Rep. Pompeo: Judge issued ‘odd’ opinion in Gitmo force-feeding ruling

The Kansas Republican defended the military’s decision to
force-feed more than 40 detainees taking part in a hunger strike at the
facility that’s grown to more than 100 prisoners.

{mosads}Pompeo, who joined the House Intelligence Committee this
year, said that the hunger strike tactic was nothing new from prisoners. He
said the military was acting ethically in force-feeding them rather than
letting them die.

Medical and human rights groups have disagreed, and Kessler
cited them in concluding in her opinion that the force-feedings were a “painful,
humiliating, and degrading process.”

Pushing back against the Obama administration’s new efforts
to try to close the facility, Pompeo defended the need for Guantánamo as a
national security and intelligence tool.

“There’s a reason the president’s promise to close
Guantánamo has not occurred,” Pompeo said, adding that Obama has run into the
reality that indefinite detention is necessary in the war on terror.

He argued that closing Guantánamo or effectively moving it
onto U.S. soil presents national security risks, including putting a target on
the back of whatever community the prison is located in and risking allowing
terrorists to be released by the U.S. judicial system.

Opponents of the prison have argued that those concerns are
unfounded, pointing to the hundreds of terrorists currently already locked up
in U.S. prisons.

Since Obama said he would try to fulfill his first-term
promise to close the prison, Congress has rejected any attempts to move in that
direction. The House has voted against allowing funds to be used to move the
prisoners to the U.S., and it voted to effectively stop any transfers to Yemen,
something Obama said he wants to resume.

In the Senate, the Armed Services Committee included
provisions in its Defense authorization bill to ease transfer restrictions. But
those were not debate during the committee mark-up, and will surely be a target
of Republicans when the bill heads to the floor.