Guantanamo Bay sits on what was once called Oriente Province. Located on the southeast corner of the island country of Cuba. Oriente Province has since been divided into five distinct provinces, Las Tunas, Holguin, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantanamo. Guantanamo Bay is situated in the belt of the Caribbean trade winds; it receives sea breezes from the southeast during the afternoons, and shortly after sunset, the wind changes to a northerly direction and becomes a land breeze. The constant breezes help to keep the bay cooler than most semi-arid deserts. However, the mountains that surround the bay to the west, north, and east shelter it from cloud systems, thus producing less precipitation and maintaining the lands aridity. …show more content…
Still to this day the Marines and Cuba’s “Frontier Brigade” still man the fence line 24 hours a day. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962 to December 1962 family members of the service people were evacuated to the U.S. as President Kennedy announced the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In 1964 Fidel Castro cut off the water supply to the base, in retaliation of some Cuban fishermen getting fined for fishing in Florida waters. So water had to be shipped in to the base. Fidel Castro accused the United States, of stealing water. So base commander John D. Bulkeley had a portion of the supply pipe excavated and an 18 inch portion of the pipe was cut and removed, to prove that water was not being stolen from Cuba. The hole was never filled in and the pipe is still exposed, at the northeastern corner of the base, where the Marines sleep when they are on the fence line duty. Since the water was shut off, Guantanamo Bay has been self-sufficient, and produces 3.4 million gallons of water daily at its desalination plant and more than 800,000 kilowatt hours of electricity daily, with the help of the four 262 feet tall wind turbines, located at the top of John Paul Jones Hill on the Windward side of the Base. U.S. troops had scattered 75,000 land mines across the “no man’s land” between the U.S. and Cuban border, creating the second-largest minefield in the
Confronted with American concerns about this military buildup, Soviet spokesmen repeatedly assured the U.S. government that the equipment sent to Cuba was for defense only. The President alluded to this in his television address:
Cuba, only 400 miles from Miami Fl, is an island in the Caribbean and is renowned for its excellent climate. There are beaches for swimming, scuba diving, snorkeling, fishing, and boating opportunities. The island has it’s dark secrets as well, there is Guantanamo Bay, a prison nearby, where the detainee’s right are stripped away and they are beaten daily. Closing Guantanamo Bay has been a big debate over the past few years. President Although what they are doing is technically legal, it is still unconstitutional on U.S. soil. Obama promised us that during his term he would close it. Obama has said that "Keeping this facility open is contrary to our values. It undermines our standing in the world. It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of upholding the highest standards of rule of law." Guantanamo Bay is an embarrassment to our country and has been since it opened. The camp was repeatedly criticized by human rights and humanitarian organizations all around—including Amnesty international, Human Rights Watch, and the International committee of the Red Cross—as well as by the European Union and the Organization of American States(OAS), for alleged human rights violations, including the use of various forms of torture during interrogations. We need to close Guantanamo Bay because it costs a lot of money to keep it open, it is unconstitutional, and we can contain the prisoners in the U.S.
The crisis began when the United States discovered the existence of offensive Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), nuclear capable, barely 90 miles from the southern coast of Florida, in Cuba. U-2 spy plane reconnaissance missions over Cuba captured the
Did you know, as American taxpayers, maintaining the prison at Guantánamo has costed $4.8 billion since it had opened in 2002? Well this al back to “ The Global War on Terror” under the Bush administration that,. response to the 9/11 attacks, targeted middle eastern regions of the world;, collecting men from left to right by heavily armed American soldiers. Unfortunately, some of them are destined to pay for another man’s crime by serving time in Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay, located within a naval base in Cuba, became a facility purposed to hold alleged enemy combatants and terrorists alike. Because of later documented injustices reported against detainees, it gained negative spotlight by both citizens and world leaders. When Obama succeeded in presidency, closing the facility became one of his priorities for a number of reasons.
The United States military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been occupied by over 700 Middle Eastern men suspected of terrorism since 2002. It has been home to some of the most heinous suspected terrorist to ever walk on this Earth. What to do with this military base, has been a major source of conflict within our nation and with other nations for over a decade, with no real reasoning substantial enough to close the base. Although our government has come forward and declared that interrogation methods used on some of the detainees has been unethical and has broken some United States laws. But closing Guantanamo Bay is a task that should not be pursued, because it causes more problems to our countries people, our diplomatic and
The Cuban Missile Crisis has long been a subject of controversy. While at the same time just the mention of the name John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, has sparked much debate, especially regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the first year of Kennedy’s presidency, November 1961, a covert program, code named Operation Mongoose, was initiated by the United States to overthrow the Castro government in Cuba. A retaliatory response by Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev was the installation of nuclear armed missiles in Cuba, just ninety miles from the U.S. shore.!
Some people believe the best way to ensure protection against terrorist is to keep this facility opened. Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp is a United States prison located in Cuba.780 people captured in the war on terror 220 of them are from Afghanistan and smaller
With President Kennedy’s advisers, he opted on a naval blockade to stop Russian ships from conveying the missiles for the sites in Cuba. Khrushchev cautioned that Russia would view the blockade as an act of war. The Russian militaries were put on vigilant and the US bombers were placed in the air sustaining nuclear bombs (Blight., et al 24). The arrangements were made to attack Cuba. There was enormous tension in both Moscow and Washington. The US secretly proposed an exchange of missile bases that is the Russian bases in Cuba and the US bases in
On October 15, 1962, a photograph proved the existence of the missile being constructed on Cuba, and for the U.S., the nightmare began. After a week of intense debating with his closest advisors, President Kennedy made a decision. He decided to impose quarantine, of sorts, around Cuba to ensure there were no more missiles arriving. The Soviet Union demanded the
In January 1898, President William McKinley ordered the U.S.S. Maine to Havana ostensibly on a courtesy visit but actually as protection for American citizens. The following month an explosion sent
The article “Why Guantanamo Bay must be closed for good” by Jonathan Russell denotes the existence of Guantanamo Bay, a maximum security prison off the coast of Cuba. Russell begins by saying that Guantanamo Bay is ineffective because it does not prevent terrorism in other parts of the world. In fact, the existence of Guantanamo Bay fuels terrorist to carry out more terrorist attacks as an act of defiance. Additionally, most people who go to the prison do not get the right to a fair trial as guaranteed by the fifth and sixth amendments. The prison is notorious for its torture of its prisoners. Prisoners face waterboarding, electric shocking, sexual humiliation and are even deprived of sleep. The torture is supposed to make prisoners reveal
One reason is that those who have been in Guantanamo Bay for years have no place to go. They have been held captive for so long that their home country do not want them back. Another reason is if their
Too many Guantanamo Bay detainees have been abused in the prison by the large, deep water harbor on Cuba’s southeastern coast; one of the best-protected bays in the world (“Guantanamo
Already for months, some congressional leaders, many Cuban exiles and various media are reporting that the USSR had sent many soldiers to Cuba and being installed in the missiles of medium range ballistic island advisers, ready to attack surface-to-surface. Each and every one of those numerous suspicions are thoroughly investigated by the Kennedy administration, which has every reason to believe that the weapons are being installed in Cuba are defensive and not offensive. President accepts the first and rejects the latter, and makes clear his position both in private conversations and in their public statements: "If the communists preparations in Cuba, at any time and in any manner, whether to put our security at risk or if Cuba were to one day become an offensive military base of significant possibilities for the USSR, then our country would do whatever was necessary to protect its own security and that of its allies.
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is originally a naval base that was once used to house detention facilities for Haitian and Cuban refugees fleeing to the United States. It was also used as a refueling station for Navy ships. It was then converted into a high level detention facility to house enemy troops captured in the War on Terror campaign by Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfield. It has three main camps that house the prisoners. These prisoners of war were later referred to as enemy combatants. They were excluded from the prisoner of war statutes of the Geneva Convention because of their involvement in a foreign terrorist organization and therefore earning themselves the title of terrorists. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Center served as the perfect location to send these terrorists. It allowed the United States to strip them of any due process or protection that is provided by US law. Due to its location, being in foreign territory they are only subjected to military law. They are close enough for them to be monitored without interference of intentional agencies or international oversight. Furthermore, the US Government is holding these men without due process because they are deemed too dangerous to be released into the public because of their associations with terrorist organizations and possession of valuable information relating to National Security such as location of key members of a terrorist groups, whereabouts. However, the United States cannot release those