John Yoo, Totalitarian, By Paul Craig Roberts

[Echo In Light]

John Yoo, Totalitarian
By Paul Craig Roberts

19/06/08 "ICH" -- John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the US can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving US citizens of habeas corpus protection. A US attorney general informed by Yoo’s memos even went so far as to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to US citizens.

Yoo’s animosity to US civil liberties made him a logical choice for appointment to the Bush Regime’s Department of Justice (sic), but his appointment as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, shatters that university’s liberal image.

Habeas corpus is a centuries-old British legal reform that stopped authorities from arbitrarily throwing a person into a dungeon and leaving him there forever without presenting charges in a court of law. Without this protection, there can be no liberty.

Yoo is especially adamant that “enemy combatants” have no rights to challenge the legality of their detentions by US authorities before a federal judge. Yoo would have us believe that the detainees at Guantanamo, for example, are all terrorists who were attacking Americans. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The question is whether any of the detainees are “enemy combatants.” Yoo would have it so because the president says it is so. As the president has already decided, what is the sense of presenting evidence to a judge? For Yoo, accusation by the executive branch is the determination of guilt.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20133.htm

[Hubert Flottz]

1. K&R

Yoo should be locked up forever to protect the Constitution.

[Jawja]

2. John Yoo will be viewed by

historians as an enabler of the war criminals George W. Bush and Dick Cheney; and will be an example of what happens when the Justice department is run by a criminal like Alberto Gonzalez and rogue ideology replaces the rule of law.

[NashVegas]

4. I Was Thinking

It might be a good thing to design some 'prosecute John Yoo' shirts, raise awareness.

[iamahaingttta]

3. You just gotta wonder about a guy like this.

How does an obviously intelligent mind turn so sour?
How does someone born in 1967, who grew up in an immigrant family that clearly achieved the "American Dream" become an apologist and cheerleader for such pure evil?
How can someone actually spend time thinking up justifications for the kinds of torture that he's advocated, and not commit suicide from the weight of the guilt of knowing that so many have suffered because of the words that you have written?
Does this man simply have no conscience, like the sociopaths he serves?
How can one live in a place like Berkeley CA, and walk down the street knowing how much you are hated?
People like this boggle my mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo

[Echo In Light]

5. Is the pathology so powerful that it makes them think history will be kind, indifferent?

...or are they confident that the know, or think they know, how establishment powers will write history, aiding in the distortion required to disguise their actions? Or worse yet, do these War Pigs actually know something that the rest of us don't...?

[glitch]

7. Some people thrive on hate.

It's weird and unimaginable to normal people, but he may get a kick out of being hated. I think Cheney is the same.

[AddisonMiles]

6. One of the most dangerous men in America

Yoo is repugnant

[Ikonoklast]

8. Using Yoo's own logic

The next President can declare Yoo an 'enemy of the state' and detain or kill him as the president sees fit.

No reason needed or given, just arrest and torture without being charged for any crime, or ever brought before a judge.

[barbtries]

9. some good and thought-provoking

comments following the article. thanks for pointing me to it.