U.S. could save millions by paying each Gitmo prisoner $2 million annual salary to do nothing

[struggle4progress]

By Max Fisher, Published: July 31 at 1:39 pm

A new report by the Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg, the dean of the Guantanamo Bay media corps, estimates that the United States spends a little under half a billion dollars per year to maintain the prison facility there. That number, including troop salaries, war court costs and other fees, amounts to $454 million this year and is estimated to be slightly less next year. The data is based on Pentagon numbers that were sent to Congress and just made public.

The cost is especially striking considering that there are only 166 detainees at the facility. That comes to about $2.7 million per prisoner per year ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/31/u-s-could-save-millions-by-paying-each-gitmo-prisoner-2-million-annual-salary-to-do-nothing/

[Betsy Ross]

1. During the Viet Nam war

The figure was a ranch house and $50,000 a year to every North Vietnamese for the cost of the war.

[Jefferson23]

2. That would be putting it mildly:

* In some cases, the United States wants to keep them locked up but can’t try them in a civilian or military court, sometimes because their testimony was tainted by Bush-era abuses that many observers consider to have met the definition of torture.


The monetary figure is astonishing.


K&R