Off the field, he's a terrific ambassador, not only for the organization, but for the NFL and city of New Orleans. That's why he's asked to represent various organizations on trips like the U.S.O. tour he went on earlier this summer to the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay.
After the visit, Brees conducted several interviews to discuss the trip, including one with the Times-Picayune's Mike Triplett and one with San Diego-based radio station, XX1090-AM.
I was on vacation at the time of the radio interview on July 10, but I'm surprised his comments about the controversial facility did not raise more eyebrows locally or nationally.
"I can say this after that experience -- the worst thing we can do is shut that baby down, for a lot of reasons," Brees said. "But I think there's a big misconception as to how we are treating those prisoners; those detainees over there. They are being treated probably 10 times better than any prisoner in a U.S. prison."
Brees made some other eye-opening statements:
"I mean, they're allowed to call and write letters home, and receive letters and calls. They get five opportunities a day to pray, and they have arrows in the prison pointing towards where Mecca is. And the prison goes dead silent so these guys can have their religious time. They have rooms where they can watch movies and play Nintendo Wii. So I think that just goes ahead and says it right there."
Washington Post, July 23
UNITED NATIONS -- The Obama administration has declined requests from U.N. human rights investigators for information on secret prisons and for private interviews with inmates at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.N. officials said, dampening their hopes of greater U.S. cooperation on human rights issues.I mean, since, geez we sent Drew Brees and he seems to think we treat these folks pretty well. Like when they let the guys have their Wii and "religious time" and stuff. Never mind that people are being held indefinitely through extra legal means and to dubious purpose. We gave them a friggin' TV room. What else do you want?
Naomi Wolf reports on a recent visit to GITMO in the Times of London And YES she does indeed find the TV room. Here's the passage where it comes up.
There in front of me was a shower stall fully fronted with glass, facing into a public central hallway where military men and women passed regularly. It forced male prisoners daily into a state of public nudity, which is illegal according to US and international law.
The guards showed us a demonstration cell: it was spotless. Hooks folded down so that no one could hang himself; there was a toilet in a corner, a plastic wedge of a bed, and high-tech mechanical doors that shut of their own accord. No sun, no sightlines, no natural light. I noted the guards’ use of facemasks. “Facemasks are to help protect soldiers,” our tour guide said. “We do have assaults — spitting, throwing faeces and urine.”
Another diorama was set up in another cell, of “comfort items”. It looked unchanged from photos of Guantánamo that I had seen in the Bush era. Here was a Koran; toiletries; a padded mattress the thickness of a yoga mat, for those who “co-operated”; a thinner mattress, fewer “comforts”, for those who did not.
Opposite this room was yet another cell, which the military handlers were most proud of. “The TV room is a big change,” one of the handlers said. There was a big blue squishy sofa facing a nice big flat-screen TV. We were told that the detainees get to watch TV three hours a day; that their favourite TV show is The Deadliest Catch, about fishing; and that they also love Harry Potter. There was a tray table where prisoners could eat baklava while watching Harry Potter — and there, at the base of the sofa, were leg shackles, bolted to the concrete floor.
At the end of the hall I opened a door. Before me was an unused cell, packed halfway to the ceiling with hundreds of cans of Ensure, the liquid nutrient used in force-feeding. (Jen Nessel, of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, had told me that 24 detainees were being force-fed daily, in restraining chairs, because they were on hunger strike.) Lieutenant Fulghum came to get me, annoyed. “No one is supposed to go this far down the hall,” he snapped. I asked if anybody was on hunger strike. “We are not allowed to say. The medical staff handles that,” Lieutenant Fulghum said.
The tour guides also managed to let Brees in on the "feces and unrine" bit. Here was his reaction.
"And you just talk to all the guards that are Army and Navy personnel, they'll tell you stories about how these prisoners, they'll be walking the cell blocks as they're keeping an eye on these guys and they'll be throwing the feces and urine in the faces of the guards as they walk by and the guards are not allowed to do anything. They're not allowed to physically retaliate or do anything hardly to try to restrain these guys at all. These guys get away with whatever they want."
I'm sure Brees wasn't quite as nosy as Wolf but if he had managed to sneak a peek into the force-feeding room, I'm sure he could have told us about how the detainees were "getting away with" awesome first-class nutrition.
But never mind that. The detainees like Harry Potter! Hey, I like Harry Potter too. I have to say I'm a bit disappointed in the most recent films in the series. Sure, the acting is getting better and the art direction is spot-on but the screenwriters just seem to be going through the motions in their handling of key plot elements that worked so well in the books. A central mystery in the sixth book is the identity of the "Half-Blood Prince" The story climaxes at the moment when that mystery resolves itself. The movie handled this clumsily, treating a crucial part of the narrative architecture like a minor afterthought. It's a shame. I'd thought that book would have made the best film especially since, as we've discussed previously, (here as well) the series really goes downhill from there. I guess it's because of my frustration with the sixth movie that I've taken to re-reading the seventh book. I pretty much hated it but since these movies are rendering the books so poorly, I have renewed hope that this could actually improve things next time around and I'm trying to figure out how.
Anyway, I guess it's because of this that when I read Wolf's description of GITMO's... um.. courtroom I couldn't help but think of how it might please Delores Umbridge.
There a new set of handlers showed us another sterile portable cell where detainees conferred with their lawyers. I asked our guide if there was lawyer-client privilege, or was the cell under surveillance? “I can’t answer that,” the guide said. (The defence lawyer Wells Dixon said that he always assumed that his conversations with his client were being listened in to.) We were taken in to the state-of-the art “courtroom” itself, where the ill-starred military tribunals meet. It is unbelievably expensive-looking: rows of gleaming wooden tables for the lawyers of the detainees — and seats with shackles at the base for the detainees at the end of each table; a raised dais where the “panel” — about 20 members of the military — sits facing the tables; and a raised platform in the front of the room, where the “judge” sits in the middle and on one side sits the detainee and on the other, the witness for the defence. Two contractors showed me around. One, “Mo”, showed me how you can put a $5 note under a light on a desk and it shows up onscreen behind the judge’s chair much magnified. I looked up: “In God We Trust”, the motto read.
Then he showed me the stop-motion button system on the audio feed that means that a censor can redact any information that comes out that he wishes to cut — so the press in the galley area behind glass at the back of the room, and down in the hangar, will never know what was redacted. The button system is in the same area as the “witness chair”, which seemed odd to me.
I asked if the chair had ever been used.
“Well ... no,” he said. Not to his knowledge. Then he showed me again with great pride the live feed that was hooked up directly into the “courtroom” that could “transmit witness testimony into the courtroom from anywhere in the world”.
“Has it ever been used to transmit actual witness testimony?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “But we have the capability.”
I'm starting to wonder if the detainees ever really use their Wii either. But I can see why they like Harry Potter movies so much. They too depict a world of hypocritical idiot celebrities and a cruel arrogant officialdom where things often aren't what they appear to be.
Update: When I first saw the Brees story, I momentarily thought about a way to weave in something about his crazy mother but it didn't seem related. Luckily she just happens to be back in the news!
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