Soccer has long been popular since the Pentagon permitted sports in its evolving 10-year effort to conform to the Geneva Conventions and reduce tensions between captives rotating guards.
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
MIAMI — Some members of Congress are questioning the wisdom of the Pentagon’s spending $744,000 on a soccer field to keep captives busy outside a $39 million penitentiary-style building at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for crying out loud?” Rep. Gus Bilirakas, R-Fla., said in a television interview. “Our deficit this year is $1.2 trillion and we’re spending this kind of money on terrorists?”
Prison camp commanders unveiled the 28,000-square-foot soccer field during a visit last week by reporters to cover a Pakistani man’s guilty plea to war crimes. Commanders called it part of the cost of doing business at the remote outpost and keeping captives diverted at the detention center.
The yard opens in April after contractors install latrines and goals.
Bilirakas, in his third term representing some Tampa suburbs, led the charge of indignation over the expense, dashing off a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., went further, and introduced the “NO FIELD Act.”
It’s short for None of Our Funds for the Interest, Exercise, or Leisure of Detainees Act, and would strip the Defense Department’s 2013 budget by $750,000.
Soccer has long been popular since the Pentagon permitted sports in its evolving 10-year effort to conform to the Geneva Conventions and reduce tensions between captives rotating guards.