Gen. Fraser defends $744,000 Guantanamo soccer field [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/07/141055/gen-fraser-defends-744000-guantanamo.html#storylink=cpy

Gen. Fraser defends $744,000 Guantanamo soccer field
By Carol Rosenberg | The Miami Herald
Posted on Wednesday, March 7, 2012

The Air Force general in charge of Pentagon operations in Latin America and the Caribbean confirmed his upcoming retirement from military service in testimony at Congress Tuesday that included a defense of the controversial $744,000 soccer field at a Guantánamo prison camp as part of cost-saving measures.

~snip~

During his testimony, Frasier defended the Pentagon’s decision to spend $744,000 on a new soccer field for cooperative captives at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a quality-of-life improvement that has drawn protest from some Republican members of Congress.

At the hearing Tuesday, Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, an accountant from Odessa, called the investment “troubling, indeed head scratching.”

The general replied that the detention center had been downsizing to consolidate the prison camps while cutting contact between captives and captors as well as meeting U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions.