The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would reaffirm and arguably expand the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed just three days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In addition, for the first time, the administration is formally threatening a veto over Congress's efforts to limit his authority to release Guantanamo prisoners and to transfer war-on-terror prisoners held by the U.S. military to the U.S. for any reason.
There is a belated quality to the veto threat since Obama previously objected to but ulitmately signed a series of bills which had provisions effectively blocking the closure of Guantanamo as well as trials for the alleged September 11 conspirators.
Those provisions are among a group of GOP-sponsored detainee-related measures in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act the House is expected to take up on Wednesday.
"If the final bill presented to the President includes these provisions that challenge critical Executive branch authority, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto," the official Statement of Administration Policy issued Tuesday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget said.
The administration said it "strongly objects" to language regarding the use-of-force authorization. "In purporting to affirm the conflict, [the measure] would effectively recharacterize its scope and would risk creating confusion regarding applicable standards," said the budget office, which coordinates the administration's consensus response to pending legislation. "At a minimum, this is an issue that merits more extensive consideration before possible inclusion."
Human rights and civil liberties groups had objected to the revision to and extension of the AUMF, saying the new language amounted to a permanent declaration of war that could be used to justify an attack on any nation. Proponents of the new language said it did not expand the 2001 measure, but simply reaffirmed it and adopted a definition the Obama Administration itself had proposed in court to govern who could be detained in the conflict.
Lamakers have filed amendments to strip out several of the provisions to which the administration is objecting.
The administration statement did not contain any objection to or comment on a provision which prohibits Defense Department funding for any program to allow family members to visit Guantanamo prisoners. Currently, such visits are prohibited, but the Washington Post reported this month that the Pentagon is considering allowing them for some inmates.
Source: http://feeds.politico.com/click.phdo?i=06d2ddf499f0dc72ad54e9bea8c4fd21
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