Close Gitmo, the repairs are in the millions. No wonder the detainees are on a hunger strike.

It would seem as though the facility was never meant to hold detainees for decades of time and the place is disintegrating. So much for being a secure facility to protect from prisoner escapes so close to the homeland. The appropriate international agencies need to inspect the place again and structurally condemn it.

Plywood. The lousy place can go up in flames in a instant. The Right Wing Congress has another failed policy on their hands. 

Published time: September 27, 2013 01:56

A US military request for funding (click here) to renovate the prison base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was denied by Pentagon officials in the Obama administration who, while pledging to close the prison, have been consistently prevented from doing so by Congress.

General John F. Kelly, the chief of US Southern Command and the officer in charge of Guantanamo Bay, requested $195.7 million to update and modify the prison in March 2013. He told Congress that buildings at Gitmo, originally only designed to temporarily house inmates eleven years ago, are disintegrating and presenting problems for troops on the base. 

His request, according to the New York Times, included $99 million to build two new barracks buildings for guards, $12 million for a new cafeteria, and another $49 million to replace the notorious “Camp Seven,” where high-value inmates formerly in the custody of the CIA are held. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed architect of the September 11 terrorist attacks, is currently held at Camp Seven. 

The budget proposal was denied at some point during the summer but the news was not disclosed until Tuesday, when Southern Command spokesman Army colonel Greg Julian told the Times the request was denied “because of a lack of Congressional support to use the overseas contingency funding that we sought to complete those projects. So now we are working on various measures to mitigate some of the conditions of the facilities.”