Trading terrorists not like trading baseball players

By the time you read this, much of the huffing and puffing over the five-for-one deal may have ended. Or maybe not.

What I'm talking about is the exchange negotiated by the Obama folks: five terrorists being held in the Guantánamo prison for a U.S. soldier who has been a guest of the Taliban in Afghanistan for the past five years.

Critics of the trade say it was a bad, bad, bad deal. They throw in the possibility that the soldier may have abandoned his post. This would, in many minds, be desertion, and the penalty for desertion is, rightly so, harsh.

Meanwhile, there are two parents in Idaho who are happy to know their son is in the hands of the U.S. military again, regardless of his fate.

As for the five terrorists who were sent to Qatar as part of the exchange, I have two words: Good riddance.

The most recent reckoning I can find of the prisoner count at Gitmo was 166 late last year. So I'm calculating that the count is at least down to 161 now.

Good.

That's five less mouths to feed.

But that's not all. In addition to being well fed, the Gitmo detainees are an expensive lot. Think of the special facilities -- air-conditioned -- and all the other needs that must be met when you have 161 guests who hate your guts.

In November 2011, it was estimated that each Gitmo prisoner cost $800,000 a year to maintain. By May 2013, that figure had crept up to $900,000 a year. And by August of last year the cost was an astonishing $2.7 million a year for each prisoner, according to a variety of reliable news sources.

The 166 prisoners were expected to cost $454 million last year, all told.

Well, now that massive figure has been reduced by more than $8 million a year.

Or maybe not.

That's because Congress is in the process of appropriating funds for a new Gitmo prison. The old one is falling apart, and goodness knows you can't expect more than 160 of the world's worst terrorists to live in crumbling surroundings. The figure for the new prison (as of last month) was $69 million, a $20 million bump over previous estimates. Apparently, construction costs in Cuba are horrendous.

A big part of the cost of keeping prisoners in Gitmo is health care. As it turns out, the detained terrorists get some of the best medical treatment in the world. Military officials have called the Gitmo medical facilities "excellent."

It's a double slap in the face when you hear Gitmo prisoners get the best medical care at the same time we are swamped with reports that U.S. veterans, right here on American soil, are getting care that even the most generous military officials would call "crap."

How can this be?

Think about it. Gitmo prisoners are not put on secret waiting lists so supervisors at the medical facility there can collect bonuses.

If the VA system really needs more money to address all of its problems -- which, by the way, go far deeper than long waits for critical care -- doesn't it seem obvious where a big chunk of that money could come from?

What would an extra half a billion dollars a year mean for the VA medical system?

Most of the terrorists in Guantánamo may never be charged with a crime, may never receive due process for their atrocities and may never have their day in court.

So let them all go. Send them to Qatar or Yemen or Somalia or anywhere else that will take them. We don't need a prison in Cuba. We need "excellent" health care for our aging veteran population.

Surely we're smart enough to make this happen.

Perhaps it's something that can be seriously discussed once all the political ranting over the five-for-one exchange dies down.

If we won't put our veterans first, who will?

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.