Taxpayers Pay Nearly a Million Dollars a Year to Incarcerate a Guantanamo Inmate While Making the US Less Secure

The hunger strike at Guantanamo is nearing 100 days long (with the majority of detainees participating). 

The Nation recounts the words of one hunger striker that "cut to the heart of the [desperation] protest": 

“As of today, I’ve spent more than 11 years in Guantánamo Bay,” he wrote. “To be precise, it’s been 4,084 long days and nights. I’ve never been charged with any crime.”

If morality, basic human decency and international standards of justice won't move the US government to close Guantanamo, then maybe in this age of "austerity" Americans should take a look at the cost of keeping a prisoner in an isolated US military base on Cuban soil. 

The Fiscal Times (and other outlets have) reported the annual cost to US taxpayers of each Guantanamo detainee is more than $900,000 per individual.  That is compared to $25,000 for the yearly taxpayer funded expense of keeping a prisoner in federal prison.  There are currently about 165 men imprisoned on the base.

It's a pity that morality, basic human decency and justice don't get this place shut down!