Tag Archives: John Yoo

Yoo & Obama’s Justice

Posted on by elizabeth
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OMG I can’t believe I missed this!  John Yoo still can’t shut up about his huge desire to place people outside the reach of the rule of law.  You’d think he’d be trying to keep a low profile these days.  But no …

The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines used in police stations throughout America. Mr. Obama has also ordered that al Qaeda leaders are to be protected from “outrages on personal dignity” and “humiliating and degrading treatment” in accord with the Geneva Conventions. His new order amounts to requiring — on penalty of prosecution — that CIA interrogators be polite. Coercive measures are unwisely banned with no exceptions, regardless of the danger confronting the country.

Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.

The first thing any lawyer will do is tell his clients to shut up. The KSMs or Abu Zubaydahs of the future will respond to no verbal questioning or trickery — which is precisely why the Bush administration felt compelled to use more coercive measures in the first place. Our soldiers and agents in the field will have to run more risks as they must secure physical evidence at the point of capture and maintain a chain of custody that will stand up to the standards of a civilian court.

Relying on the civilian justice system not only robs us of the most effective intelligence tool to avert future attacks, it provides an opportunity for our enemies to obtain intelligence on us. If terrorists are now to be treated as ordinary criminals, their defense lawyers will insist that the government produce in open court all U.S. intelligence on their client along with the methods used by the CIA and NSA to get it. A defendant’s constitutional right to demand the government’s files often forces prosecutors to offer plea bargains to spies rather than risk disclosure of intelligence secrets.  [oh no, more]

If there was ever any doubt that John Yoo thinks it’s a great idea to torture detainees, it should be laid forever to rest:  “Coercive measures are unwisely banned with no exceptions, regardless of the danger confronting the country.”

Shorter John Yoo:  Oh NO, we can’t torture people, no exceptions, whatever will we do …?  The right to a lawyer, the right to silence and the right to a speedy trial for all?  What the fuck?  Rule of law you say?  Never heard of it.  Same goes for the Geneva Conventions.  That’s only for other folks.  They don’t apply to us …  If we get attacked it will be because of Barack!

Bush Crimes

Posted on by elizabeth
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From John S. Hatch:

Amidst the somewhat hysterical euphoria of the Obama win is the fact that he has some very sober decisions to make, and his choice of Chief of Staff (Rahm Emanuel has already had to apologise for remarks by his once-terrorist father) does not auger well. Why choose someone who has served in Israel’s brutal IDF and who is rabidly anti-Palestinian? Is this ‘Change’? Also disturbing is talk of retaining Secretary of Defense Robert Gates with all his Iran-Contra baggage. Or Madeleine Albright who insanely stated that the undisputed deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children (under the age of five) during the (ineffectual to Saddam) sanctions following Gulf War I were ‘worth it’. Or possibly  appointing Paul Volker to head Treasury. Change? This sounds like Business As Usual. 

            But his biggest challenge will be in how he chooses to deal with the crimes of the previous Administration. Crimes such as kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, torture (including perhaps hundreds of torture deaths for which no one has been held to account), assassination, illegal invasions, the use of prohibited weapons such as white phosphorous, the wrongful deaths of up to 1.2 million Iraqi and Afghan civilians, illegal domestic spying, and probably a host of other things as yet undisclosed. 

            Will an Obama Administration seek to restore justice? 

            Or will it indulge in the familiar American proclivity to retreat into self-delusional denial? And please note that we’re not just talking about President Bush here, but a huge number of enablers from the top right down to the actual torturer or sniper or pilot dropping white phosphorous on living human beings, including children. It’s Ashcroft and Rice and Rumsfeld and all their minions. It’s John Yoo and a bunch of law-breaking lawyers. It’s generals and colonels and functionaries and aides. America sees fit to put Osama’s chauffeur on trial. So why not those who drove America along such a long low road? In Hitler’s Germany Adolph wasn’t the only sadistic maniac committing war crimes. This was recognized at the Nuremburg trials. Even if Bush and Cheney express contempt for Nuremburg (as well as Geneva conventions and habeas corpus), most civilized people and nations consider it as a template with which to judge human conduct in wartime. 

Read the rest here

Wow. Just Wow.

Posted on by elizabeth
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From Newsweek:

The most influential legal thinker in the development of modern American interrogation policy is not a behavioral psychologist, international lawyer or counterinsurgency expert. Reading both Jane Mayer’s stunning “The Dark Side,” and Philippe Sands‘s “Torture Team,” it quickly becomes plain that the prime mover of American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of Fox television’s “24,” Jack Bauer.

