The Hill News

When it comes to dealing with terrorism, synching the law, morality and effectiveness of how we deal with terrorists â€" and how we show ourselves to the world â€" is vitally important.  Senators McCain, Ayotte, Graham, McConnell and Chambliss took to the Senate floor this week to “talk about the importance of the defense authorization bill.” The Senators focused on controversial provisions on detention and trial of terror suspects buried within this key piece of defense legislation. However, the Senators are playing loose with both the facts and history involved, and this leads to conclusions that are cynical at best, and harmful to our security at worst.

First a little background: The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes all defense spending for the fiscal year, contains several provisions related to detention policy that mark a drastic deviation from the norm: Section 1031 authorizes of indefinite detention; Section 1032 requires! military custody of terrorism suspects; and 1033 has stringent restrictions on the transfer of detainees.

The five Senators took to the floor to raise three questions that they say their provisions are necessary to answer, but facts and recent history say otherwise:

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