Guantanamo Camp Burns Through $900,000 a Year Per Inmate

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

Guantanamo camp burns through $900,000 a year per inmate

Fri May 3, 2013 8:30pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It's been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth and President Barack Obama cited the cost this week as one of many reasons to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which burns through some $900,000 per prisoner annually.

The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.

By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.

The high cost was just one reason Obama cited when he returned this week to an unfulfilled promise to close the prison and said he would try again. Obama also said that the prison, set up under his Republican predecessor George W. Bush and long the target of criticism by rights groups and foreign governments, is a stain on the reputation of the United States.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE94211N20130504

[PSPS]

1. How much ends up in "private contractor" pockets? How much laundered back as "campaign contributions

[gussmith]

2. What a Waste

Imagine that money ($900,000) per prisoner going toward a jobs program to help the discriminated against older workers. The New Hour reported tonight that workers peak at 40! Imagine an 18-year career if you are lucky. America wake up.

[SoapBox]

3. Where is the PukeBagger outrage over this waste of money?

...oh ya...they are so blinded with HATE that they can't even see the waste.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. And one US Constitution.

[Sunlei]

5. imagine the contractor profits.

[LisaL]

6. How can this be?

What are they feeding the inmates?
Unbelievable.

[Earth_First]

9. Lately. Nothing.

Many of them have been on hunger strike to protest their incarceration...

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. Wow. Someone's getting really, really rich. n/t

[awoke_in_2003]

10. When you look at why so many things...

in this country are fucked up and ask why, look at who is making money off of it.

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. Always:

The leaked 2006 Citigroup Plutonomy memo Part 1

http://occupyobservations.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-leaked-2006-citigroup-plutonomy-memo.html

[tclambert]

13. I wonder what Halliburton's KBR subsidiary charges for lemon chicken.

[blkmusclmachine]

8. .

.

[tclambert]

12. Like Butch said, "If he'd just pay me what he's spending to make me stop robbing him, I'd stop

robbing him."

OK, maybe terrorists feel more devotion to their calling than Butch Cassidy did to train robbing.

Still, I can't help remembering that Saddam Hussein offered to voluntarily leave Iraq if someone paid him $1 billion. Of course, we rejected that ridiculously expensive offer, and spent $1 trillion on a war we could have avoided by writing a check. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush%E2%80%93Aznar_memo No, wait. I re-read that article. We wouldn't have had to pay him anything, just let him keep $1 billion that he already had.

[SunSeeker]

16. Ug. Had no idea about Saddam's offer. Shit, can the story get any worse? nt

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

14. Wow, talk about rich inmates...

and all they( the inmates) want is their freedom.

[SunSeeker]

15. Yet another fact you won't hear on Fox News. nt

[Turbineguy]

17. $900,000 per year.

The US has turned this into another successful operation for al Qaeda.

[bemildred]

18. Think of the deficit. nt

[hughee99]

19. The president should just let all the people down there go, then he can close the prison

tomorrow.

[indepat]

20. Tens of millions of seniors face having their pre-paid benefits cut whereas profligate MIC

spending continues to abound and run amok.