The answers to all the other questions about Guantanamo are hotly contested ground. The controversy swirling around the base made my three weeks there surreal. The headlines didn't match my daily experience with young, earnest guards and with dedicated, impressive military brass - bright guys who spend their days and energy solving problems like how to prevent detainees from plugging up their toilets to flood their cells.

The troopers were encouraged to talk to us - and so we met many of the young men and women pulling the least politically correct of military assignments. They told us how their wives back home are verbally harassed because they have a husband at Guantanamo or how they joined up to do something noble but they were concerned it wasn't working out that way. They drove by us in their hand-painted beater cars called "Gitmo specials," made to look like the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine or completely covered in duct tape. They reminded us that the groups down on that island base are just young men and women from all over America. Gitmo might've been with us for eight years, but these men and women are brand new to this fight.

And the fight at Gitmo has changed a lot in eight years. The detainees are the only ones on island that know just how different life is - they've been there longer than anyone, and as commanding officers remind the troopers every day: they know the rules better than anyone.

This became clear to us in our three weeks of filming. To make this documentary, the DoD extended our access beyond the ordinary and allowed us time on cellblocks previously never permitted. The detainees took note that we were in verboten territory and assumed we must be in league with the military. We learned from the block leaders the detainees made some noise about "splashing" us - hurling a cocktail of feces and other body fluids at us - just like they do the guards. This was something new for a member of the media though.

Mostly the detainees ignored us, or showed a bit of benign curiosity. A few reached out to us in anguish to release them from their seven-year imprisonment. It would take a hard person to be unaffected by the impassioned speeches about American ideals of freedom and liberty issued through heavy cell doors in broken English. The detainees know astonishing amounts of detail about the US, so much in fact, the guards have named the phenomenon the DNN or Detainee News Network. Guards say the detainees knew within one hour when Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned and within a half hour of Barack Obama's election, both were met with cheers.

We were never splashed, thankfully, though we weathered a tropical storm, a hurricane, an island-wide power-outage (generators cover the detention facility) and pounds of greasy food at the mess hall before we embarked on our flight back to the states. It was just three hours away, but already it felt like a different world.