government wanted to conduct interrogations and by free of oversight. Guantanamo is unique because of its location and the fact that there would be no oversight by the Cuban Government. When they were trying to figure out where to house this detainee's Guantanamo in the beginning was an after thought

Greenberg discusses what the military went through to convert Guantanamo from nothing to a make shift detention center in a short amount of time. Getting the right people in place for this operation, making sure that at least the bare essentials would be available, food, clothing, housing, dealing with language, social and religious barriers etc. for not only the hundreds of incoming soldiers but the detainee's as well. This was a monumental operation.

Greenberg also details what life was like at Guantanamo for the detainee's and the military men and women working there in the early days of the operation. She discusses how several different legal barriers where overcome. Greenberg describes how the decisions were made on the ground that conflicted with decisions made by people in Washington and who was involved in those decisions.

Greenberg interviewed a lot of people that were on the ground at Guantanamo in the beginning. Her research for Guantanamo the first 100 days is extensive. Everything she details in the book has a time line to help the reader understand the sequence of events and the decision making behind those events.

Greenberg does an excellent job of presenting the subject matter in an unbiased way. Guantanamo the first one hundred days is an excellent book; it really details the confusion within the Government as to how to deal with the detainee's. Very thoroughly researched and well worth the price.