April 11-Secret Torture Memo Released Today in Response to ACLU, VCS Lawsuit

[fed-up]

edited for correct date of news story in thread title

FOIA is your friend

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/9806

April 12: Secret Torture Memo Released Today in Response to ACLU, VCS Lawsuit
ddit

ACLU
Apr 12, 2008



April 11, 2008 - New York, NY -- A secret memo authored by the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserting that President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations to extract information from detainees was declassified today as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union and Veterans for Common Sense Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The memo, written by John Yoo, then a deputy at the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), was sent to the Defense Department in March 2003.

"Senior officials at the Justice Department gave the Pentagon the green light to torture prisoners," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney. "It is outrageous that none of these high-level officials have been brought to task yet for their role in authorizing prisoner abuse."

A similar OLC memo asserting the same kind of unchecked executive authority was sent to the CIA in August 2002. In that now-notorious document, torture was defined so narrowly that it encompassed only those methods that result in pain akin to that associated with "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function."

In many respects, the March 2003 memo released today parrots the advice previously given to the CIA. In other ways, however, the 2003 memo goes even further. For example, it argues — without any qualification — that, during wartime, the president's Commander-in-Chief power overrides the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.

..snip

[Th1onein]

1. So Bush views himself as a dictator....

He's above the law. Completely.

[fasttense]

2. Changing the Constitution as they go along

so that the corrupt and powerful can get away with anything.

[Ian David]

3. Bush: The Great Dictator

[lonestarnot]

4. snort... painful as first is funny but sadly true therefore freaks me out.

:hurts:

[lonestarnot]

5. kick

[bdamomma]

6. oh, when are they going to throw his a$$ out!!

[fed-up]

7. "they" 2 worried about political careers-"We the People" must Investigate Indict Impeach Imprison nt

[bdamomma]

8. it is truly up to us.

[Matariki]

9. The obvious problem with wartime 'powers' over-riding the constitution

is that a dictator would be motivated to keep the country in a perpetual war.

Oh wait...