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Spoof ad belies business as usual

crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Saturday Night Live's savage spoof on Guantánamo's going-out-of-business sale may have circled the globe this weekend on the blogosphere.

But it was taboo Sunday for troopers plugged in at work, blocked from military computers because of filtering of the Web at this remote base in southeast Cuba.

''Hoods! Blindfolds! Shackles! Chains! Dog bowls for people!'' declares a mock CIA field officer, announcing the Jan. 20 sale of detention center paraphernalia. ``If it's used to humanely detain or interrogate prisoners, we've got it! We're passing the savings on to you.''

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to empty the prison camps to help restore U.S. standing internationally.

But there was little evidence here this weekend as the Pentagon brought lawyers, former interrogators, judges, observers and two dozen members of media for a docketed monthlong session of President Bush's war court, the military commissions.

Monday brings two simultaneous hearings.

Five Sept. 11 accused, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, are being brought to a maximum-security court at Camp Justice on administrative issues. The judge for the 9/11 accused will also hold a partial hearing on Yemen co-defendant Ramzi bin al Shibh's mental competence to defend himself at trial.

In a second courtroom, Canadian Omar Khadr's judge hears testimony on whether to suppress the fruits of interrogations of the Toronto-born captive, who is facing Jan. 26 trial -- unless the Obama administration halts the proceedings.

Khadr, captured at 15, is accused of the July 2002 grenade-killing in Afghanistan of a U.S. soldier. His Navy lawyer says he was tortured into confessing.

The Pentagon has long maintained that detainees are treated humanely, and the White House has said that the United States does not engage in torture.

Meantime, a prison camps officer declined comment on the ''Everything Must Go!'' sketch, noting it could not be seen on Department of Defense computers here.

In Washington, Chris Isleib, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gate's public affairs office, likewise declined to comment. ``I have not seen the SNL skit.''

In it, the NBC comedy program spliced the mock field officer atop footage from the prison camps, who announces the going-out-of-business sale, codenamed Operations Savings.

''The world's largest terrorist detention center will be closing,'' he declares, ``by executive order.''

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