Josh Gerstein reports that Senator Reid has announced that he will not allow the NDAA for FY’12 to come to the floor for a vote until concerns over section 1031, 1032, and 1033 are addressed.  As you may recall (we posted on those provisions previously; see here for a set of links to posts on this blog discussing the NDAA), section 1031 involves clarification that the AUMF confers detention authority, 1032 mandates military detention in some cases, and 1033 imposes restrictions on transfers out of GTMO.  Those latter two are particularly bad ideas, in my view. 

In any event, it may be that the next public step in the Senate on these matters will involve hearings.  Senator Reid had hinted at this when, speaking from the floor on Monday, he said the following:

To show you how extremely important it is that we do something about these provisions in this bill that are just wrong, both the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and the Intelligence Committee in the Senate have asked for hearings on this provision in this bill.

As readers may recall, there was a hearing in the House partially focused on just this question back in July, and my takeaway from it was that there was potential consensus that it was in fact unwise to mandate the military options in all cases.  More to follow soon, no doubt.

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