Guantánamo Naval Base, Playground for Pedophiles

Well, they have to put them somewhere, and the place where the U.S. military sends its pedophiles is Guantánamo Naval Base. Incredibly, this actually does make some sense. Guantánamo is the only U.S. military facility in the world whose personnel is not allowed to mix with the local residents. The gates at the naval base have been locked for 46 years. The Castro regime has mined its environs not just to slow down an American invasion but to restrain its own citizens from seeking refuge there. If you are going to tolerate pedophiles in the armed forces — and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" apparently extends to them as well — then the place to isolate them is where they have no access to children and must limit their predations to 18-19 year-old soldiers or prisoners, not 8-9 year olds. Or so one would suppose.

Of course, children do sometimes manage to find their way to Guantánamo and the pedophiles find their way to them. Under the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot Policy," when Cuban refugeees are picked up by the Coast Guard on the high seas and it is determined that they have legitimate grounds to claim asylum, they are not transported to the U.S. but sequestered at Guantánamo Naval Base, where they are segregated from the alleged terrorists confined there but subjected to the same draconian security measures. These measures until recently included cavity searches of the children and even babies. When this became known last month — in fact, it was the last story that Oscar Corral reported on before his long hiatus — the government sought third-countries that would accept the Cuban refugees at Guantánamo, thereby preempting another scandal to rival that of the Arab military translators.

A story in the news lately confirms that Guantánamo has long been a pedophile's playground for the U.S. military. Kirby Logan Archer, a military police investigator at Guantánamo during the 1990s balsero crisis, was recently plucked from a life boat in the Florida Straits along with a Cuban teenager when the chartered boat on which he hoped to flee to Communist Cuba disappeared along with its 4-man crew. The fugitive Archer, a suspect in a $92,600 theft from an Arkansas Walmart, was apparently attempting to defect to Cuba with the teenager whom he first met when he and his family were confined at Guantánamo more than ten years ago. Archer maintained contact with him since his arrival in the U.S. and Archer's ex-wife claims that as a boy the Cuban teenager had even vacationed in their home in Arkansas. The Archers' marriage ended recently when she came out as a lesbian and Archer as a homosexual.

It has been assumed that Kirby Archer was fleeing to the island because he was wanted in connection with the Arkansas theft. It seems more probable, though, that the theft was committed in order to provide him with the funds to flee to Cuba with his teenage victim. The Cuban regime's open tolerance of sex tourism, and, particularly, the sexual exploitation of children, must have convinced Archer that he would have been welcome there along with his teenage companion, a Cuban national.

Although this is admittedly a unique case in many respects, the catalyst for it is not unique. The U.S. military must end its longstanding policy of using Guantánamo Naval Base as a dumping ground for all kinds of dysfunctional and anti-social elements from its ranks. With the scarcity of recruits in wartime and the cost of training replacements for them, it is unlikely that this will happen any time soon.