The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee in a letter to President Obama on Tuesday praised the president’s renewed commitment to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but urged Obama to appoint a senior official charged with working to close the facility.

“I write to add my strong support to your efforts to re-engage with Congress on this issue,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said. “I will do everything I can to aid those efforts.”

The State Department in January reassigned Daniel Fried, the special envoy for closing Gitmo, and did not replace him. Attorney General Eric Holder said this month that the administration is “in the process now” to fill the position, and Smith is urging action:

I ask you to appoint a senior official, either to your White House staff or to a senior position within the Department of State, charged with leading the renewed efforts to transfer those detainees held at GTMO who have been cleared for transfer by the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force. The appointment of a senior leader to negotiate and effectuate international detainee transfers is fundamental to a renewed effort to close GTMO.

Obama can order Defense Secretary Hagel to start transferring detainees out of Guantanamo, particularly 59 Yemenis who have been cleared for release. Not only would that begin the process of closing Gitmo — and perhaps even end the ongoing hunger strike there — but it’s relatively non-controversial because, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the Yemenis’ “new government wants them back.”

Smith agrees:

I also ask you to make several efforts to expedite the transfer of detainees whose transfer from GTMO will not hurt the security of the United States. First, request Secretary of Defense Hagel to study the feasibility of using the national security waiver to transfer low-risk detainees. Second, implement a limited waiver of your ban on transfers to Yemen.

While the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), has also written Obama offering support for closing Gitmo, getting the rest of Congress, particularly Republicans, to sign on is going to be a tough sell. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he wants the prison closed but has so-far just complained that Obama has “never come up with a viable plan.”

“Congress has blocked it, so he’s going to have to find a way to remove the blockages of Congress, and hopefully he’ll let us know how he’ll do that,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said Tuesday, according to the Hill.

More than 100 detainees are officially on hunger strike at Gitmo, and 31 are being force-fed — a practice rights groups have condemned as a violation of international law and possibly torture. “It’s getting uglier and uglier at Gitmo,” Smith told the Hill.

“The level of embarrassment is growing and the cost is growing, so is that enough to persuade [Members of Congress] that it’s time to change positions?” Smith added. “We’re going to have that debate.” (HT: Carol Rosenberg)

The most expensive prison in the world recently became even more costly. The Guantanamo Bay prison is badly in need of renovation and it’s going to cost the American taxpayer nearly $200 million to do it.

“The mess hall, the barracks for my military personnel down there are just ramshackle,” Southern Command commander Gen. John Kelly told Foreign Policy this week. “No one thought [Gitmo] would be open this long, so they didn’t build any accommodations for the troops.”

That $200 million is on top of the $150 million it costs each year — setting aside the moral, tactical and strategic costs — to operate the prison and military court system — that’s around $900,000 per detainee. To put that number into perspective, the Federal government pays around $60,000 per inmate, per year in a maximum security prison and an average of $30,000 across all federal prisons.

“That … may be what finally gets us to actually close the prison. I mean the costs are astronomical, when you compare them to what it would cost to detain somebody in the United States,” CAP’s Ken Gude recently told Reuters.

Or perhaps what might move Congress and the President is what the U.S. government could spend that money on otherwise, Reuters has some examples:

Just one inmate from Guantanamo, for example, is equivalent to the cost of 12 weeks of White House tours for the public — a treasured tradition that the Secret Service says costs $74,000 a week and that has been axed under sequestration.

A single inmate is also the equivalent of keeping open the control tower at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport for 45 months. That control tower, another victim of cuts, costs $20,000 per month to run.

The $900,000 also matches the funding for nearly seven states to help serve home delivered meals to the elderly. Sequestration has cost Meals on Wheels a median shortfall of $129,497 per state, the organization says.

Or measured in terms of military spending and national security, the cost of four inmates represents the cost of training an Air Force fighter pilot – based on the Department of Defense’s figure of $3.6 million per pilot.

