Former
Deputy U.S. Attorney General John Yoo, who contributed to the
PATRIOT Act, has advocated the legality of torture, and advised that enemy combatants can be denied protection under the
Geneva Convention as a means of diminishing legal challenges regarding
war crimes, wrote an
op-ed piece in today's
New York Times. From Glenn Greenwald's Sunday
post at
Unclaimed Territory:
Why is it even necessary to point out that the U.S. President does not have the power to violate laws which he thinks are "wrongheaded or obsolete," or that Presidents have no authority to disregard "wrongheaded or obsolete judicial decisions" (whatever that might mean)? And what permits a "law professor" to claim otherwise on the Op-Ed page of the NYT? Under this administration, there is no notion too radical or authoritarian to be off limits not only from being subject to debate, but from being implemented.
Just look at the things we're debating -- whether the U.S. Government can abduct and indefinitely imprison U.S. citizens without charges; whether we can use torture to interrogate people; whether our Government can eavesdrop on our private conversations without warrants; whether we can create secret prisons and keep people there out of sight and beyond the reach of any law or oversight; and whether the President can simply disregard long-standing constitutional limitations and duly enacted Congressional laws because he has deemed that doing so is necessary to "protect" us.
These haven't been open questions for decades if not centuries. They've been settled as intrinsic values that define our country. Yet nothing is settled or resolved any longer. Everything -- even the most extremist and authoritarian policies and things which were long considered taboo -- are now openly entertained, justifiable and routinely justified.
At no time in recent memory has our very system of government been under more direct assault from within;
Watergate pales in comparison. The fact that we have allowed the types of policies championed by John Yoo into the public discourse at all - and as ostensibly reasonable options - only illustrates the damage that has already been done.
Former Deputy U.S. Attorney General John Yoo, who contributed to the PATRIOT Act, has advocated the legality of torture, and advised that enemy combatants can be denied protection under the Geneva Convention as a means of diminishing legal challenges regarding war crimes, wrote an op-ed piece in today's New York Times. From Glenn Greenwald's Sunday post at Unclaimed Territory:
2 comments:
This guy is totally nuts. How someone can think that the executive branch, constitutionally outlined by colonists scared to death of centralized power, wields this kind of supreme power is beyond understanding to me. Has he even read the federalist papers?
I love how he says "The changes of the 1970’s occurred largely because we had no serious national security threats to United States soil." He must have hit his head and forgot about the cold war.
It's amazing to me that John Yoo has a job at a university as prestigious as Berkeley. My strong suspicion is that his continued employment is one of those deals where an institution with a long-standing liberal reputation is trying to appear "fair and balanced" by keeping him on the roles.
What's worse however, is that he ever had a job in the Justice Department. It just goes to show how much value the Bush Administration places on being told what they want to hear!
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