His new order amounts to requiring — on penalty of prosecution — that CIA interrogators be polite.

Because, you know, the one thing our CIA was known for prior to 9/11 was being polite!

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.

We have to keep in mind that this guy is now teaching law to somebody’s kids

But you forgot the best part…His public confession and incrimination of President Bush. And without having to torture him no less!

On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)

That was fun. John Yoo is a truely ballsy lawyer, willing to argue while disdaining the use of logic, fact or wisdom.
However, have a care when starting sentences with “If the judge… …says…”.

If there is just ONE bush administration shitstain who learns all about life in a Federal Correctional Facility it’s this embarrassment.

For him to stand there in his safe office with his clean suit and manicure and advocate this kind of treatment of human beings…

Well, let’s just say that it’s interesting to look at the relative life experiences of those who think torture’s just the coolest thing, and those who are sickened by it…

mikey

amen to that lasst line.

Just imagine if Al Qaeda had been able to hire a Madisan Ave ad firm to work on sinking America’s reputation internationally, so that AQ could generate more recruits, and also to disable the U.S.

They couldn’t have dreamed up a better ‘marketing package’ than torture, institutionalized from the Pres and VP through their acolytes at DoJ — with Yoo a key player. He’s quite the legal fetishist, is Mr. Yoo.

Him and Addington.

Spencer should reserve “I lit a fire and it wouldn’t go out” for the post about them getting sentenced.

My mistake, he’s already used it.

http://attackerman.firedoglake…..laimiskid/

And for a better reason.

I’ll shut up now.

And of course, last time I looked was last spring, but at least then it was impossible to study Constitutional Law at Berkeley’s Boult Law School unless you wanted to do so under the tutelage of the learned Professor Yoo …
I think I believe in the institution of Tenure protections, at least in theory, but there must be some form of due process to at least remove him from teaching a class on the subject of the Constitution …

unless I missed it nothing about not using “contractors” to use the “enhanced interrogation techniques”

You missed it.

Can you even imagine a bunch of law students showing respect to this guy? Should be on the TV….

Hmmm. which technique to use while talking with my banker, torture or manners? Hmm.

Yo, Yoo only traitor’s torture or condone it’s use.
The number of people not covered by Geneva?
It isn’t a number it’s a place holder… ZERO

Not only do I get the honor of being ashamed of my country, I also get to be ashamed of my alma mater and the Bad News Bears.

slinks away.

I think a shoe to the noggin’ would do John Yoo some good!

I periodically send Garry Trudeau emails asking when Joanie Caucus Redfern is going to be leading demonstrations against Yoo at her ‘alma mater’.

John Yoo’s a war criminal and nothing more. Asking his ‘opinion’ of Guantanamo is like asking Heinrich Himmler’s opinion about closing Auschwitz. Our ‘Liberal’ press in action. BTW, Is a war criminal faculty member mentioned in Berkeley’s course descriptions?

Just read the Yoo article three times. Nothing in there (again unless I missed it) about not using “contractors”

Don’t forget…Yoo is responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, on top of everything else.

http://www.democracynow.org/20…..ys_torture

This is what I posted on the WSJ Yoo opinion piece. What do you want to bet that their moderator doesn’t allow my comment to be added? lol

I hope Mr. Yoo crawls back under his rock and stays off opinion pages forever.

Thanks for this, it’s great piece Attackerlady. That any school gives him a platform that any newspaper gives him ink, is a total mystery to me

The most ironic thing is, if investigators were to use these techniques that Mr. Yoo swears aren’t torture on him to get him to tell the truth, they wouldn’t get to use it. And it may be small of me, but I must confess that I find the idea of Yoo getting waterboarded to be cosmic justice. It would be high humor for someone to pretend to be conservative zealots who were going to film waterboarding of Yoo (to show that it WASN’T torture, naturally) and punk him just before applying the water. I can dream, can’t I?

Are you talking about Yoo’s flaming opinion? Or are you talking about Obama?
One doesn’t mean squat and the second one does.

Exactly! This guy is dumber than dog shit.

OT: So is Laura Ingraham. I do believe I heard her call Michelle Obama a Liar today after some comments by Ms Obama about women’s pay.

Well, he wrote this one for Murdoch, after all.

Citi gets called out on their Gulfstream, Obama calls out the Street Captains for their bonus spree.

It’s flaccid days on Wall Street.

