US Senate declares the entire USA to be a ”battleground”

[Implode]

https://newsvoice.se/2011/12/02/us-senate-declares-the-entire-usa-to-be-a-battleground/

This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a ”battleground” upon which U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity.

Is this really as bad as it sounds? I haven't heard too much about it except on Tumblr.

[Chino]

If the protests take a turn for the worst it could be,

[Progmetty]

Who decides it took a turn for the worse? That's the situation we had in Egypt for the last 30 years, only it was the police that had these powers not the military but I don't think it will make much difference once someone in command decides to take matter in their own hands and has such law on their side. Or they took worst case scenarios in account so nothing that bad would happen.

[El Barto]

From what I can tell,  this seems to be a different shot at the bill we were discussing in the chat thread.  Obama was planning to veto that, and will apparently be vetoing this one, as well.  I suspect the GOP is trying to push this thing through to reclaim the tough-on-terror label that Obama has recently swiped from them.  By sticking this into the NDAA,  they're making it tough to vote against. 

Pretty shitty ploy, frankly.  Even Bush would have vetoed this.  Like I said in the chat thread,  the executive already has us all by the balls.  Giving the power to the military could undermine that. 

And the article cited was more than a little sensationalistic.  Yes,  it's a very bad thing,  but the bill does exempt US citizens form military rule,  so it's not quite the end of liberty for everybody (just Muslims). 

[Rathma]

93-7 vote? What the fuck?

[orcus116]

The thing is, did they vote 93-7 on a bill that outlined that specifically or another bill with that snuck into it?

[Fiery Winds]

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people." - William Adama

[El Barto]

The thing is, did they vote 93-7 on a bill that outlined that specifically or another bill with that snuck into it?

The latter.  It was the National Defense Authorization Act,  which comes up every year and is what largely funds the entire military.  That's what made it a dick move; it's hard to vote against.

[Implode]

I see. That's why I came here. I trust you guys to know about the issue than the people post links to this in caps on Tumblr.

[gmillerdrake]

That's what made it a dick move; it's hard to vote against.

What 99.9999% of all the 'moves' that are made by our elected officials are.......

[orcus116]

The thing is, did they vote 93-7 on a bill that outlined that specifically or another bill with that snuck into it?

The latter.  It was the National Defense Authorization Act,  which comes up every year and is what largely funds the entire military.  That's what made it a dick move; it's hard to vote against.

That's why I don't take those "so-and-so voted against this!" claims in campaign ads. There's no point of reference.

[MetalMike06]

I know this was discussed a bit in the chat threat but,

Bump.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."

There was heated debate in both houses of Congress on the legislation, requiring that suspects with links to Islamist foreign terrorist organisations arrested in the US, who were previously held by the FBI or other civilian law enforcement agencies, now be handed to the military and held indefinitely without trial.

The law applies to anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces".

Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.

"We're facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life," he said. "When you join al-Qaida you haven't joined the mafia, you haven't joined a gang. You've joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat."

Graham added that it was right that Americans should be subject to the detention law as well as foreigners. "It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next," he said. "And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them, 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'"

Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.

But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said "detaining citizens without a court trial is not American" and that if the law passes "the terrorists have won".

"We're talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk," he said. "Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts."

Paul was backed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.

"Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," she said. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."

Paul said there were already strong laws against support for terrorist groups. He noted that the definition of a terrorism suspect under existing legislation was so broad that millions of Americans could fall within it.

"There are laws on the books now that characterise who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the department of justice. Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist," Paul said. "If you are suspected because of these activities, do you want the government to have the ability to send you to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite detention?"

Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial "until the end of hostilities". They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.

The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would "cause confusion" in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.

But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.

Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year's election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.

Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.

"The paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people's minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is," Malinowski said. "It wasn't asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs."

In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.

The FBI director, Robert Mueller, said he feared the law could compromise the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be more complicated to win co-operation from suspects held by the military.

"The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain co-operation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.

Civil liberties groups say the FBI and federal courts have dealt with more than 400 alleged terrorism cases, including the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", Umar Farouk, the "underwear bomber", and Faisal Shahzad, the "Times Square bomber".

Elements of the law are so legally confusing, as well as being constitutionally questionable, that any detentions are almost certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court.

