Word: base
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Guantánamo Bay has been seeped in controversy for the greater part of the century. Located on the southeastern tip of Cuba, it is the only U.S base located in a communist country. The 45-square-mile site was originally used as a coaling station for U.S. Navy ships, under a lease drawn up in 1903. U.S. possession of Guantánamo was reaffirmed under former Cuban president Batista in 1934 with a provision that the lease could not be terminated without mutual consent - a provision that was challenged to no avail by Fidel Castro following the Cuban Revolution...
...Despite Cuban disdain for the base, it received some international praise and recognition in the early 1990s when it became a vital haven for Haitian refugees fleeing the violent coup that ravaged their country. However, these glory days have been outshone by its current role as a detention center. Since early 2002, the beginning of the U.S.-led War on Terror, the base has been used to house those suspected of terrorist activity or of having ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban...
...Deemed "enemy combatants" by the U.S. Government, the hundreds of detainees currently being held in Gitmo (as the base is known) were considered ineligible for the normal legal process that U.S. prisoners are entitled to, and unprotected by the prisoner of war statutes of the Geneva Convention by virtue of being alleged combatants of a "foreign terrorist group" rather than belonging to a standing foreign army. President Bush's passage of the Military Commissions Act in 2006 authorized the use of military tribunals in place of federal courts to try the detainees, and justified the use of some forms...
...middle ground. For those conservative zealots, Alaska governor and controversial McCain running mate Sarah Palin may be the future of the party - and she'll be in Miami this week as well. GOP watchers are bracing to see whether her rock-star appeal with the party's red-meat base will muffle any trend toward the center - or whether, in her much-rumored desire to be the party's presidential face in 2012, she'll adapt to the new realities...
...anti-gay-marriage amendment to Florida's constitution, yet it passed by a wide margin last week. So was it really Crist's lack of enthusiasm for the McCain campaign that sank the Arizona Senator in Florida - or was it the fact that the peninsula's conservative Republican base spent so much time, money and effort on one of its pet issues that it ended up neglecting the larger McCain effort? Daniels (who declined to be interviewed for this article) begged off stumping for a similar marriage amendment in Indiana. It died in the state legislature; but this fall...