Holdbrooks, Terry - short clip - TrainingforGuards
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | We had two weeks of training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, | 0:00 |
from individuals who hadn't ever been to Guantanamo. | 0:03 | |
And it wasn't in a military facility. | 0:06 | |
It was just a mock prison made of mesh wire and PVC piping. | 0:08 | |
It really wasn't a very accurate display. | 0:13 | |
Our detainees when we were training | 0:16 | |
were our fellow soldiers, | 0:17 | |
so it was kind of a very haphazard way to learn | 0:19 | |
what it's like to work in a prison situation. | 0:22 | |
Interviewer | What year was that? | 0:24 |
- | It would have been in 2003. | 0:25 |
Interviewer | And in terms of the two weeks, | 0:27 |
that was the full training as a guard | 0:30 | |
before you were shipped off to Guantanamo? | 0:31 | |
- | Correct. | 0:34 |
Interviewer | Did you have any sense of, | 0:35 |
did they tell you what kind of prisoners | 0:36 | |
you'd be working with, the kind of men these detainees were? | 0:38 | |
- | Outside of all the catchphrases we've heard, | 0:41 |
the worst of the worst and a bunch of towel heads | 0:44 | |
and dirt farmers and such. | 0:47 | |
That's the only reasonable explanation is that they, | 0:48 | |
they didn't want us to trust them. | 0:50 | |
They didn't want us to develop any type of a friendship | 0:52 | |
or a relationship with them whatsoever. | 0:53 | |
As I've said before, prior to us leaving, | 0:56 | |
we went to Ground Zero. | 0:59 | |
The day we were leaving, we went to Ground Zero | 1:00 | |
and I can only imagine the purpose behind that | 1:01 | |
was for propaganda, you know, take us to the place | 1:03 | |
where 9/11 happened and then tell us | 1:07 | |
that Islam and Muslims are to blame. | 1:09 | |
Take us to Guantanamo, obviously everybody's | 1:11 | |
going to be riled up and it's going to be | 1:13 | |
an effective means of getting the job done. | 1:15 | |
I think a lot of people initially | 1:17 | |
were buying into the propaganda of it. | 1:19 | |
And fortunately, by the end, I can say that maybe | 1:20 | |
only half of them were still buying into the propaganda. | 1:23 | |
I, myself, as soon as we got to Ground Zero, | 1:26 | |
I remember particularly reading one comment | 1:29 | |
that somebody had written on the wall. | 1:30 | |
This is the worst tragedy to happen to all of mankind. | 1:32 | |
And as I was reading this comment, | 1:35 | |
I just kind of snickered and started laughing, | 1:37 | |
and my company's behind me and they look and they're like, | 1:39 | |
what are you laughing about? | 1:41 | |
This is Ground Zero, 2700 people died here, | 1:43 | |
this is a tragedy, and I'm like, yeah, it's a tragedy. | 1:46 | |
It's not the worst one ever. | 1:49 | |
Like, what are you talking about, yes it is. | 1:50 | |
I'm like, the Holocaust was worst, | 1:51 | |
the Armenian genocide and Crusades, | 1:54 | |
these things didn't matter? | 1:56 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund