How much has it cost to hold the detainees at Guantanamo Bay? According to some neat analysis by the Washington Post , it comes out to a mere $2.76 million per prisoner.
The newspaper obtained a line-by-line breakdown of capital expenditures, ranging from the mundane to the exotic. All up, the bill came out to half a billion dollars, spent on items like volleyball courts and go kart tracks for the troops, a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee and a building that houses a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant.
This totalled $500 million. Divide that by 181 detainees and you get the picture. That number by the way is on top of the annual operating costs of $150 million, double the amount for a comparable U.S. prison.
Now, President Obama wants to close the detention centre and relocate it to Illinois. Which raises the question of what are you going to do with this white elephant.
Maybe they should turn it into a fun park, or even a museum on the Bush administration's war on terror. Or why not create a Guantanamo Bay Holiday Camp, representing all that is good about America and its place as the number one country in the world.
By offering a great vacation opportunity, the American government might even get some of that money back.
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