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On December 7, 2007, Senator Sheldon
Whitehouse, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
disclosed on the floor of the US Senate that he had declassified
three legal documents of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)
within the Department of Justice that state:
1.
An executive order cannot limit a president. There is no
constitutional requirement for a president to issue a new
executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a
previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive
order, the president has instead modified or waived it.
2.
The President, exercising his constitutional authority under
Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise
of the President’s authority under Article II.
3.
The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal
determinations.
Whitehouse discovered the OLC’s classified
legal opinions while researching the Protect America Act
legislation passed in August 2007, which Whitehouse warns will
allow the administration to bypass Congress and the Courts in
order to facilitate unchecked spying on Americans. He noted that
for years under the Bush administration, the Office of Legal
Council has been issuing highly classified secret legal opinions
related to surveillance.
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Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are coming
forward to recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations.
An investigation by the Nation (July 2007) and the Winter
Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, in March 2008,
which was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War and brought
together over 300 veterans, have made their experiences public.
Soldiers’ harrowing testimony of atrocities they witnessed or
participated in directly indicate a structural problem in the US
military that has created an environment of lawlessness. Some
international law experts say the soldiers’ statements show the
need for investigations into potential violations of
international law by high-ranking officials in the Bush
administration and the Pentagon. Though BBC predicted that the
Winter Soldier event would dominate headlines around the world
that week, there was a near total back-out on this historic news
event by the US corporate media.1
Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and
Afghanistan occupation publicly testified at the four-day Winter
Soldier gathering about crimes they committed during the course
of battle—many of which were prompted by the orders or policies
laid down by superior officers. Such crimes include targeting
innocent, unarmed civilians for murder and detention, destroying
property, desecrating corpses, severely abusing detainees (often
torturing to death), and using corpses for medical practice.
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When in 2005 news reports exposed the fact
that psychologists were working with the US military and the CIA
to develop brutal interrogation methods, American Psychological
Association (APA) leaders assembled a task force to examine the
issue. After just two days of deliberations, the ten-member task
force concluded that psychologists were playing a “valuable and
ethical role” in assisting the military. A high level of secrecy
surrounding the task force prohibited disclosure of the
proceedings and of members and attendees. It wasn’t until a year
later that the membership was finally published on Salon.com,
revealing that six of nine voting members were from the military
and intelligence agencies with direct connections to
interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA black sites that operate
outside of Geneva Conventions.
The Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task
force was assembled in response to growing evidence that
psychologists were not only taking part in procedures that have
shocked the senses of humanity around the world, but were in
fact in charge of designing those brutal tactics and training
interrogators in those techniques.
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Top 10 Most
Under-reported Stories of
2006-2007
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