home

Obama's Signing Statement on Guantanamo

Here is President Obama's signing statement objecting to portions of the NDAA. His statement on restricting the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo:

This provision hinders the Executive's ability to carry out its military, national security, and foreign relations activities and would, under certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The executive branch must have the flexibility to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers. The Congress designed these sections, and has here renewed them once more, in order to foreclose my ability to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. [More...]

I continue to believe that operating the facility weakens our national security by wasting resources, damaging our relationships with key allies, and strengthening our enemies. My Administration will interpret these provisions as consistent with existing and future determinations by the agencies of the Executive responsible for detainee transfers. And, in the event that these statutory restrictions operate in a manner that violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my Administration will implement them in a manner that avoids the constitutional conflict.

On the prohibition of transfer to the U.S. for federal trial:

“My administration will interpret these provisions as consistent with existing and future determinations by the agencies of the executive responsible for detainee transfers,” Obama said. “In the event that these statutory restrictions operate in a manner that violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my administration will implement them in a manner that avoids the constitutional conflict.”

This year's NDAA contained some new restrictions:

The bill extended and strengthened limits on transfers out of Guantánamo to troubled nations like Yemen, the home country of the bulk of the remaining low-level detainees who have been cleared for repatriation. It also, for the first time, limited the Pentagon’s ability to transfer the roughly 50 non-Afghan citizens being held at the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan at a time when the future of American detention operations there is murky.

Obama signed the bill into law Wednesday.

The cost of Gitmo is enormous. There are 166 remaining detainees at Gitmo. The Miami Herald reports:

1,700 troops and civilians serve on temporary or contract duties — in a setting where the Pentagon imports everything from food to fuel for electricity to entertainment for both captives and captors.

...The Obama administration has estimated the costs of keeping a captive at Guantánamo as topping $800,000 per prisoner per year. A Government Accountability Office study on the possibility of relocating Guantanamo captives to U.S. soil estimated the cost of one year’s federal confinement in a maximum security lockup at $34,627.55 a year.

DOJ has cleared 55 detainees for release, mostly Yemenis and Syrians, but they can't leave because of the Congress' restrictions.

< Kim Dotcom Alleges Government Lied in Getting Seizure Warrants | Friday News and Open Thread >
  • The Online Magazine with Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news

  • Contribute To TalkLeft


  • Display: Sort:
    He could easily take this argument... (5.00 / 4) (#1)
    by Dadler on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 12:46:41 AM EST
    ...straight to the American people, like he could with any number of supposed major disagreements with the insane Right (he did just win re-election, no?)  In fact, that would seem to be the better route, since the Right has no interest in doing anything to help anyone, not even themselves. So...you go around them, over their heads, you blow right past them, and you beat them at a game of YOUR choosing, of YOUR design. But that requires imagination and creativity, and, sigh, you know the rest. Plus, from his actions, Obama can't really be viewed as believing this stuff too much. When we murder innocent folks by drone, for example, our enemies are just as "strengthened," if not more so.

    And (5.00 / 1) (#6)
    by lentinel on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 10:00:06 AM EST
    that was our choice.
    Between him, and Romney.

    As we go along, I must wonder what the difference would have been.

    Parent

    So, when is a veto threat not a (5.00 / 7) (#2)
    by Anne on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 06:22:32 AM EST
    veto threat?  When Barack Obama is the one issuing it, apparently.

    Charlie Pierce had some thoughts on this subject:

    I'm sure we will soon hear from some people that the fact that the president signed the new National Defense Authorization Act today, despite a previous promise to veto the measure if provisions that prevented him from closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay were included, because he has a "long game" strategy designed to "put the Republicans in a corner." He also endorsed, by his signature, the principle embodied in the act that Americans can be detained indefinitely without probable cause on the suspicion of "supporting" terrorism which, of course, will mean whatever the executive department or the Commander In Chief -- Trumpets, please -- decide that it means.

    [snip]

    Yes, Congress has partly tied his hands, and it has done so by making it harder for him to close Gitmo down. But, even against that, the president argues for the supremacy of the executive branch in such matters. That, coupled with a veto warning that was as empty as a toddler's threat to run away from home, vitiates any case the president might choose to make that what he really wants to do is to protect the Bill Of Rights. The presidency has been allowed to become a dangerous beast over a number of decades, to the point where anyone who seeks it can rightly be presumed to have at least the spark of lawless authoritarianism in him. And, if that spark is there, the presidency will seek it out and bring it to flame. This president is no different.

    [snip]

    This is what you get when you don't listen to old Ike's warning, when you let the Kennedys run amuck concerning Castro, when you let Lyndon fake an incident in the Tonkin Gulf, when you impeach Nixon over a burglary and not the illegal  bombing of Cambodia, when you let everyone skate on Iran-Contra, when you impeach one president over a blowjob but let another one slide for lying the country into a war, for abrogating treaties and violating international law regarding torture, when you let a sociopath like Richard Cheney anywhere near the levers of power, and when you let a president decide which American lives or dies by standards he declines to share with the rest of us. This is what you get. Barack Obama didn't sell out the Bill Of Rights today because he's Barack Obama. Barack Obama sold out the Bill Of Rights today because he's the president of the United States, and that's now part of the damn job description.

    All I can say is, it's long past time we stopped thinking that "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" means what we thought it did.


    Obama (5.00 / 5) (#5)
    by lentinel on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 09:58:09 AM EST
    issued a veto threat, and then he signs.

    If I were in the opposition, I would be quite confident that when Obama says he will stand firm, he will wilt like an old daisy.

    Parent

    Ugggghhh ... a first year teacher ... (5.00 / 3) (#8)
    by Yman on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 10:58:25 AM EST
    ... would know that, if you don't follow through with promised consequences, the kids will never take you seriously.

    Parent
    With some people, a veto threat (5.00 / 1) (#15)
    by shoephone on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 12:54:31 PM EST
    is just like a filibuster threat. FISA 2008...

    Parent
    With (none / 0) (#20)
    by lentinel on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 03:00:20 PM EST
    this guy, it"s all a load of ....

    Parent
    Irony (none / 0) (#9)
    by vicndabx on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 12:03:15 PM EST
    a web page w/a post about the President "selling out" on the Bill of Rights is itself preceeded by multiple pages of bot-loading tracking code - or am I the only one who gets the 10-second please wait while the page loads message?

    Parent
    ::shrug:: (3.50 / 2) (#10)
    by sj on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 12:13:38 PM EST
    It's not as bad as the MSNBC website.  But talking about the delivery by the website is one way to [attempt to] divert the conversation from the content.

    Parent
    gotta luv ya sj (5.00 / 1) (#11)
    by vicndabx on Fri Jan 04, 2013 at 12:29:13 PM EST