Contact your senators now.....

Provisions in the Defense Authorization bill would make it even harder..to close Guantanamo and send the men home who are not going to face trial.
Senator Udall has proposed an amendment which is pretty much the best we can do. This is summary of Udall's amendment No. 1107:

Here’s a summary of the Udall Amendment:

The amendment by Senator Mark Udall would strike all of the detention provisions from the Defense Authorization bill and, in their place, mandate a process for Congress to use an orderly process to consider whether any detention legislation is needed.  Under the Udall amendment, the Administration would have 90 days to report to Congress on its detention authority and any deficiencies, and Congress would have 45 days to hold hearings and another 45 days to report out any needed legislation.  Instead of the rushed and confused process that has created the current convoluted and harmful bill, Congress would follow regular order and carefully review the issue.   This is the type of approach (even if it may be opposed by sponsors of the NDAA, who don’t want the detention provisions stripped at all) that should be able to draw wide support even from Senators who may be on the fence about the merits of the issues. 

The consensus of those opposing the detainee provisions of the Defense Authorization bill is that the best course now is to throw all effort into urging Senators to support the Udall Amendment, rather than seeking tweaks to the language of any of the detainee provisions.  If you get any feedback from the Senators’ offices re where they stand on the Udall Amendment, please shoot me an e-mail to let me know so I can pass it on to those working on this.

If you make calls, you might also urge the Senators to vote against an amendment offered by Susan Collins (we don’t have the Amendment #) that would make permanent some of the onerous transfer restrictions.