President Obama agrees. As the hunger strike and force-feeding crises at Gitmo were heating up, the President announced last month that he would renew his administration’s long-stalled efforts to close the prison. “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” he said, adding: “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

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On February 6, a number of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison started a hunger strike after guards there allegedly searched their Qurans, an act the detainees viewed as mistreating Islam’s holy book and saw as violating a long-standing agreement with authorities at Gitmo. But now the hunger strike is 100 days old with no end in sight. Dozens more prisoners have joined the protest (102 of the 166 detainees by the military’s count, but detainee lawyers say the number is closer to 130) and the military says 30 hunger strikers are being force-fed, mostly against their will.

While the hunger strike has had the benefit of sparking wider media attention to the detainees’ predicament and renewing interest in closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, particularly from President Obama, the situation in and of itself is looking more like a lose-lose proposition for all sides involved: a public relations disaster for the U.S. military and the Obama administration and, for the detainees, many of whom have been cleared for release, malnutrition, the possibility of being force-fed — which experts and rights groups say violates international law and could be viewed as torture — or perhaps even death.

Ultimately, the problems at Guantanamo Bay won’t end until the prison is closed. But lawyers for hunger striking detainees have said that, at the very least, there are seemingly non-complicated ways to end this hunger strike. Listed below are some ways, they said, to achieve that result. And indeed, one possible prescription for beginning to end the hunger strike could also serve as one step in the process of closing the Gitmo prison all together:

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A group of human rights organizations is calling on Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to abandon force-feeding hunger striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg reports:

The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Watch and 17 other groups wrote the Pentagon on Monday … [calling] Guantánamo’s force-feeding process “inherently cruel, inhuman, and degrading.”

“We urgently request that you order the immediate and permanent cessation of all force-feeding of Guantánamo prisoners who are competent and capable of forming a rational judgment as to the consequences of refusing food,” they wrote.

The letter also asked Hagel to allow “independent medical professionals” access to the prison to “review and monitor the status of hunger-striking prisoners in a manner consistent with international ethical standards.”

While other groups like the American Medical Association and the Constitution Project’s task force on terror detainees have also condemned force-feeding at Gitmo, the rights groups’ letter comes after Al-Jazeera reported on Monday the contents of the Guantanamo Bay Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for managing hunger strikes at the prison. The documents illustrate “a brutal and dehumanising medical procedure that requires [detainees] to wear masks over their mouths while they sit shackled in a restraint chair for as long as two hours.”

A lawyer representing several Gitmo prisoners said last week that “detainees have described the experience of having the tube snaked down your throat as being like having a razor blade pulled down.” The lawyer, David Remes, said the military uses force-feeding to prevent detainees from becoming martyrs.

The SOP makes clear that the prison commander, not doctors and nurses, has the final authority regarding whether a detainee is to be force-fed and that only “reasonable efforts” are needed to get consent from a hunger striking detainee to begin force-feeding.

Leonard Rubenstein, a lawyer at the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Heath and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, told Al-Jazeera that the SOP is “Orwellian.”

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President Obama’s renewed calls to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are already being met with promises of further stonewalling from Republicans in Congress, before a new plan can even be put forward.

It’s not new that Republicans oppose the idea that closing a prison that has been for years now a symbol of U.S. disregard for human rights would be in the interests of the United States, having blocked administration proposals several times. And now, Republicans are already shooting down Obama’s renewed push, mostly based on previous proposals to transport detainees to “supermax” prisons in the United States:

• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “There is wide, bipartisan opposition in Congress to the president’s goal of moving those terrorists to American cities and towns.”
• Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC): “[The detainees are] individuals hell-bent on our destruction and destroying our way of life.”
• Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): “All of the prisoners housed at Guantanamo are terrorists. They pose an obvious threat to our national security, and they should not be allowed to set foot on our soil.”
• Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “The American people expect us to keep them safe. I have yet to hear one good reason why moving these terrorists from off our shores right into the heart of our country makes us safer.”
• Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): “The president needs to realize that the Global War on Terrorism did not end with the killing of Osama bin Laden. The Boston bombing is a sharp reminder that there is still a clear and present threat to our American way of life from those that mean us harm.”
• Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-TN): “[Detainees] are not U.S. citizens and should not be given the same rights and privileges as if they were. [...] I do not support any plan for these prisoners that puts them on U.S. soil.”

