Ouch: Cost to house a captive at Guantanamo Bay is $800,000

[unhappycamper]

Cost to house a captive at Guantanamo Bay is $800,000
By CAROL ROSENBERG - McClatchy Newspapers
POSTED: Tuesday, Nov. 08, 2011

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Guards get combat pay, just like troops in Afghanistan, without the risk of being blown up. Some commanders get to bring their families to this war-on-terror deployment. And each captive gets $38.45 worth of food a day.

The Pentagon detention center that started out in January 2002 as a collection of crude open-air cells guarded by Marines in a muddy tent city is today arguably the most expensive prison on Earth, costing taxpayers $800,000 annually for each of the 171 captives by Obama administration reckoning.

That's more than 30 times the cost of keeping a captive on U.S. soil.

It's still funded as an open-ended battlefield necessity, although the last prisoner arrived in March 2008. But it functions more like a gated community in an American suburb than a forward-operating base in one of Afghanistan's violent provinces.

[HereSince1628]

1. Isn't the job of a prisoner of war to be expensive

and troublesome in order to divert an enemy's energies and resources from the actual war...I'd say these terrorists are succeeding in that mission.

[Bucky]

12. !!

:thumbsup:

Frankly, I could use the free housing, free health care, supervised & supported daily exercise, free time for thinking & writing, and $38 worth of free food everyday. How do I hook up with one of those sweet Gitmo monastery slots?

[Downwinder]

2. Don't send me to a nursing home, send me to Gitmo.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. It isn't like they are going to torture themselves ya know!

[Fumesucker]

4. I can and do eat pretty well for $40 a week..

That figure of $38.45 a day is utter bullshit.

[slackmaster]

11. Yes, especially when you are in a place where locally-procured food is very inexpensive

The whole situation is ridiculous.

[valerief]

5. And when they're not being tortured, they get good healthcare, as Michael Moore pointed out.

Unlike 50 million or more Americans.

[progressoid]

6. Thank Gawd. I feel so much safer.

[xchrom]

7. Fuck. Nt

[sarcasmo]

8. Should have been closed this term day 1.

[dionysus]

9. i take it you haven't followed this particular issue? ordere closed, funding to close it, blocked...

transfer of detainees to US prisons, blocked (by dem and repukes alike)

[ThomWV]

13. so, there is plenty of funding to keep it open, but none to shut it?

As commander in Chief Obama could have had the prisioners flown to any other military base in the world he wanted and he could have 'redeployed' every single military person on the island of cuba to Tuly Greenland if he wanted to. Then funding through the Congress to keep it open or close it would be a moot point, all it would cost would be our $1 a year rent.

[slackmaster]

10. Guard duty there should be privatized out to local Cuban citizens

The prisoners could be fed a lot cheaper on locally bought food. Maybe they could be put to work making uniforms or Fidel hats or something.