U.S. Military Budget Continues to Grow in 2014

Edited by Juan Leandro
2013-12-30 13:59:30

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Washington, December 30 (RHC)-- In the United States, despite bipartisan agreements to slash vital services and workers' benefits, military-industrial-complex spending will continue untouched into the New Year.

U.S. President Barack Obama has signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2014 that allots $526.8 billion for the Pentagon's budget and $80 billion for the war in Afghanistan -- totaling nearly $607 billion in defense-related spending. This is nearly $30 billion more than was agreed to in the bipartisan federal budget deal.

According to reports from Capitol Hill, the bill includes an ease of restrictions on transferring Guantanamo U.S. military prison inmates to the custody of other countries, while banning transfers to the United States, in what human rights advocates are calling a limited victory.

"We hope that President Obama will make swift use of the new NDAA provisions to actually act on his removal of the ban," reads an official statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has battled unlawful detentions at Guantánamo for the past 11 years.

"Despite President Obama's announcement in May that he would lift his self-imposed ban on transfers to Yemen, seven months later not a single Yemeni has been released," the statement warns.

The bill also introduces limited protections for survivors of sexual assault within the U.S. military, yet keeps power over legal cases within the chain of command -- which survivors and their advocates say is inadequate in a sexist system where attacks against women continues to skyrocket.



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