President Barack Obama may name a new envoy as a first step toward honoring his renewed pledge to close Guantanamo Bay, but the path to shuttering the "war on terror" camp seems as intractable as ever. With more than half of the inmates on a hunger strike, Obama said the situation was "not sustainable" in rare comments Tuesday on a jail that stained the US image and that he promised, and failed to close in his first term. A day later, the White House was under pressure to explain exactly how Obama planned to do things differently for the George W. Bush-era facility.

By Matt Spetalnick and Jane Sutton WASHINGTON/MIAMI (Reuters) - An independent task force issued a damning review of Bush-era interrogation practices on Tuesday, saying the highest U.S. officials bore ultimate responsibility for the "indisputable" use of torture, and it urged President Barack Obama to close the Guantanamo detention camp by the end of 2014.

By Jane Sutton MIAMI (Reuters) - The indefinite detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo detention camp is "abhorrent and intolerable" and should end by the time U.S. troops leave Afghanistan next year, an independent U.S. task force said in a report released on Tuesday. The Constitution Project's task force, which included two retired U.S. generals, urged President Barack Obama to declare the war over when U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of 2014.

* Guantanamo judge orders mental competency test * Defendant was waterboarded in secret CIA prison By Jane Sutton GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Feb 8 (Reuters) - CIA records documenting the waterboarding and interrogation of an alleged al Qaeda chieftain must be shown to the doctors who will decide whether he is mentally competent for trial on charges of conspiring to bomb a U.S. warship, a judge ordered.