This fictional counterterrorism agent—a man never at a loss for something to do with an electrode—has his fingerprints all over U.S. interrogation policy. As Sands and Mayer tell it, the lawyers designing interrogation techniques cited Bauer more frequently than the Constitution.

According to British lawyer and writer Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early “brainstorming meetings” of military officials at Guantánamo in September 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial interrogation techniques including waterboarding, sexual humiliation and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer “gave people lots of ideas.” Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security chief, gushed in a panel discussion on “24” organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show”reflects real life.”

John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who produced the so-called torture memos—simultaneously redefining both the laws of torture and of logic—cites Bauer in his book “War by Other Means.” “What if, as the Fox television program ’24’ recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?” Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking in Canada last summer, shows a gift for this casual toggling between television and the Constitution. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Scalia said. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?”

There are many reasons that matriculation from the Jack Bauer School of Law would have encouraged even cautious legal thinkers to bend and eventually break our longstanding rules against torture. U.S. interrogators rarely if ever encounter a “ticking time bomb,” someone with detailed information about an imminent terror plot. But according to the advocacy group the Parents Television Council (which has declared war on “24”), Bauer encounters a ticking time bomb an average of 12 times every season. Given that each season represents a 24-hour period, Bauer encounters someone who needs torturing 12 times per day. Experienced interrogators know that information extracted through torture is rarely reliable. But Jack Bauer’s torture not only elicits the truth, it does so before the commercial. He is a human polygraph who has a way with flesh-eating chemicals.

… Yoo wanted to change American torture law to accommodate him, and Justice Scalia wants to immunize him from prosecution. The problem is not just that they all saw themselves in Jack Bauer. The problem was their failure to see what Bauer really represents within the legal universe of “24.”

For one thing, Bauer operates outside the law, and he knows it. Nobody in the fictional world of “24” changes the rules to permit him to torture. For the most part, he does so fully aware that he is breaking the law. Bush administration officials turned that formula on its head. In an almost Nixonian twist, the new interrogation doctrine became: “If Jack Bauer does it, it can’t be illegal.”

The Scylla in this case is a belief that this guys are profoundly evil.  The Charybdis is that they are profoundly mundane and superficial.  If it’s possible to be profoundly superficial.

Funny thing is, I noted the similarity between Bush-think and Bauer-think quite awhile ago, here.  As did matttbastard [I can’t find the link to mattt’s original post – drop it in comments if you find it].  And, of course, Philippe Sands at Vanity Fair.  But I hadn’t read either of them at the time.

My idea was that tv shows like “24”, much as I confessed to being addicted to it, softened us up to the idea that an American working on behalf of America would use immoral and illegal means without much thought but with easy justification – “it works and I gotta do it to save the world”.  I guess Scalia and Yoo noticed that as well.

Newsweek article via digby

UPDATE:  mattt kindly dropped some links in comments and I’m moving them up –

see this, this, and this and you get your LL.B. from The Jack Bauer School of Law.  Show evidence of having read Jane Mayer and Philippe Sand and you get your doctorate.

Strange Bedfellows

Posted on by elizabeth
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Joan Walsh “Betrayed by Obama”:

I actually have some sympathy for Obama. He was never the great progressive savior that his fans either thought he was, or peddled to their readers. While Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas and Tom Hayden were hyping him as the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, Obama was getting away with backing a healthcare bill less progressive than Clinton’s, adopting GOP talking points on the Social Security “crisis” and double-talking on NAFTA. So why shouldn’t he think his “friends on the left” will put up with his abandoning other progressive causes?

I share Ms Walsh’s view of Obama.  Always have.  But, of course, the responsibility for the passage of the FISA legislation is not Obama’s alone.

Glenn Greenwald:

Historians writing about the Bush era were given a great gift yesterday — an iconic headline that explains so much of what has happened in this country over the last seven years:

Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill

Their rationale for doing that is that it prevents the Republicans from depicting them as “weak,” because nothing exudes strength like bowing.

[…]

Yesterday’s episode also illustrates why I’ve been so ambivalent about campaigns such as those to demand that John Yoo lose his tenure. Although Yoo ought to be far outside of the mainstream of American political thought, he simply isn’t. The Democratic-led Congress yesterday just passed a bill by a wide margin that institutionalized Yoo’s signature theory — namely, that when the President orders something, then it is legal and proper, even if it’s against what Congress calls “the law.”

