GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba--Last week, I went on a media tour of the Guantanamo Bay prison, where the U.S. military is holding 155 men who were deemed “enemy combatants” in the war against al Qaeda and its affiliates by the Bush administration.

Most of the remaining prisoners at Gitmo have never been charged with a crime and nearly 80 of them have been cleared for transfer to other countries by the Obama administration. Others the government believes are too dangerous to release, but it does not have enough admissible evidence to charge them. Various diplomatic, legal and political hurdles have left these men languishing, thwarting President Obama’s aging campaign promise to close the Cuban prison down.

In the meantime, the military allows journalists to tour parts of the controversial detention facility and its tropical surroundings in small groups chaperoned by cheerful public affairs officials. They stress that the prisoners are treated humanely as they await the end of their legal limbo. The base, which is overrun by giant iguanas that sun themselves on steep cliffs overlooking the Caribbean, is more than just a giant prison and its staff. There’s a McDonalds, Pleasantville-esque residential cul de sacs where military personnel live, a movie theater, and O’Kelly’s, an Irish bar.

Over three days at Gitmo, I spent less than an hour total in the prisons. The rest of the time was parceled out into interviews with prison staff, an extensive tour of the kitchens where prisoners’ food is prepared and in the mess hall where Gitmo military personnel eat their meals. Another chunk of each day was devoted to “OPSEC review,” the military term for going through journalists’ photos and videos and deleting any images that show the faces of people who work in or near the prisons. (OPSEC stands for “operational security.”) The staff deletes photos for other security reasons, too, such as showing the location of more than one prison gate or a surveillance camera.

There’s no “OPSEC” for language. (We didn’t have to turn over our notebooks for review.) But public affairs officials and other staffers do choose their words very carefully when talking about Gitmo, and will occasionally correct reporters if they use terms that do not fit with their own messaging on the prison. The “detainees”—never prisoners or inmates—are well cared for in the “detention center,” or “camp”--never prison or jail. “Noncompliant” detainees—which include men who are well behaved but are protesting their indefinite detention by refusing to eat—are housed in “single cell operations”—never solitary confinement.

Here are a few of the phrases that you are unlikely to hear if visiting Gitmo:

1. Inmate/Prisoner (military term: detainee)

Public affairs officials and other people associated with Gitmo shun the use of the word “inmate” or “prisoner” to describe most of the 155 men imprisoned in Guantanamo. Instead, “detainee” is used. Only the handful of men at Gitmo who have been charged with a crime—including accused 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--are called “prisoners” by its staff. The reasoning is that prisoners are serving time for a crime, while detainees are simply waiting for the government to charge them or release them.