The text of Udall's Amendment is here. Essentially, it would strike the detainee provisions and instead insert a timetable to come up with a new plan.

Here's the action page to tell your senator to vote for the Udall Amendment.

The time has passed for "tweaks" to the provisions. The best course now is for Udall's amendment to pass and for nothing to be included in the Senate bill on detainees.

Two Amendments that really needs to be defeated are Sen Collins #1158, making Guantanamo transfer restrictions permanent and Sen. Infofe's Amendment #1093, requiring long term detention at Guatanamo, which he calls "the single greatest repository of human intelligence in the war on terror."

Here is the White House position (as of 11/17, days after the Levin/McCain compromise was introduced.) It didn't threaten a veto of the entire bill -- it said only that Obama's advisors would recommend a veto.

The Administration supports Senate passage of S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. ....Any bill that challenges or constrains the President's critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the Nation would prompt the President's senior advisers to recommend a veto.

Those holding out hope for an Obama veto are likely to be disappointed....again. Obama also opposed the detainee provisions in the 2011 bill The Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization 18 Act for Fiscal Year 2011.) Yet he signed it anyway, explaining:

Despite my strong objection to these provisions, which my Administration has consistently opposed, I have signed this Act because of the importance of authorizing appropriations for, among other things, our military activities in 2011.

Nevertheless, my Administration will work with the Congress to seek repeal of these restrictions, will seek to mitigate their effects, and will oppose any attempt to extend or expand them in the future.

Levin/McCain make a big deal of how their bill doesn't "mandate" certain treatment or strictly prohibit transfers of detainees to other countries. While Section 1033 repeals the 2011 version on prohibition on detainee transfers to foreign countries, it replaces it with an overly complicated certification process allowing some exceptions. Even Levin doesn't seem sure of who certain sections of his bill covers or who is included under current law. From Levin's statement in the Congressional record on Najibullah Zazi (a permanent resident alien:)

It is not accurate to say everything the FBI did in the Zazi case would have had to be ``transferred immediately to the military.'' First, it is not at all clear Zazi was covered by the provision because we don't know that he was al-Qaida, and in any event there is an exclusion because he is a lawful resident alien of the United States.

Second, until a coverage determination was made, no transfer would be required and the President would decide how and when that determination would be made. Finally, even if Zazi were somehow determined to be covered, the requirement could have been waived and Zazi could have been kept in civilian custody in the discretion of the executive branch.

If the Senate bill passes, it still has to go to conference with the House Bill that passed in May.

The New York Times explains the uncertainties in the McCain/Levin compromise over charging and holding American citizens here. An October letter from Feinstein, Leahy, Udall and other Dems on the uncertainty is here. Rep. McKeon, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who is leading the House on the issue, pooh-poohed Obama's concerns in this October 20 letter.

The ACLU says:

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.”

The ACLU is right, and it's no accident the bill was written that way. Read through the Congressional Record debate, letters and statements, and you'll see how important it was to them that people alleged to be al Qaeda not be given trials or constitutional rights, especially Miranda rights, even if seized in the U.S. Here's Sen. Lindsay Graham explaining:

No one in America is going to be held as an enemy combatant who doesn't get their day in Federal court. But their day in Federal court is a habeas proceeding, not a criminal trial. If the judge agrees with the United States that you are, in fact, an enemy combatant, then you can be held indefinitely, but we require an annual review. If the judge lets you go, they have to let you go. This is the best we can do. This is a hybrid system.

In no other war do you have access to a Federal court. As I said before, this is war without end, and if we don't watch it, an enemy combatant determination can be a de facto life sentence because there will never be an end to these hostilities probably in my lifetime. I recognize that. And in working with the Senator from Michigan and Peter and others, we have come up with a process now that allows the Federal court to review the military decision.

Later he adds:

Here is the thought process for the body and the Nation: If you capture somebody--not just involved in terrorism; that is not just what we are talking about--al-Qaida operatives involved in an attack on the United States, if they are an American citizen--who cares?--if they are doing that, we want to know what they know, interrogate them and hold them for prosecution, or just hold them so they will not go back to the fight. That is the law (my emphasis)

.....what we have been able to do on the committee is basically say, in law for the first time, that the homeland is part of the battlefield; that military custody is available to hold a suspected al-Qaida operative caught in the United States--American citizen or not--but we are going to allow the administration--this administration and all future administrations--to change that model if they believe it is best?

As if it's not clear enough, he adds later:

Quite frankly, the Congress is saying, through this bill, if someone is caught in the United States, citizen or not, joining al-Qaida, trying to do harm to our Nation, we are going to create a system where you can be held, you can be prosecuted, you can be interrogated within our values, and we are not going to create an absurd result that if you make it here, none of that applies. That is all we are trying to do.

He also says we have the right "hold someone under the law of war for years to gather intelligence."

Again, Levin and McCain are pushing for a Monday night vote on the Amendments:

I agree with my friend from Arizona that we should ask the majority leader to make Monday night available for votes after the scheduled vote at 5:30. We need to have votes on amendments. I would hope that amendments that can't be agreed to will be voted on on Monday night after the vote on the judge, which is scheduled for 5:30.

We need a name for this year's turkey of a bill. How about the Captain Underpants- Najibullah Zazi- Korematsu Indefinite Military Detention and Star Chamber Renewal Act?