Yoo wrote that one to stiffen them up.

mr.yoo should write a book. he should have a long time to write this book. from a prison cell.

yoo is not as big a moron as his piece suggests

what he’s doing is trying to keep himself, rumsfeld, cheney, bush from being prosecuted

as the military tells us themselves, the policies of torture COSTS us information and CAUSES terrort events.

yoo is doing whatever it takes to justify his war crimes, if that means lying about how good the practice he is hardly above that lie

through policies of torture we get less information not more, we get actionable information not actionable, we waste assets, we waste time

information is lost and assets are used researching wild goose chases, security events are not prevented they are facilitated from our policies condoning torture

those are the obvious practical implications, there are other obvious implications but they don’t become obvious till told, then once told they are clear as day;

if my brother, friend, son, friends friend is ever tortured that body turns me and all my friends into terrorists

that is something that I cannot believe is not pointed out in the corporate propaganda while it tries to defend Cheney and his actions against our country and Constitution.

each person tortured breads legions more terrorists, each action of torture will create another attempt at terrorism in retaliation and retribution

our policies of touter turn advocates into enemies, moderates into radicals, radicals into terrorists, terrorists into heroes.

a person who might have been sympathetic to our cause will NEVER volunteer information for fear of that torture

and there will be NO willing surrenders, each person will fight to the death rather then face the prospect of torture.

here’s the real travesty;

the administration was informed of those very results, that they would incite terrorism not prevent it, that they would create terrorists not disabuse them, that they would cause events not eliminate them, that they would create insurgency.

they knew the results of these policies, they were informed what would happen before the initiated their policy

it becomes brutally clear they did not want to “win the hearts and minds” of the middle east, it becomes clear they wanted unending unrest

so to prove that last paragraph is not hyperbole, we have the record of cheney who invented data that undermined Nixon’s treaty of détente, way back then he proved to us he did not want peace and would do whatever it might take to prevent it

brigadier BrigGen JamesCullen, who commented with 16 other generals on the matter which is my first link ;

History has shown repeatedly that torture does not work. It produces poor information; it weakens the morale of the forces that employ it; and it turns local populations against you.

bold is mine

Shorter John Yoo: Don’t try me for war crimes.

I’m in one of my Age of Stupid moods today. Yoo is a perfect example of the dimwitted hack with a résumé who spends his whole life failing upwards. This guy should never have been let within a million miles of any position of responsibility and that he was at the OLC and still at Boalt shows why the Age of Stupid is alive and well, and why so many of our problems will go unsolved and unaddressed. So long as fools and other Republicans continue to pollute our national discourse with their sick and nutty ideas, so long will flourish the Age of Stupidity in all its tinfoil and koolaid glory.

I wonder how many times yoo has interigated someone to make the claims he makes, I wonder how many wild goose chases he’s gone on with the inactionable information he gathered

I wonder if he knows how much information was lost because we used torture instead of the much more reliable methods

I wonder if he knows how many brothers are now terrorists, friends, sons, daughters are now terrorists becuase their relative or friend was tortured

I wonder if he knows how many people did NOT come forward for fear of being tortured

I wonder if he would care to take a guess how long it would take for him to admit he was a war criminal if we used on his person the techiques he endorses

Shorter John Yoo: Don’t try me for war crimes.

BINGO!

I forgot to ask a very important “I wonder”;

I wonder if he knows how many of the people we tortured were there because we offered bounties 10 times a yearly salary

yoo’s

mr.yoo should write a book. he should have a long time to write this book. from a prison cell.

Does the world really need a sequel to Mein Kamf?

Closing time – one last call for one last call for “I’ll keel haul”, so finish: you’re frisky with fear.

its closing time. Yoo doesn’t have to go home but he can’t stay here.

I know who I want to take to the Hague.
I know who I want to take to the Hague.
I know who I want to take to the Hague.
Take to the Hague….

Looking at things from John Yoo’s perspective, scary though it is, you can see why he does and says what he does and why he will continue to do so. There is no downside to it and a big, big upside. If Yoo had been a prinicpled lawyer, instead of a hotshot wing nut with nothing between his ears, do you think he would have gotten his gig at Boalt or at the OLC or back at Boalt again. Do you think he would be given space at the WSJ or appearances on cable TV or shows like the NewsHour? I know even in a coma I could think rings around John Yoo but the last I noticed no one has invited me to write for the WSJ or the NYT, to work in government or get a cush tenured post at Berkeley. While I still may have my integrity *g*, it sure looks like the Yoos of this world have gotten everything else.

yoo’s an idiot.
sorry for the misunderstanding.

I for one am glad to see this fascist prick sociopath crawling out of his hole. The higher his profile, the more likely we are to see his ass booted out of his tenured position at UC Berkeley and hauled into court. And for those who insist tenured profs can’t be fired, two words: Ward Churchill.

There really should be a concerted campaign by well-heeled Berkeley alumn to pull all donations to UC Berkeley until Yoo is removed. Money speaks, always, and maybe the people who are keeping this war criminal in place will listen to that, since they don’t care about ethical or moral or even legal arguments, it seems.

“fascist prick sociopath” not currently a violation for which one can be fired. if you wan’t to start imposing standards for political beliefs in academia, that would cause trouble. if you want to fire teachers who aren’t sane, you would cause massive unemployment.

It is naïve to say, as Mr. Obama did in his inaugural speech, that we can “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

I think a more powerful objuection to this statement is to parse his quotation from Obama’s inauguration speech in terms even Mr. Yoo could understand.

