Gitmo Costs USTaxpayers $800,000/Year Per Detainee

Gitmo Costs $800K/Year Per Detainee (Mother Jones, Nov. 10, 2011):

The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg, returning to Gitmo for the arraignment of alleged USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, reports how much the island prison is costing American taxpayers these days.

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.

Just to put that in perspective, while each Gitmo detainee costs close to a million dollars per person annually, inmates in federal prisons cost about $25,000 per person. Even in our supposed age of austerity, with Republicans demanding cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and turning Medicare into a voucher plan, there’s always money to waste on an elaborate island prison for thirty times the cost it would take to lock people up here.

Still, closing Gitmo has grown unpopular as Republicans have repeatedly raised the specter of terrorists somehow escaping. The irony is that with only 171 detainees left, there are more convicted international terrorists in federal prisons in the United States than there are detainees remaining at Gitmo.

Flashback:

Former Governor Jesse Ventura: You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour

More info on torture:

‘In Gitmo I Got 30 Days In Darkness For Feeding Iguanas’: Ex-Detainee

Trained To Torture: Get Your Torture Degree From School Of The Americas!

Dick Cheney And Donald Rumsfeld Praise Torture, Want Credit For Osama Kill – Darth Cheney on Waterboarding: ‘It was a good programme. It was legal programme. It was not torture. I would strongly recommend we continue it.’

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ‘Knew Guantánamo Prisoners Were Innocent’:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

CIA Report: Interrogators Threatened to Kill And Rape Family Members of Detainees

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to Uzbekistan for extreme torture, to be ‘raped with broken bottles,’ ‘boiled alive’ and ‘having their children tortured in front of them’

I guess those torture victims hate America for its FREEDOM, right?

The US is torturing it’s own soldiers:

US Torture Hearings: Sergeant Chuck Luther Tells Congress How Army Tortured Him (Video)

See also:

US Soldiers Tell The Truth: Confess to Institutionally-Sanctioned War Crimes!

American Soldiers Are WAKING UP!!!

US Soldier: The Enemy Is At Home

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