Base the Navy's Fourth Fleet there. The prison camps now operate out of the Intelligence Operations Facility, or IOF. The state-of-the-art building known as the Red Roof Inn was built in 2004 for $13.5 million but is too far from the heart of Guantánamo to be useful as the Navy base headquarters. The Pentagon established the command and control staff of a so-called Fourth Fleet in Jacksonville in April 2008, but assigned it no full-time warships. It borrows vessels for specific missions in the waters of Latin America and the Caribbean.
See the Fourth Fleet announcement
Get out
Julia E. Sweig, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that the U.S. Navy should give it back in a guest commentary in The Washington Post this month that noted the U.S. Navy has withdrawn from Subic Bay in the Philippines and Vieques in Puerto Rico. "Whatever Guantánamo's minor strategic value to the United States for processing refugees or as a counter-narcotics outpost, the costs of staying permanently -- with the stain of the prisons, the base's imperial legacy and the animosity of the host government -- outweigh the benefits,'' she wrote.
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