BY CAROL ROSENBERG

                      GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Until its latest incarnation as an offshore internment center for
                      international terror suspects, this U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba could be summed up in a slogan:
                      Last American outpost on communist soil.

                      A model of post-Cold War downsizing, it was in virtual ''caretaker status,'' says the base commander,
                      Navy Capt. Bob Buehn, who has seen the number of U.S. military personnel triple since Christmas.

                      U.S. troops first arrived on this site in 1903, leasing it as a ''coaling station,'' or refueling port, with a
                      more friendly, if not subservient, Cuban government.

                      A century later, it is still ''a nice option to have,'' a strategic slice of offshore, extra-judicial territory
                      where in 1994 and 1995 the United States housed some 50,000 Haitians and Cubans captured at sea,
                      says Kevin Whitaker, a U.S. diplomat on the State Department's Cuba Desk.

                      ''It gives the decision-makers flexibility,'' he says.

                      For example, at any given time since the late 1990s, the State Department and Immigration and
                      Naturalization Service have used the base to house a revolving population of about 40 Cubans and
                      Haitians -- people found at sea who have credible fear of persecution if they are returned home. To
                      discourage a widespread exodus, the Clinton administration established a policy of housing asylum
                      seekers at Guantánamo until a third country, not the United States, agreed to give them safe haven.

                      Before the latest arrival of terror suspects, it was hard to spot anyone in uniform among the 2,400
                      inhabitants. Years of Pentagon out-sourcing meant that an estimated 1,100 contract laborers were
                      more likely to swab the decks and serve the grub than the 700 sailors and Marines living on the base at
                      any given time.

                      Filipinos, for example, run the ferry that links two sides of the base across Guantánamo Bay. Jamaicans
                      change sheets at the bachelor officers' quarters and serve ribs and beer at The Jerk House, an outdoor
                      eatery alongside the Officers' Club.

                      The few Americans around the sprawling 45-square-mile base live mostly in suburban-style housing.
                      Sailors' spouses and their children occupy themselves with the schools, churches and open-air Lyceum
                      cinema that to this day gives the base the feel of small-town America, circa 1950 -- even with al Qaeda
                      and Taliban prisoners over the hill at Camp X-Ray.

                      There are two 50-member platoons of Marines to patrol 17.4 miles of barbed-wire-topped fence-line.
                      They also sit with M-16 assault rifles in 15 watchtowers, monitoring members of Fidel Castro's Frontier
                      Brigade, arrayed in their own towers at distances of 300 to 1,500 yards away.

                      ''We watch them. They watch us,'' says Marine Maj. Scott Packard, who before the prison project arrived
                      was the highest-ranking Marine on the base. ``We enjoy a pretty much benign relationship with the
                      Cubans on the fence-line.''

                      So much so that the major says the last time a Marine fired his weapon in the Cuban direction was in
                      1972 -- decades before Jack Nicholson growled, ''You can't handle the truth,'' as a grizzled Marine
                      general commanding Guantánamo in the Tom Cruise-Demi Moore Hollywood hit, A Few Good Men.

                      But the truth is, it's a pretty boring business compared to the height of the Cold War when Washington
                      maintained artillery, tank and air units at Guantánamo to check Soviet ambitions. Now U.S. and Cuban
                      troops on watch around the clock are mostly on alert for Cubans trying to reach the U.S. base through
                      a Cuban minefield, says Packard, adding it happens a couple times a year.

                      So why stay here?

                      Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Brendan McPherson says Guantánamo's strategic value is the same today as it
                      was 100 years ago -- as a sheltered harbor off the Windward Passage, a Caribbean choke point
                      between Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti. Until the terror project came ashore, in fact, Coast Guard spotter
                      aircraft and cutters were among the most frequent visitors, stopping to refuel from patrols in search of
                      drug smugglers and migrants trying to sneak into South Florida by raft or pleasure boat.

                      During the Clinton administration it was also a diplomatic carrot to the Castro government. In
                      statements not since echoed by the Bush administration, according to Whitaker, the Democrats said a
                      negotiated withdrawal from the bay could be part of a successful transition to democracy in Havana.

                      Meantime, the Americans are staying rent-free. Under a 1934 lease agreement, the U.S. is to pay the
                      Cuban government $2,000 a year in gold for the base. That works out today to $4,085, according to
                      U.S. estimates.

                      But the Cubans no longer cash the check, a reflection of Castro's policy of denying the legitimacy of the
                      pact that gave the U.S. government a sovereign slice of Cuba.

                      Even so, U.S. commanders say they take seriously a statement by Raul Castro, commander of the
                      Cuban armed forces and brother of Fidel, that he would return to them any prisoner who might break
                      free of Camp X-Ray and manage to maneuver through either the shark-infested waters or minefields.

                      And base commander Buehn says he likewise took seriously, but did not need to accept, a Cuban offer
                      to send doctors to assist in the prisoners' medical care.