Why should we pretend that John Yoo is some sort of grotesque authoritarian aberration when his defining belief in presidential omnipotence is, to varying degrees, shared by the leaders of both parties? Yoo has long been mocked for his belief that the President — simply by uttering the magical phrase “National Security” — has the power to break the law, but Congress, yesterday, just passed a bill grounded in exactly that premise.

There are many things that one can say about what the Democrats did yesterday. Claiming that they showed how “strong” they are, or avoided being depicted by Republicans as “weak,” isn’t one of them.

[…]

John Cole makes the always-important point that to say that Democrats “surrendered” on this bill gives them too much credit in many cases. While some Democrats vote for measures like this out of standard, craven political fear, many — perhaps most — do so because they simply believe in the National Security and Surveillance State.  

On a more positive note, Howie Klein writes about (and lists) the 12 members of Congress and Congressional candidates who will receive $1,000 checks each from our Blue America fund for having stood very firm on the FISA bill. The list begins with Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd, and includes members of Congress from red states who nonetheless voted against the bill (Sen. Jon Tester of Montana); vulnerable freshmen who voted NAY (Rep. Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire); House members who are running for the Senate in tough states yet also voted NAY (Tom Allen in Maine and Rep. Tom Udall in New Mexico); and challengers who have been outspoken against telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping (Darcy Burner in Washington, Jim Hines in Connecticut and Rick Noriega in Texas).

Finally, this afternoon I’m going to interview Jameel Jaffer, the Director of the ACLU National Security Project, regarding the constitutional challenge the ACLU intends to bring against the FISA bill. I will post the podcast later this afternoon when it’s available. It’s important to recognize that yesterday’s defeat is not the end of anything. It should only fuel more resolute and resourceful battles in defense of these core political values.

It’s difficult for “outsiders” like me not to lose faith in the project that is America.  If not for Glenn Greenwald and people like him, for instance, the broad coalition that has formed to keep the FISA crimes before the American public by coordinating the Strange Bedfellows Money Bomb, I’d have to give my “faith” a respectful burial.

Footnote:  My critique of American politics should not be mistaken for a statement of confidence in the political governors of Canada.  There is no reason for such confidence.  The latest evidence that such confidence would be misplaced is the performance of our “leader” at the G8 summit and his continuing lack of concern about the treatment of Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr by the US government and the US military at Guantanamo Bay.  I hold the Canadian government responsible, by their silence and lack of action, for his torture.  Stephen Harper takes his orders from George W. Bush.  We are a colony of a foreign Empire again.  It just has a new name.

It’s sad.  It’s all so sad.  Let’s change it.  YES WE CAN!

Quote of the Day

Posted on by elizabeth
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From the speech of Judge Dan Haywood, played by Spencer Tracy, in Judgment at Nuremberg as part of his reasons for convicting the German judges charged with war crimes:

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” — of “survival.” A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient — to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Abby Mann, the writer of these words, died on March 25 of this year.

American Rhetoric

More Yoo

Posted on by elizabeth
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I’ve posted here and here about the atrocious non-testimony of David Addington and John Yoo before the House Judiciary Committee.  Check out this great post by Thomas Nephew at newsrackblog.  Here are a few bits:

First, torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading abuse of children by United States military, intelligence personnel, and/or U.S.-hired contractor thugs is not a hypothetical situation.

[…]

Second, the way in which Addington and Yoo answered — that is, failed to answer — Congressional questioning should itself set off emergency sirens for our democracy. These two are, in a very real sense, enemies of our state. They are our enemies.

[…]

Meanwhile, at least the future narrative is clear. We were attacked. We panicked. Our elected leaders in the White House threw away our country’s honor and our alleged principles, and set about subverting our own political system in order to do so and to get away with it. Meanwhile, our elected representatives in Congress did next to nothing to prevent it.

[…]

A recent study (by WorldPublicOpinion.org) suggests that the United States is more akin to brutalized societies like Egypt, Azerbaijan, or Russia than those like Europe’s when it comes to accepting torture under some or even any circumstances.

Check it out.

Canadian Silence, US Cruelty

Posted on by elizabeth
1

On Sunday I posted this horrible video of David Addington and John Yoo testifying before the House Judiciary Committee.  Or should I say not testifying.  Now Linda McQuaig has voiced the thoughts I found myself unable to form out of sheer disgust:

Does the president of the United States have the right to order a detainee buried alive?

Oddly, this grotesque question was posed at a U.S. Congressional hearing last week. Even odder was the answer — from John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Bush administration, now a law professor at the University of California.

“I don’t think that I’ve ever given the advice that the president could bury somebody alive,” Yoo told a judiciary subcommittee hearing into detainee interrogations.

