So you think that Obama's decision to not to veto the National Defense Authorization Act means he can throw Americans into military detention.? Well it doesn't.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

Following the Obama administration's withdrawal of its veto threat Wednesday, the National Defense Authorization Act passed both houses of Congress easily and is now headed to the president's desk. 

So what exactly does the bill do? It says that the president has to hold a foreign Al Qaeda suspect captured on US soil in military detention—except it leaves enough procedural loopholes that someone like convicted underwear bomber and Nigerian citizen Umar Abdulmutallab could actually go from capture to trial without ever being held by the military. It does not, contrary to what many media outlets have reported, authorize the president to indefinitely detain without trial an American citizen suspected of terrorism who is captured in the US. A last minute compromise amendment adopted in the Senate, whose language was retained in the final bill, leaves it up to the courts to decide if the president has that power, should a future president try to exercise it. But if a future president does try to assert the authority to detain an American citizen without charge or trial, it won't be based on the authority in this bill. 

So it's simply not true, as the Guardian wrote yesterday, that the the bill "allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay." When the New York Times editorial page writes that the bill would "strip the F.B.I., federal prosecutors and federal courts of all or most of their power to arrest and prosecute terrorists and hand it off to the military," or that the "legislation could also give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial," they're simply wrong. 

The language in the bill that relates to the detention authority as far as US citizens and permanent residents are concerned is, "Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States."

What it does do is write into law an assumed role for the military in domestic counterterrorism that did not exist before. In my opinion that is a slippery slope, and I am not at all happy that this bill is going to pass.

But it does not change the existing laws in this country as they pertain to American citizens, or legal aliens visiting this country. I am not sure why the President decided to let this pass without a fight, though in the past we have seen what has appeared to be a defeat turn out to be a victory, but in doing so he did not put any American protestors in danger of military incarceration. That is simply false.

You can read more about this at Please Cut the Crap.