The insistence that Guantanamo’s current population of 166 detainees must remain in place rather than reach U.S. soil is in itself based on a flawed premise. More than 200 international terrorists are currently serving out sentences in super-maximum security facilities in the United States, and — counter to GOP theories about the consequences of transferring detainees to the mainland — no convicted terrorist has escaped or attacked a prison in the U.S.

While Democrats are largely remaining silent on the issue thus far, not all Republicans are opposed to closing down the prison, with some seeming willing to work with the President on its closure — so long as they aren’t the ones that have to propose solutions. “I don’t agree with the reasons that have been offered, that they outweigh the use of Guantanamo,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) told the Wall Street Journal, but maintained that she would be willing to work with the administration should they propose a new detention policy. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon — chair of the House Armed Services Committee — made a similar point in an op-ed this weekend, demanding a new detention suggestion from Obama before Gitmo can be closed.

Obama made his comments regarding Gitmo’s eventual closure at a press conference last week when asked about the ongoing hunger strike among the detainees imprisoned there. “I’ve asked my team to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively and I’m going to reengage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the American people,” Obama said at the time.

Given the intransigence of Republicans, President Obama may be forced to go around Congress to release some Gitmo detainees. Several options are available to Obama including, as CAP expert Ken Gude pointed out, utilizing his authority to transfer detainees cleared for release from Gitmo to custody in their country of origin.

A lawyer representing several prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison said on Monday that hunger striking detainees have described to him the excruciatingly painful process of being force-fed, saying that the tube going down to the stomach through the detainee’s nostril feels like “having a razor blade pulled down.”

The U.S. military says that 100 of the 166 Gitmo detainees are currently on hunger strike, although detainee lawyers say the number could be closer to 130. Their refusal to eat initially began in February as a protest against guards allegedly mishandling their Qurans but it has grown into a general demonstration against their indefinite detention.

David Remes, a lawyer representing some of those on hunger strike, described the process to the CBC’s As It Happens on Monday:

REMES: You’re strapped into a restraining chair with so many straps and hand cuffs that you can’t move a muscle. Then a tube is snaked down your throat putting it through your nostril down to your stomach and they pump Ensure into it or other nutrients and they do that until they’ve given you what they consider to be enough and then they take the tube out. … And detainees have described the experience of having the tube snaked down your throat as being like having a razor blade pulled down.

The American Medical Association, a bipartisan expert task force on Gitmo detainees and a top U.N. official have condemned the military’s force-feeding policy, saying it violates international law and could amount to torture.

Military officials say authorities force-feeds hunger strikers at Gitmo in order “to preserve life.” But Remes argues the policy is meant to prevent detainees from becoming martyrs:

REMES: The government doesn’t have the right or the authority to make that decision for the detainee. I’m sure you’re aware of the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands who died many years ago because the British didn’t force feed him. Now they did the right thing but as a consequence, he became a martyr. The U.S. doesn’t want the detainees to become martyrs. When they say it’s lawful, what they really mean is it’s their policy. There’s no requirement that they do it. There’s no prohibition against their doing it. They just do it.

Listen to the full interview here:

Another lawyer representing two Kuwaiti detainees told NBC News on Sunday that one of his clients described a similar brutal force-feeding process:

“When that tube goes up your nose, your eyes begin to water, as it passes through the back of your skull. As it passes through your throat, you begin to gag and you begin to suck for air until it’s passed into your stomach,” [Lt. Col. Barry] Wingard said. “It’s agony, according to my client.

“The more times that you’ve been force-fed this way, the more your nose gets inflamed, the more your esophagus begins to burn, the more your stomach begins to burn.”

