Navy resumes use of sonar off California [View All]

[Bonobo]

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Washington - Environmental groups are fighting President Bush's move to allow US Navy ships to use sonar during exercises off the California coast beginning this week, a new wrinkle in the long-running legal battle that pits military readiness over concerns about whales, porpoises, and dolphins.

The Navy aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its accompanying ships began an exercise Wednesday that allows the aircraft carrier's strike group to use sonar to practice detecting submarines in the waters near San Diego before the ships deploy overseas. The Navy says such training is crucial to prepare ship drivers for the threats that lurk in waters around the world.

But that training may not last for long. Environmental groups expect a federal judge to rule against the Navy in the coming days, nullifying an exemption signed by Bush last week that environmentalists believe was unconstitutional. The president, says Richard Kendall, an attorney representing the National Resources Defense Council, used an agency within his own executive branch to overturn the federal court ruling limiting the use of sonar during the exercises.

"The president's effort to use a White House agency to override a court order is very dangerous in our legal system, highly illegal, and completely unjustified," says Mr. Kendall.



Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0125/p02s03-uspo.html

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We live in a democracy. That means WE are the government. Our own Federal Judges ordered the Navy to stop this. Our President has contravened the law. It is our duty to stop him.

Before we advocate that other sovereign countries bring military action against Norway, Iceland and Japan, we should first act to stop it our own country.