Since coming back from the Thanksgiving break, the Senate has been working on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013. However, the administration has a whole host of complaints about the bill as it is currently constructed and has promised to veto it unless their concerns are addressed. Of interest to you, their veto threat extends to the language on Gitmo.
Detainee Matters: The Administration strongly objects to section 1031’s restrictions on the use of funds to transfer detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to foreign countries. When he signed past versions of this legislation, the President objected to the restrictions carried forward by section 1031, promised to work towards their repeal, and warned the Congress that the restrictions on transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay to foreign countries would in certain circumstances interfere with constitutional responsibilities committed to the Executive Branch. Since these restrictions have been on the books, they have limited the Executive’s ability to manage military operations in an ongoing armed conflict, harmed the country’s diplomatic relations with allies and counterterrorism partners, and provided no benefit whatsoever to our national security. The Administration continues to believe that restricting the transfer of detainees to the custody of foreign countries in the context of an ongoing armed conflict interferes with the Executive’s ability to make important foreign policy and national security determinations, and would in certain circumstances violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The Administration also continues to oppose the prohibition on funding to construct, acquire or modify a detention facility in the United States to house any individual detained at Guantanamo, which shortsightedly constrains the options available to military and counterterrorism professionals to address evolving threats. The restrictions carried forward by section 1031 were misguided when they were enacted and should not be renewed.
In tandem with this, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report yesterday that said that U.S. prisons can handle housing the Gitmo detainees.
Perhaps the administration is willing to take a stand to close Gitmo since they no longer have to face reelection. The problem was never the administration, though. The problem was that Congress is full of bedwetters who pee their pants whenever a wingnut says, “Boo!”
Menu is symbolic, right?
He ran a turkey of a campaign because he was too chicken to stand up to his base.
A white turkey of a campaign, to put a fine point on it.
The Southwestern/chili elements were just Obama rubbing it in.
well, Romney’s Dad was Mexican, so it’s just down home cooking to Willard.
Booman, thank you so much for saying this: “The problem was never the administration, though. The problem was that Congress is full of bedwetters who pee their pants whenever a wingnut says, “Boo!”” It was as disgusting to watch Dems, Dems who knew better, run and hide on this with their new president Obama as they ran and hid on gays in the military with Clinton.
Yep, Dems like Russ Feingold.
And Chuck Schumer
Wasn’t even the great progressive Bernie Sanders against closing Gitmo?
yes.
Hold on now. Are these people you guys are mentioning senators who came out in public against closing Gitmo, or are you all just listing people who voted for that year’s NDAA when the final version came to the floor?
Because the annual NDAA, like all departmental bills, always contains a zillion subsections, and everyone ends up voting for a bill that contains something they don’t like.
Schumer was vocal. Don’t know about Sanders. Once Bloomberg flipped, Schumer was right behind him.
I remember that now. The New York delegation ran for the hills.
I remember Sanders saying on the Thom Hartmann show that was in favor of closing Gitmo.
Heh.
For TarheelDem, your senator did something good.
Explain to me how more ethanol plants is good.
Ok,Ok, the Air Force can now buy vegetable oil to power their jets. (Norwegian tests say no mechanical changes required.)
Is this where we hear about switchgrass again?
Or are the Congressional loos going into a fecal methane generator to heat the Capitol?
Given her record, you could have stopped with “your senator did something.”
It was embarassing to see the knees buckle on so many Dems. One of the discussed prison sites was here in IL in a small rural community. The thought was it would be bought by the Feds and in addition to other Fed prisoners include prisoners from Gitmo. All you heard was about how terrorists would be flocking through O’Hare and shoot up this small town.
The interesting thing is the town welcomed the idea. They figured increased employment and dollars would result. They didn’t buy into the scare langauge, although everybody else in the state did. Well, not everybody but definitely a majority.
Obviously not you or I, and probably not ILJimP. In fact, I never heard any opposition except for Republican blowhards.
The prison is a SuperMax. How do prisoners who probably speak little or no English and have no cash and only prison garb, escape into the really deep woods and make their way to the city where they can find support from mosques? One doesn’t even have to argue whether the mosques would help or not. These escaped prisoners would have to make their way through hundreds of miles of woods and/or hundreds of miles of farms occupied by gun-toting Republicans. These morons think their guns can be used against the United States government which has millions of military and law-enforcement professionals, but not an unarmed escaped Middle-Easterner. Bed-wetters indeed.
I suspect they really want the prisoners to stay in Gitmo so that they cannot access lawyers and reporters to talk of human rights abuses.
I didn’t even really hear any opposition from state republicans it was only the DC cowards that want to protect their hides from what they allowed under the Bush Administration.
The security justification was so transparently bogus that it can be assumed to be a pretext – but for what?
Maybe it’s what you say. Maybe it was just a cheap political attack without any actual policy goal. Maybe it was a broader point about keeping the issue of terrorism on an entirely military footing.
It’s like the real reasons for the Iraq War; the only thing we can know for sure is that the reason they offered isn’t honest.
I believe that was it in its entirety – if someone had floated the option of closing GitMo and having the military summarily execute everyone held there then we’d probably see the sides reversed.
Perhaps the administration is willing to take a stand to close Gitmo since they no longer have to face reelection.
Well, the administration took a stand on closing Gitmo and giving KSM a trial – picked it as one of their big, public fights, using the BULLY PULPIT and everything, expending a great deal of political capital in an uphill fight – back in 2009, when Obama did have to face reelection.
Perhaps a better explanation is that he is trying to leverage the influence from his recent election victory, like he did in 2009.
If you look at leaving Iraq, killing the F-22, canceling the missile defense bases in Eastern Europe, setting a timeline in Afghanistan, killing off Future Combat Systems, and ending DADT, Obama has quite a record of not caring if his actions open him up to criticism as “soft” on defense matters. I don’t think a fear of being criticized by the hawks makes much sense as an explanation for his behavior in office.
So the Obama administration is taking the same stance this year that it did last year. Absent any evidence that he won’t sign the NDAA again this year and again “strongly object” to the Gitmo provision, or evidence that there’s any possibility Congress won’t again include the provision with bipartisan support, why is this year any different?
I like the way you left out “…got the provision he didn’t like altered so he could do what he wanted to do.”
And while we’re on this subject: there was a veto-proof majority for passing the original version of last year’s NDAA, the version that would have mandated that the government use indefinite military detention. By negotiating that language out of the bill in exchange for his signature, Barack Obama prevented the practice of putting people into indefinite military detention (which he ended upon coming into office) from being reintroduced. He stopped that practice; Congress tried to force him to adopt it; he fought back, and he won. Because of Obama’s maneuvering on that bill, which includes the deal he ultimately cut, terrorist suspects are not being put into the federal courts, instead of going the Jose Padilla route. Absent that deal, they would be.
I’m glad we have a President who can understand the actual, as opposed to symbolic, implications of his decisions.
That’s supposed to read “…terrorism suspects are NOW being put into the federal courts.”
Strong statement from Obama. He has a lot of cred on national security now, so it seems like he’ll have a much better chance of getting what he wants. My recollection is that there was no big public opposition to closing Gitmo, just a lot of cheap posturing by both parties to head off being accused of being “soft on terrorism”. Now Obama has managed to turn that charge around. Excellent news.