The choice the President rejects as false is the choice between our safety and our ideals. That is, he thinks it’s wrong to say that we can only be safe if we give up our ideals, ideals I think we can safely say the President means include the protections of the Bill of Rights.

So when Mr. Yoo calls the President’s statement “naive”, he is saying that we cannot be safe and keep our ideals: we must give one of them up.

Mr. Yoo is welcome to his opinion on this matter. But it strikes me as a profoundly unamerican position, striking at Franklin’s view that “those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” If Mr. Yoo wants a state which does not cherish the people’s rights, he can look elsewhere. Go, Mr. Yoo, go away.

getting john yoo to testify before congress would almost be as good as having bush/cheney testify.

yoo he’s got some ’splainin to do & i will be hanging on every word.

i have plenty of popcorn ready for that day.

Last week’s The Daily Show included this thought, suitable for framing:

If you don’t hold onto your core values when you’re in trouble, they’re not your core values — they’re hobbies.

I think he’s pissed at Bush for not pardoning him. Why else would he spell out that Bush ordered it?

Ward Churchill was fired for his espousing his political beliefs. Churchill was railroaded by Alan Derschowitz’s campaign against liberal academics. Yoo can be similarly rairoaded out of his position with a similar campaign. Yoo’s screed in the WSJ (a cartoon page of a newspaper even before Murdoch) surely calls attention to himself, his wicked idealogy and his handiwork in the Cheney Administration in a way that does not serve him well.

Thanks Attackerlady! Well done.

That Baby Huey looking MF-er is the definition of “banality of evil”.

‘It is naïve to say, as Mr. Obama did in his inaugural speech, that we can “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”‘

Who’s writing these talking points? How do I get on the mailing list?

Okay, so now this is in the public domain…the fact that Bush personally authorized the waterboarding. Since it is now no longer a secret, and that Yoo publicly revealed it so that it isn’t protected by Executive privilege, then he should be liable for interrogation before Congress.

Or has he revealed something that should send him to jail?

Churchell was fired for reasons having to do with the research related to his position. Those were the stated grounds, bu he indeed was fired for espousing political statements.
I don’t think that calling him a “liberal” fairly characterizes him ofr the positions that caused the controversy around him.
And, yes, one might be able to do the same thing to Yoo.
In either case, it can only produce mere satisfaction and does little to advance justice.

Actually Yoo was apparently granted tenure because someone in the Law school violated the standards which requires that continuous teaching residency be considered foremost in the process. Yoo was gone for six of the eight years up to the time the decision was made. Thus he was ineligible for tenure status. Even after he left the DOJ he didn’t return to Berkeley, taking a visiting position in Holland and Italy. His actual contact hours with students at Boalt Law school have been pared down because he is, reportedly, a pretty poor teacher. He runs an “Institute”, reportedly with funding from Conservative sources.

This year he’s somehow being allowed to take yet another “sabattical”…his fifth…in a tenure that has only about four years actually teaching.

Maybe “allowed” to take another sabbatical is less accurate than “encouraged”.

As a law school graduate myself, I can’t imagine how this sniveling yes-man was hired to teach law at a respected law school. He doesn’t even understand the basics of the U.S. Constitution and our legal obligations pursuant to treaties.

” But now, in a Thursday editorial published by the Wall Street Journal, John Yoo, the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, explained that the Bush administration’s torture programs, for which he co-authored the legal justifications, were initially designed to outwit crafty defense attorneys. “

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._0129.html

mr. yoo may be safe in his office in berkeley due to tenure. however, i don’t think tenure will protect him should he wander outside the borders of the USA.

on the question of torture: is there anyone in history, from the spanish inquisition to the present day, who has undergone water boarding and declared that it is not torture?

has professor yoo volunteered to test his thesis that it is not torture? based on my reading of history, john yoo has no basis to call himself qualified to speak to this. his opinion has no weight. yet. his opinion may change.

perhaps we should engage mr. yoo in a little wager. i’ll put $500 down, payable to him or his favorite charity, and if john yoo can go 30 minutes on the water board without complaining, i’ll pay up.

“Hey! Hey!
This is what I say

That Secret Memo
Is so yesterday!

Woo! Woo!
This is what I’d do

If they can torture me
Then I can torture Yoo!”

Yoo being a fascist is not the point. His OLC opinions are blatant legal malpractice – he deliberately left out major authorities that made his arguments ridiculous. He did this in order to allow war crimes, and arguably committed war crimes by authoring the opinion. The war crimes involved torture and murder.

Tenure does not protect a professor when criminality is involved. Usually there is some sort of morals clause, too.

The irony for me is that although I have ancestors who were tortured by the Inquisition,but the law professors I had at my Jesuit law school had a much greater commitment to human rights and constitutionality than the administrators at Boalt, a public law school subsidized by the taxpayers of a constitutional republic.

At the risk of sounding like a defense of the man rather than of academia, I suggest that tenure is unlikely to be revoked due to allegations of criminal conduct. Calling the sob names is nice, but until somebody actually pins a tail on this donkey, he gets to bray all day.