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October 29, 2009

Obama Signs Record $680B War Bill, Extends Military Commissions
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President Obama has signed into law the $680 billion National Defense
Authorization Act, the largest military spending bill of its kind. The
bill includes funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and
modifies the military commissions system at Guantanamo Bay. The changes
include new restrictions on hearsay and coerced testimony, although
without barring them completely. The law also increases prisoners’
access to evidence and witnesses. But civil liberties advocates say it
still falls far short of adhering to international law and the Geneva
Conventions. Children could still be tried as war criminals, and terror
suspects—now known as “unprivileged enemy belligerents”—could be tried
for offenses not traditionally considered “war crimes.” Jameel Jaffer of
the American Civil Liberties Union said, “Closing the [Guantanamo Bay]
prison will have little meaning if the administration leaves in place
the policies that the prison has come to represent.” At the signing
ceremony, Obama said the measure had trimmed excessive military
spending.

President Obama: “I have always rejected the notion that we have to
waste billions of dollars of taxpayer money to keep this nation secure.
In fact, I think that wasting these dollars makes us less secure. And
that’s why we have passed a defense bill that eliminates some of the
waste and inefficiency in our defense process—reforms that will better
protect our nation, better protect our troops, and save taxpayers tens
of billions of dollars.”

Despite Obama’s praise, the bill included several military spending
projects he had opposed, including $560 million for a new F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter engine the Pentagon had rejected. Overall, the bill
increases spending $24 billion from the last fiscal year. The bill also
includes a law expanding the definition of hate crimes to cover those
targeted because of their sexual orientation, granting new protections
to lesbian, gay and transgender people under federal law. The measure
was named after Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming university student who
was brutally beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die in 1998.



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