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Obama Signs NDAA Again Despite Empty Veto Threats

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, despite his own threat to veto it over prohibitions on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Civil liberties advocates had roundly criticized the bill over Guantanamo and a separate section that could allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on suspicions of supporting terrorism. Just as he did with last year’s version of the bill, however, Obama decided that the need to pass the NDAA, which also sets the armed forces’ $633 billion budget for the 2013 fiscal year, was simply “too great to ignore,” according to a presidential signing statement released in the early morning hours Thursday.

Members of the human rights coalition that had urged Obama to follow through on his veto threat blasted his decision as a cave to congressional Republicans.

“President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. “His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.”

“It’s the second time that the president has promised to veto a piece of a very controversial national security legislation only to sign it,” said Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. “He has a habit of promising resistance to national security initiatives that he ultimately ends up supporting and enabling.”

Obama’s signature caps an intense sequence of events for opponents of indefinite detention. In November, a bipartisan group of senators amended their chamber’s NDAA bill to prohibit the military from detaining American citizens on American soil. But when the House and Senate met to reconcile their versions of the NDAA, that amendment was stripped out behind closed doors.

Outside of Congress, civil liberties groups are pushing forward with a lawsuit against the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA on the grounds that they are unconstitutional. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg denied their efforts to reinstate an injunction against indefinite detention on Dec. 14, but the case against the law is still proceeding in the Second Circuit Court.

“It’s not encouraging that the President continues to be willing to tie his own hands when it comes to closing Guantanamo,” Dixon Osburn, the director of Human Rights First’s Law and Security Program, said in a statement. “The injustice of Guantanamo continues to serve as a stain on American global leadership on human rights.”

Jan. 11 marks the 11th anniversary of the prison camp’s opening there.

Source: anarcho-queer