Well, I guess that’s comforting to know. But it was striking to watch Yoo evade answering whether he considered there was any treatment so vicious and inhuman that it would be beyond the president’s power to inflict it on a detainee, in the interests of national defence.

Apparently there isn’t. In a public debate in 2005, Yoo was asked if he thought it would be lawful for the president to authorize crushing the testicles of a detainee’s child.

It would seem like a simple “no” would suffice. But here’s how Yoo responded: “I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that.”

Asked about that line last week during his Congressional testimony, Yoo didn’t deny saying it, but protested that it was taken “out of context.” Does that mean there’s a context in which a top legal adviser might advise the president that that’s okay?

After 7 1/2 years of George W. Bush, much of the media and political establishment — which have never shown much interest in holding Bush to account — now appear anxious to simply move on. They seem determined to leave unexamined the full cruelty and mendacity of the Bush administration, with its unlawful wars and blatant violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Moving on is a great idea – once there’s been some accountability, with a full public recognition of wrongdoing, and a commitment to bring about change. Otherwise, nothing will have been learned.

The comments of Yoo, who authored top-level internal memos justifying torture and virtually unlimited presidential power, suggest a moral depravity in very high places.

That depravity led to the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib and at other U.S. prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and “black sites” around the world.

The dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, Lawrence Velvel, argues that Bush and top administration officials, including Yoo, should be tried for war crimes. His law school is holding a conference in September to map out ways to try to pursue these prosecutions “if need be, to the ends of the Earth.”

Meanwhile, here in Canada, it seems we’re supposed to avert our gaze. Strong critiques of Bush are slapped down for being “anti-American.”

Certainly, the Harper government, while quick to spot anti-democratic behaviour in Zimbabwe, is blind to it south of the border. Not only has Ottawa failed to join European nations in protesting Guantanamo Bay — and refused to do anything to help the Canadian imprisoned there — it actively co-operates with the United States on security matters and has sent thousands of Canadian troops to Afghanistan to fight in the front lines of Bush’s “war on terror.”

All this is presented as helping our neighbour, and building democracy in Afghanistan. Another way to look at it is that we’re lending support to an administration whose moral compass doesn’t seem to rule out burying people alive or crushing the testicles of children.

[emphasis mine]

Lawyers!

Posted on by elizabeth
2

Oh my fecking gawd, watch and listen to the smug, supercilious David Addington, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, refuse to answer a question asked at the hearings of the House Judiciary Committee, to this effect:  Do you agree that it would be legal to torture the child of a detainee to get information from him?  I neither agree nor disagree because you’re asking for a legal opinion and we agreed that I wouldn’t give legal opinions.  [So FUCK you and so THERE]

Oh CRAP!  A lawyer without an opinion?

And listen to John Yoo refuse to answer ONE single question he’s asked by the pesky and getting impatient Rep John Conyers (Conyers for President!).  Could the President order someone to be buried alive?  No President would ever do that?  But if he did, would it be legal?  No President would ever do that.  [ So FUCK you and so THERE]

Yoo does look a bit queasy though, as he imagines how what he says could be used against him at his war criminal trial.

This makes me want to PUKE!  In fact, I may have to go do that now.

Yoo on Torture

Posted on by elizabeth
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John Yoo’s memorandum on the legality of “harsh” interrogation techniques and the meaning of “torture” makes for chilling reading. As someone trained as a lawyer, I find it quite incomprehensible that he believed what he was writing. I’m quite sure that a first year law student could blow holes straight to hell in his argument. And that’s where Yoo belongs.

You can download the memorandum [pdf] here. Everyone should read it. Tell me how you feel about Yoo teaching law at Berkeley afterwards.

Sue Yoo

Posted on by elizabeth
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Graduation at UC Berkeley Law School:

Some 50 protesters, clad in orange jumpsuits and black hoods to emulate the infamous photos of prisoners in Iraq, picketed UC Berkeley’s law school graduation ceremony Saturday, demanding that the university fire Professor John Yoo for his authorship of the Bush administration’s policies on torture.

“We want to see him fired and disbarred for being a war criminal,” said Anne Weills, an Oakland attorney who said she was with the National Lawyers Guild, one of the groups that protested. “Academic freedom stops when you intend to harm or injure somebody.”

Yoo, a tenured constitutional law professor at Boalt Hall, took a leave of absence from 2001 to 2003 to work for the U.S. Department of Justice. During that time, he wrote what critics call the “torture memos,” which protesters say outlined the legal basis for the use of torture at the Abu Ghraib (Iraq) and Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) military prisons.

CommonDreams