Word: pentagons
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...What the Pentagon calls "the long war" on terror has led the U.S. military to seek a way to keep people it deems a threat behind bars indefinitely. While Guantánamo's unique status - far from the battlefield yet subject to total U.S. sovereignty - led the Supreme Court to grant Gitmo detainees habeas relief, the U.S. government argues that neither circumstance applies at Bagram. "Federal courts should not thrust themselves into the extraordinary role of reviewing the military's conduct of active hostilities overseas, second-guessing the military's determination as to which captured aliens as part of such...
...military had hoped to farm out the Bagram detainees to prisons run by Afghanistan and other nations, but over the past year, amid escalating violence and a surging prison population, it became clear that it would not be able to hand over all the detainees. So the Pentagon has decided to build a new prison to replace the current Bagram Theater Internment Facility, a converted hangar used by the Soviets during their occupation. The new facility, expected to cost at least $60 million, is slated to hold 600 detainees under normal circumstances, with a capacity of 1,100 in emergency...
...Pentagon insists Posse Comitatus is not going to be an issue because the 20,000 troops will play no role in actual law enforcement. "The first point to make, our department understands and respects the concerns that have been voiced - even under circumstances where some of the concerns are not well based in fact," says Paul McHale, the outgoing assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, who vows transparency about the mission. McHale says he met with the American Civil Liberties Union a few weeks ago to give assurances that the proposals will not infringe on the basic rights of civilians...
...Sifting through Pentagon data, the CSBA study breaks down the total costs of the war on terrorism as $687 billion for Iraq, $184 billion for Afghanistan and $33 billion for homeland security. By 2018, depending on how many U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan and Iraq, the total cost is projected to likely be between $1.3 trillion and $1.7 trillion. On the safe assumption that the wars are being waged with borrowed money, interest payments raise the cost by an additional $600 billion through...
...bottom line: Bush's projections of future defense spending "substantially understate" just how much money it will take to run Obama's Pentagon, the CSBA says in its report. Luckily, Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to hang around to try to iron out the problem...