U.S. to build new massive prison in Bagram

[Hell Hath No Fury]

U.S. to build new massive prison in Bagram
by Glenn Greenwald

As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.  Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for "the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan" which includes "detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees."  It will also feature "guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems."  The announcement provided: "the estimated cost of the project is between $25,000,000 to $100,000,000."

In the U.S., prisons are so wildly overcrowded that courts are ordering them to release inmates en masse because conditions are so inhumane as to be unconstitutional (today, the FBI documented that a drug arrest occurs in the U.S. once every 19 seconds, but as everyone knows, only insane extremists and frivolous potheads advocate an end to that war).  In the U.S., budgetary constraints are so severe that entire grades are being eliminated, the use of street lights restricted, and the most basic services abolished for the nation's neediest.  But the U.S. proposes to spend up to $100 million on a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan.


more at http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan/?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/09/19/bagram

[RKP5637]

1. That's Americas' biggest business anymore ... prisions, war and the MIC. What a

reputation.

[HopeHoops]

2. Can we send the shrub and Cheney there?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. IBTL

[glowing]

4. Can we just pretend the United States is in one of these foreign countries,

and build something massive here, like really good modern public transit? Or rebuild our schools.. We can give them foreign sounding names if it will trick the Republicans into funding them. Seriously!!! We don't jail enough of our citizens, we have to jail the world's too?

[Shagbark Hickory]

5. Don't forget universal healthcare which the Afgans and Iraqis now have.

[TBF]

6. I see that we're getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible ...

:sarcasm:

[chill_wind]

7. "If that's winding things down, I sure would hate to see

what a redoubling of the American commitment to Endless War looks like."

-Greenwald


"In one of the first moves signalling just how closely the Obama administration intended to track its predecessor in these areas, it won the right to hold Bagram prisoners without any habeas corpus rights, successfully arguing that the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision -- which candidate Obama cheered because it guaranteed habeas rights to Guantanamo detainees -- was inapplicable to Bagram. Numerous groups doing field work in Afghanistan have documented that the maintenance of these prisons is a leading recruitment tool for the Taliban and a prime source of anti-American hatred. Despite that fact -- or, more accurately (as usual), because of it -- the U.S. is now going to build a brand new, enormous prison there.

One last point: recall how many people insisted that the killing of Osama bin Laden would lead to a drawdown in the War on Terror generally and the war in Afghanistan specifically. Since then -- in just four months since bin Laden's corpse was dumped into the ocean -- the U.S. has done the following: renewed the Patriot Act for four years with no reforms; significantly escalated drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan; tried to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process; indicted a 24-year-old Muslim for "material support for Terrorism" for uploading an anti-American YouTube clip after he talked to the son of a Terrorist leader; pressured Iraq to keep U.S. troops in that country; argued that it has the virtually unlimited right to kill anyone it wants anywhere in the world; and now finalized plans to build a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan. If that's winding things down, I sure would hate to see what a redoubling of the American commitment to Endless War looks like."

[Metta]

8. "Everybody's crying 'Justice,' just as long as there's business first." Mose Allison.

:toast:

[chill_wind]

9. What that would be in human needs in terms of trade-offs

in the U.S. alone.

I tried to find what some reasonable figure would provide (in between the lower/upper cost estimates cited above as $25,000,000 to $100,000,000) using the Costs tradeoff calculator at Cost of War as a rough notion.

Using for example Boise, Idaho, which will pay $47.2 million for Afghanistan war spending for FY2011. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided:


26,611 Annual Energy Costs for a Household for One Year OR

25,448 Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR

755 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR

6,393 Fair Market Rent for One Bedroom Apartment for One Year OR

1,115 Firefighters for One Year OR

5,636 Head Start Slots for Children for One Year OR

17,224 Households Converted to All Solar Energy for One Year OR

36,171 Households Converted to All Wind Energy for One Year OR

7,179 Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year OR

22,542 One Year Worth of Groceries for an Individual OR

9,066 People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR

828 Police or Sheriff's Patrol Officers for One Year OR

9,566 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR

8,501 Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550

http://costofwar.com/en/tradeoffs/state/ID/city/boise/program/13/tradeoff/0/


And it goes without asking, what would that mean, in terms of humanitarian peaceful aid to any parts of Afghanistan or other parts of the world instead, in health care, poverty aid, education, agricultural assistance or small infrastructure programs?

[chill_wind]

10. "Funny accounting".

A little more at emptywheel.net on the newest habeas-free prison..

The Cost of $100 Million Prison Expansions and Other “Civilian-Led” Blowback
Posted on September 19, 2011 by emptywheel

In addition to green-lighting debt collection calls to cell phones, another of the deficit plans Obama rolled out today is basically claiming credit for military withdrawals.

The plan also realizes more than $1 trillion in savings over the next 10 years from our drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As DDay notes, these “cuts” are scheduled to happen anyway. It’s just funny accounting, particularly since the foreverwar hawks will fight some of these changes in any case.

But there’s another reason I think this is funny accounting. We’re not withdrawing, we’re switching to “civilian-led” efforts in these places. And Obama is not measuring the costs of these civilian-led efforts.

http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/09/19/the-cost-of-100-million-prison-expansions-and-other-civilian-led-blowback/

And then there's the latest expansion of the already monstrous sized "Embassy" in Iraq:

Massive U.S. Embassy In Iraq Will Expand Further As Soldiers Leave
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/16/us-embassy-iraq-state-department-plan_n_965945.html