A new survey released on Tuesday from the polling firm YouGov found that 56 percent of Americans opposed force-feeding hunger striking Gitmo detainees, even if that means that they will die.

The Gitmo hunger strikes gained national attention after one detainee described the “painful” process of force-feeding in a New York Times op-ed last month. President Obama has since said that he will renew efforts to close the prison there.

A former Bush White House official on Thursday made the case that Nazi Germany had adhered to the laws of war during World War II when defending the Bush administration’s decision to open the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects.

Nearly 60 percent of the detainees at Guantanamo are currently on hunger strike, in what experts and their lawyers say is a protest against their indefinite incarceration there. Amid the crisis, President Obama announced this week that he will renew his administration’s efforts to close the prison.

The events sparked a debate on CNN last night, prompting former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to defend his former boss’s decision to open Gitmo to begin with. “We have it because these people did not even follow the law of war, let alone the rule of war,” he said, adding, “These people didn’t even wear a military uniform. They engaged in battle against America as terrorists, a violation of the laws of war. That’s why Guantanamo got invented.”

But most legal experts say detention practices at Gitmo violate international law.

“This country fought Adolf Hitler. And I don’t really believe that Osama bin Laden and his group are worse or more dangerous than Adolf Hitler,” CNN legal expert Jeffery Toobin countered Fleischer, adding, “We managed to defeat Adolf Hitler by following the rule of law.”

Backed in a corner, Fleischer then went a bit off the rail:

FLEISCHER: They [the Germans] followed the law of war. They wore uniforms and they fought us on battlefields. These people are fundamentally, totally by design different. And they need to be treated in a different extrajudicial system.

Watch the clip:

Apparently, according to Fleischer, in order to follow the laws of war, all one has to do is wear a uniform and fight the enemy on a grassy field. But of course the Germans committed countless brutal and vicious war crimes during World War II. We’re assuming Mr. Fleischer knows this, but it’s striking how low he’ll go to defend the Bush administration’s failed and discredited security policies.

A United Nations official called the practice of force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay “torture” on Wednesday, adding the world body to a growing list of those concerned over U.S. treatment of detainees there.

For the last several weeks, a hunger strike has been spreading throughout Guantanamo, as detainees refuse to accept food what is now widely understood as a protest of their indefinite detention. In response, the military has begun force-feeding several of the inmates through a nasal tube to keep them alive. According to AFP, the United Nations’ main human rights office has taken notice:

“If it’s perceived as torture or inhuman treatment — and it’s the case, it’s painful — then it is prohibited by international law,” Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, told AFP.

A bipartisan task force on detainees assembled by the Constitution Project earlier this month condemned force-feeding and one member also suggested that it could be torture. “The World Medical Association and international officials have clearly identified that process as cruel, in human and degrading treatment,” said Dr. Gerald Thomson. “And given the level of brutality could extend to torture.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who has long advocated for the closure of Guantanamo, reiterated her call for the prison’s closure when the hunger strike first began. “Given the uncertainty and anxieties surrounding their prolonged and apparently indefinite detention in Guantanamo, it is scarcely surprising that people’s frustrations boil over and they resort to such desperate measures,” Pillay said of the hunger strike at the time.

Coville’s statement is in-line with the opinion of the American Medical Association (AMA), which recently wrote to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel condemning the practice. Both the AMA and United Nations base their conclusion on the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Tokyo in 1975, which holds that when a prisoner “refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially.” In 1991, the group also declared that force-feeding is “never ethically acceptable.”

As of Wednesday, 100 of the 160 prisoners held within Guantanamo are on hunger strike. According to the Department of Defense, 23 of those striking are being force-fed, an increase of two from yesterday. Military doctors have been rushed to Guantanamo to provide additional support to the base’s medical facilities.

President Obama on Tuesday said he would renew his attempt to close Guantanamo Bay, saying that the prison is not in the United States’ interest and is “not sustainable.”