The 45-square-mile U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba was chosen to house terrorist suspects in 2002 for a very good reason. It provided the Cheney-Bush administration with a jurisdictionless no-man's land. Not really Cuba since it was forcibly leased by the United States more than a century ago, and not really the United States, the administration figured it had put its doings outside the reach of any possible busybodies who might have humanitarian or legal concerns. The Supreme Court messed up that torturers' wet-dream a bit with its subsequent rulings. But only a bit.
The administration gave the go-ahead for torture at Guantánamo and other locales. And after years of seeing bits of evidence come to light thanks to Jeffrey Kaye and the Physicians for Human Rights, we now have the latest PHR report, Experiments in Torture, indicating that the CIA conducted illegal human experimentation. But while it was committing war crimes at Guantánamo and elsewhere, the administration was also paying contractors such as Kellogg, Brown & Root, at the time a Halliburton subsidiary, to spruce up the base at Cuba, according to Scott Higham and Peter Finn at the Washington Post.
Overall, it spent only half-a-billion dollars on renovation, peanuts when put against the trillion dollars in direct spending so far for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the tax-paid improvements:
• $188,000 for an electronic marquee labeled "Pearl of the Antilles," and flashing "Welcome Aboard," along with a smaller sign at the airfield.
• $683,000 to upgrade a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee; $773,000 to remodel a building for a KFC/Taco Bell fast-food outlet.
• A now-empty go-kart track: $296,000, according to the Pentagon; $400,000, according to the base newspaper. The track, with its troublesome battery-powered go-karts, was closed last month.
• $169 million (plus an undisclosed amount of bonuses) for KBR to build prison camps and other facilities.
• $5.1 million for 27 playgrounds for the population of 5,500, more than 10 times the standard number of playgrounds planners usually recommmend for civilian developments. The playgrounds cost three times what similar facilities run in counties near Washington, D.C. New playgrounds at a cost of $1.6 million are still planned.
U.S. staffing has been reduced and sections of the base, such as Camp X Ray, have been abandoned. But 181 prisoners remain, their future uncertain, and building activities continue. Public money is being spent to house a new pub.
All told, including operating, maintenance and other expenses, about $2.2 billion has been spent on the base since 2002. Not so much when compared with the $9 billion in cash lost in Iraq.
Meanwhile, 8000 miles away in Afghanistan, the newly expanded prison at Bagram Air Base, which, no doubt to the chagrin of PR officers, has been dubbed Guantánamo Two, is now open. Since prisoners were moved from the cages of the notorious old Bagram prison earlier this year, there have been no new reports of prisoner abuse. But prisoners, who spend an average of 24 months imprisoned there - some of them much longer - have no means to effectively challenge the allegations against them. And none has access to a lawyer.
The new facility cost $60 million to build. And while it will be turned over to Afghan authorities in seven months, it costs $5 million annually to run, well beyond the means of the Kabul government. So far, however, there's no snazzy electronic sign greeting visitors.
