WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The Guantanamo military  prison guards call it a “cocktail,” the mix of faeces, urine and  spit that inmates hurl at them and that dramatizes the  soldiers’ view that they are serving on a battlefield.

In this January 21, 2009 file photo, reviewed by the U.S. Military, leg shackles are seen on the floor at Camp 6 detention centre, at the U.S. Naval Base, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. REUTERS/Brennan Linsley/Pool (CUBA)

The inmates talk of their years behind steel doors, many  held without charges, and denounce their American jailers as  “attackers of Muslims … with blood on your hands.”

The day-to-day tensions between inmates — some of whom  charge torture — and the troops who guard them are vividly  depicted from both perspectives in a new National Geographic  documentary, “Explorer: Inside Guantanamo.”

“This is still an integral part of the war on terror,”  Guantanamo’s “warden,” Col. Bruce Vargo said in the movie. A  former inmate agrees, calling Guantanamo a physical and  psychological “war zone.”

The documentary is the first in-depth look at the detention  center for terrorism suspects that has become a worldwide  symbol of U.S. abuses in fighting terrorism after the Sept. 11  attacks. National Geographic Channel will broadcast it tomorrow evening in the United States and other countries.

It may also be the last such look — President Barack Obama  in January ordered the facility at the U.S. naval base on  Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, closed within a year. His administration  is studying what to do with about 240 detainees who remain.

“Guantanamo Bay was the legal equivalent of outer space —  a place with no law,” former Navy defense lawyer Charles Swift  says in the movie.

Swift’s client, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, won major Supreme Court  rulings giving Guantanamo prisoners rights in U.S. courts.

The 1-1/2 hour film was shot last August, at a time that  the Bush administration was insisting it was impossible to  close Guantanamo despite worldwide condemnation.

Crews also visited Afghanistan and England to interview  released inmates, and spoke with U.S. policy makers,  intelligence officials and lawyers on both sides of the issue.

The movie depicts the daily routine in a cellblock of  Guantanamo’s concrete-and-steel maximum-security facility.  Guards make suicide checks every three minutes; inmates banter  or taunt; a Muslim librarian hands out books, or soldiers rush  with face shields and rubber gloves to quell a disturbance.
TIGHT SHACKLES,

WINDOWLESS ROOMS

It shows the vine-covered ruins of Camp X-Ray — the open  cages where inmates in orange jump suits were first held in  2002 and led tightly shackled to nearby wooden shacks for  interrogations in tight, windowless rooms.

The film also traces post-Sept. 11 U.S. policy toward  terrorism suspects, from vilification, to the harsh  interrogations and the military leaders who fought them, to  Supreme Court rulings and to what the military now casts as  respectful, humane treatment.

Along the way, former President George Bush denounces  militants as “nothing but a bunch of cold-blood killers, and  that’s the way we’re going to treat ‘em.”

A Bush lawyer runs down a list of difficult options:  “Once  you capture those people you can’t release them,” former White  House associate counsel Bradford Berenson said. “You can’t kill  them — that would be a violation of international law.”

A Guantanamo guard orients new guards last year: “You can  be fair, firm and impartial, without being a dickhead …  people know,” he said.

But in the prison, an inmate shouts from his cell:   “Never, never, I am here for seven years, I never get my  rights.”

Another says the guards are putting on a show for the  camera crew, which is barred from interviewing him. “It’s  pretty good service now,” the inmate says, laughing. “One hour  ago, you bad guys don’t care about anything.”

“If you believe this propaganda, I am Santa,” he says.

Across the Atlantic, released inmate Moazzam Begg, a  British citizen held from 2002-2004, says he nearly went insane  during solitary confinement on suspicions he was financing  terrorism, and wished a storm would sweep him away.

“Everything that I was had ended. Being a father had ended.  Being a brother, a husband, a son,” Begg said.

Key figures involved in the film say it fairly depicted the  prison and debate.

“It gives a 360-degree view and people can make up their own  mind,” said Charles Stimson, a former Pentagon chief for  detainee affairs, who helped get Geographic into Guantanamo.

He told a panel discussion after an advance screening this  week that he had hoped the effort would help narrow a “chasm”  in reality between Guantanamo now and the years it gained  notoriety.

Defense attorney Sarah Havens cautioned that closing  Guantanamo would not cleanse a questionable U.S. human rights  record, as long as Obama’s administration continues to assert  it can hold some prisoners without trial.

“If they pick up these detainees and move them to the  United States and detain them indefinitely, Guantanamo still  exists as a concept,” she said.