Yesterday, despite a White House veto threat, the House voted to approve a defense funding bill that contains an expansion of the original post-9/11 authorization to use military force and provisions that would hamper the prosecution or transfer of Gitmo detainees, as well as force the Department of Justice to consult with the defense secretary and director of national intelligence before trying foreigners suspected of terrorism in federal court. The bill won't necessarily get better in the Senate either, despite Democratic control. Republicans in the Senate have previously sought to extend indefinite military detention to U.S. citizens, something House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon's doesn't even do.
As Robert Chesney points out, however, critics of the new AUMF provision in the NDAA don't necessarily all agree that there shouldn't be one at all. He posts a letter from Democratic Reps. Adam Smith and Howard Berman, ranking members of the House Armed Services Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee, respectively, asking that the provision be stripped out and altered. But they're not demanding that no new AUMF be passed at all. Even if that happens, though, the administration's statement suggested they were more concerned about the detention and trial restrictions than the AUMF per se, so we may still get to find out how serious they were about that veto threat.
