Evidently it will cost $450,000,000, or roughly $2.5 million per prisoner to maintain and “upgrade” the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon budget request. Considering 86 or so– the majority– of the 166 men still held there have been cleared for release by our own government, that means we’ll be spending over $200 million to hold men our government tells us are innocent and shouldn’t be there.
The sheer financial cost of political cowardice and national ignorance and apathy mixed with complacency is impressive, to say the least. My prediction remains that Guantanamo will ultimately be shut down at some point not out of some legal or moral epiphany, or even international pressure, but because the United States will simply lack the financial wherewithal to keep it open.
Of course, given the massive prisoner hunger strike that has managed to get GTMO back into public consciousness in the first place, it seems that the government isn’t spending all that much on prisoner meals… although quite a bit seems to be being spent on Ensure.
Priorities, folks. We’ve got to keep our phoney baloney jobs… give the President a harumph!
tdog
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