Malinowski said "vague language" was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed. "The very lack of clarity is itself a problem. If people are confused about what it means, if people disagree about what it means, that in and of itself makes it bad law," he said.

[slycordinator]

When people say that he abandoned a commitment to veto the law, they make it seem like the administration was ever against having this bill applied to Americans...
when it was Obama's administration that asked the people in Congress to change the bill to remove the exemption they originally had for US citizens. Obama only threatened to veto because they wanted it put in that the decisions for who would be detained would go through the president. The administration never gave two shits about civil liberties.

[orcus116]

I wonder what the consequences of vetoing the bill would've been. I mean it's pretty clear the whole detention of US citizens thing would be a no brainer to veto by itself[/b] but what other things surrounding it had everyone by the balls to vote yes?

[MetalMike06]

I wonder what the consequences of vetoing the bill would've been. I mean it's pretty clear the whole detention of US citizens thing would be a no brainer to veto by itself[/b] but what other things surrounding it had everyone by the balls to vote yes?

It funds the military for the next year. If he'd veto it, most Republicans would say he's then "weak on terror/defense" etc. Still no excuse, and I doubt that has anything to do with Obama signing it.

[ResultsMayVary]

I wonder what the consequences of vetoing the bill would've been. I mean it's pretty clear the whole detention of US citizens thing would be a no brainer to veto by itself[/b] but what other things surrounding it had everyone by the balls to vote yes?

It funds the military for the next year.

They would have more luck removing this specific part of the bill then vetoing the entire bill.

[El Barto]

Like I said before.  It was a dick move on Congress's part.  It was also an effective one since Obama is a genuine pussy when it comes to standing up for things like this. 

But not even that matters since Obama was actually the one responsible for making it even more egregious.  The original version actually had more safeguards for applying this nonsense to citizens.  Obama's contribution to it was to have it stipulate that only the executive gets to make that determination.

A couple of weeks ago I said that threatening to veto this thing was the first sign that he wasn't completely worthless.  Now,  it's just another demonstration of what a sorry piece of shit he truly is. 

[juice]

This bill is stupid.  The part about detaining civilians should be taken out and made a separate bill and it should be rejected by everyone in congress.

[XJDenton]

Forgive my ignorance of american politics, but why can shit like this be attached to otherwise serviceable bills?

[El Barto]

Forgive my ignorance of american politics, but why can shit like this be attached to otherwise serviceable bills?

It's another step in the evolution of our broken system.  Anybody can attach a rider to a bill;  including something completely non-germane.  Like most shitty practices in Congress,  nobody fights to prevent such tactics since they would lose them as well. 

[antigoon]

The worst part of it is that he's not going to have to answer to ANYBODY about this unless a long shot like Ron Paul somehow manages to get into a debate with him.

A big part of me wants a Republican to be president again just so our elected Democrats can pretend they care about civil liberties again.

[Scheavo]

The only thing that annoys me about all the conversation around this kind of thing, is the complete ignorance of American history. Lincoln did a lot more, he suspended Habeus Corpus, he detained the Maryland Legislature, he was a horrendous civil liberties President - and he was forgiven enough we've all carried around an picture of him; but he had the Civil War, and not this cockamamie "War on Terror." I don't really see Obama's excuse for something like this, though he has mentioned his love for Lincoln, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised.

At the same time, I really don't see something like this as TOO ripe for abuse. Not much is going to actually change, it's mostly what we were doing anyways.

[antigoon]

I think it's exactly what powers the executive has claimed he's had since 2001, except now it's being codified into law.

[slycordinator]

I think it's exactly what powers the executive has claimed he's had since 2001, except now it's being codified into law.

I'm pretty sure Bush only did the indefinite detention without trial for people who weren't citizens of the US. Obama's administration has, from what I see, expanded on that.

And before someone says "Congress expanded it, not the administration" remember again that Congress removed the exemption of our citizens at the behest of the administration.

[antigoon]

I think it's exactly what powers the executive has claimed he's had since 2001, except now it's being codified into law.

I'm pretty sure Bush only did the indefinite detention without trial for people who weren't citizens of the US. Obama's administration has, from what I see, expanded on that.

And before someone says "Congress expanded it, not the administration" remember again that Congress removed the exemption of our citizens at the behest of the administration.

*reads original post*

Oops