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.
I'd like to hear Republican Senators Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, and Republican Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, et al. huff and puff and justify the expense of maintaining the prison at Guantanamo in the name of protecting us from terrorism, even as the most vulnerable in our society, who were already suffering before the sequester cuts, suffer more pain. Oh, I have no doubt they'll find the words, but I am confident that their words will make no sense.
