Requests revealed on May 21 show the Pentagon wants more than $450 million for maintenance and upkeep of Guantanamo prison.
According to Fox News, this figure includes “$200 million for military construction work that could stretch over a decade.” The request also includes “$40 million for fiber optic cable and millions more for military commissions at the facility.”
No matter how you divide it, $450 million is a lot of money. In fact, it may be too much money for many of us to wrap our minds around. So think about it this way–on Hilton Head Island, a beachfront home with seven bedrooms and eight full baths costs about $7.7 million. The money the Pentagon is requesting would buy 58 of them.
Or think about it like this–when it was announced that the San Francisco Ritz Carlton was going up for sale and “could fetch $168 million” in the Spring of 2012, the Pentagon’s request could have covered that purchase plus the $180 million the Chicago Ritz Carlton is expected to bring and still left $102 million for other things.
The point is–$450 million is a lot of money. And one shouldn’t be criticized for wondering if a request this big is really just an attempt to have funding denied so the prison can be shut down.