Support for Guantanamo Eroding in Bush’s Circle

Some Bush administration officials have come to believe the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be closed because reports of abuse have created a public relations problem, a senior Republican lawmaker said Sunday.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the administration was divided on the issue, with some officials taking the view that if the facility was shut down, “you shorten the [news] stories, you shorten the heated debate, and you get it off the table and you move on.”

Hunter’s comments on “Fox News Sunday” were the latest sign that the White House was considering a step that would require it to find other accommodations for about 520 detainees.

After former President Carter urged the closure of the camp and Amnesty International referred to it as a “gulag for our time,” President Bush and his aides indicated last week that they were weighing options.

Bush said in a television interview Wednesday that “we’re exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective.” At the same time, he warned that “what we don’t want to do is let somebody out that comes back and harms us.”

On Friday, Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida became the first prominent Republican to urge the facility’s closing, saying, “It’s become an icon for bad stories, and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio: ... Is it serving the purposes you thought it would serve when initially you began it?”

Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview to be broadcast today on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes,” said there was “no plan” to close the detention facility but noted that options were reviewed on a continual basis.

“The important thing to understand is that the people that are in Guantanamo are bad people,” he said.

In addition to human rights groups, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the FBI have cited abuses at the prison. Most people held there were captured in Afghanistan and sent to Cuba in hopes that they would provide information about Al Qaeda. Some have been held for three years without being charged with a crime.

In a statement Sunday, the Defense Department said interrogations at the facility had “undoubtedly produced information that has saved the lives of U.S. and coalition forces in the field as well as thwarted threats posed to innocent citizens in this country and abroad.”

Hunter said there was “good reason to push back” against proposals to close the detention facility because “we haven’t been abusing prisoners.”

To illustrate that those housed at Guantanamo have been well treated, Hunter read from a menu indicating that on Sunday, the detainees were to be fed orange-glazed chicken, fresh fruit, steamed peas and mushrooms, and rice pilaf.

“We treat them very well,” he said.

But Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, said on CNN’s “Late Edition” that Guantanamo was one reason the United States was “losing the image war” around the world.

“It’s identifiable with, for right or wrong, a part of America that people in the world believe is a power, an empire that pushes people around: We do it our way; we don’t live up to our commitments to multilateral institutions,” Hagel said.

He said Pentagon leaders had failed to take responsibility for the situation, including for harsh interrogation techniques and the treatment of prisoners.

The suggestions to close the Guantanamo camp echo arguments last year after abuse reports at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But critics pointed out that if the prison was torn down, taxpayers would need to spend millions to build a replacement.

Meanwhile, Time magazine described the Guantanamo interrogation of a man suspected of trying to take part in the Sept. 11 plot.

Quoting interrogation records, Time said interrogators tried to get information from Mohammed Al-Qahtani by making him bark like a dog, by hanging pictures of scantily clad women around his neck, by forcing him to briefly stand nude and by pouring bottles of water on his head.

During interrogations late at night, they sought to keep him awake by playing Christina Aguilera songs, the magazine said.

Al-Qahtani, who authorities say was supposed to be the 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, tried and failed to enter the United States in August 2001. The next year, U.S. authorities picked him up on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The Pentagon statement Sunday said the techniques used on Al-Qahtani were “approved and monitored” and that Al-Qahtani had acknowledged his connection with Al Qaeda as a result of the interrogation.