The White House on Wednesday said it would not veto the controversial National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
""President Barack Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney said lawmakers who crafted a compromise version from rival Senate and House versions of the legislation had addressed his worries about proposed tough rules on detainees.
The legislation has been the subject of considerable criticism.
At one point the bill contained a provision that would have authorized the U.S. to use military force anywhere there were terrorism suspects, including within the U.S. itself. The American Civil Liberties Union described it as authorizing a “worldwide war without end.”
The section was removed from the bill in July.
But other controversial provisions, Sections 1031 and 1032, remained. The provisions would have authorized the U.S. to indefinitely detain suspected terrorists anywhere in the world without charge or trial, and hold them in military custody.
Democratic senators tried amend the provisions, but failed. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned the provisions “put every American at risk” of being sent to Guantanamo Bay. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) said it violated the Constitution because U.S. citizens could be apprehended on U.S. soil and held without a trial.
Obama threatened to veto the entire bill because of the provisions, which he said were “inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”
The latest version of the bill, drafted by the House-Senate conference committee, kept both provisions. But it exempted U.S. citizens from the requirement for terror suspects to be held in military custody and included language stating that the bill did not extend new authority to detainee U.S. citizens.""
""The bill forces federal agencies to treat non-citizen terrorism suspects as enemies waging war against the U.S. rather than criminals. FBI Director Robert Mueller said the provisions would disrupt, rather than strengthen, efforts to fight terrorism in the U.S.
“The statute lacks clarity with regard to what happens at the time of arrest,” he explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It lacks clarity with regard to what happens if we had a case in Lackawanna, New York, and an arrest has to be made there and there’s no military within several hundred miles.”""
""The National Defense Authorization Act of FY2012 (NDAA) has taken the nation by storm with its intended application of the keyword “authorization.” The Act enables military force against American citizens, presumably on American soil, while further allowing indefinite detention of citizens without first applying the due process of law. Conservatives led the outcry against the Senate’s bi-partisan plan to remove rights from the people by drawing attention to sections 1031, 1032 and 1033 of the Act that specifically authorize military detainment of civilian personnel subjectively linked to al-Qaeda and Taliban terror efforts. The NDAA sections encompassing indefinite detention contradict themselves on the bearing the Act will actually have on American citizens; to which a waiver policy ensures anyone selected by government can be apprehended by both an increasingly militarized police force and the U.S. military itself. The implications on the NDAA are far more reaching then most realize.
Appropriate Loss in Obama Administration Trust
The sense of trust lost with the Obama Administration has come with good reason. Many were alarmed when President Obama stood before the U.S. Constitution and very succinctly declared how he would seek to circumvent the U.S. Constitution in order to essentially legalize indefinite detention. The Obama Administration raised even more concerns when defining Right Wing Extremists to include military veterans and further linking the two with word “terrorist.”[i] Conservatives, embracing personal liberty were taken back by the back-room tactics utilized by the Obama Administration in the “transparent” handling of the Patient Protection and Affordable Patient Care Act.[ii] For many, America was rapidly spiraling into a nation whose Constitution was a mere afterthought. Concerns were raised over the Pentagon’s program providing local law enforcement agencies with military grade equipment.[iii] Thursday, the White House released its new homegrown terror strategy that further blurs the authority of local law enforcement missions and that of full blown militarization.[iv] The NDAA only validates suspicions harbored against the Obama Administration.""
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