WASHINGTON, June 17: As the first full Senate hearing on the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees of the war on terror continues, the demand for closing Guantanamo Bay prison camp also increases. Even the solid support of majority Republicans in Congress, who have consistently viewed Guantanamo as necessary in the post-Sept 11 battle against terrorism, is eroding.

Chuck Hagel, a Republican senator from Nebraska, warned that Guantanamo is “going to end in disaster ... if we don’t wake up and smell the coffee.” He pointed to those incarcerated at Guantanamo as one reason the US is “losing the image war around the world.”

“We do need some kind of a facility to hold these people. But this can’t be indefinite. This can’t be a situation where we hold them forever and ever and ever until they die of old age,” the senator said.

Mel Martinez, another Republican senator and a former member of the Bush Cabinet, also suggested that the administration consider closing Guantanamo.

“It has become an icon for bad stories, and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio,” Mr Martinez said. “How much do you get out of having that facility there?”

At the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is conducting a hearing on the issue, Sen Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel’s senior Democrat, said the US has created a “legal black hole” at Guantanamo. “We want other countries to adhere to the rule of law. And in Guantanamo, we are not.”

But defenders of Guantanamo Bay have a new argument: A prison that serves inmates lemon-baked fish, rice pilaf and honey-glazed chicken can’t be all bad.

Duncan Hunter, a Republican congressman from California, brought a steaming plate heaped with food to a Washington news conference earlier this week, railing about how inmates get rice, bread, vegetables “and two types of fruit” in addition to main courses. “The inmates have never eaten better, they’ve never been treated better and they’ve never been more comfortable in their lives,” he exclaimed.

But this failed to impress those who are demanding the closure of the prison. They argued that Mr Hunter missed the point; the dispute is not over the prison menu but about the legal rights of the prisoners. “(Mr Hunter) seems to argue this is more a Club Med than a prison – let’s get real,” Senator Patrick Leahy said at the Senate Judiciary Committee. “These people have been locked up for three years, no end in sight and no process to lead us out of there.”

He pointed to yet new revelations of humiliations and mishandling of the holy Quran by Guantanamo guards to support his demand for closing down the prison.

Although President George W. Bush has not ruled out the possibility of closing Guantanamo, some senior members of his government have rejected the demand. Vice President Dick Cheney has vigorously defended the prison, saying it is essential to the Bush administration’s efforts to combat terrorism. And Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Guantanamo is the most scrutinized prison in history and that the US military has “gone to unprecedented lengths to respect the religious sensibilities of these enemies of civil society.”

Mr Rumsfeld said harsh interrogation techniques that he approved helped interrogators at Guantanamo in getting useful information from some of the detainees, particularly from Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th bomber of 9/11.

But human rights activists have raised questions about interrogation methods and the treatment of detainees that Mr Rumsfeld says led interrogators to useful information. Quoting official prison logs, they point out that al-Qahtani, a suspected terrorist from Saudi Arabia, was forcibly injected with three and half bags of fluid. He was stripped nude and made to get down on all fours and bark like a dog. He was forced to wear pictures of scantily clad women hung around his neck, then held down on the floor while a female soldier straddled his chest. And when he told interrogators he had to relieve himself, they made him wet his pants.

“The bottom line is, I think more Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence, than if there were no Guantanamo,” says Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.