Stephen Holmes (The Nation): John Yoo's Tortured Logic

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Issue of May 1, 2006
Posted online Thursday April 13

John Yoo's Tortured Logic
By Stephen Holmes

At the Justice Department between 2001 and 2003, Berkeley law professor John Yoo crafted a series of now notorious legal opinions. In them, he spelled out the fundamentals of a secret emergency Constitution under which the President's inherent powers in the "war on terror" are essentially unlimited. In the wake of 9/11, Yoo argued, the United States was at war in a constitutional sense, and consequently Congress and the courts could no longer purport to second-guess or interfere with or even learn about the President's national-security decisions, however momentous. Supposedly vital for fighting mass-casualty terrorism, Yoo's presidential Constitution was never publicly discussed or debated. Instead, it began to leak out, one memo at a time, only after important policy choices had been made on the basis of its presumed authority. The memos claimed to provide legal grounds for a whole range of now hotly contested decisions concerning indefinite executive detention without access to counsel, harsh interrogation techniques, rendition to countries known for torture, the establishment of clandestine prisons for "ghost detainees," the assassination of terrorist suspects by US hit squads worldwide and (we have learned) warrantless surveillance of telephone and e-mail communications between the United States and overseas.

Many and perhaps most constitutional scholars viewed these policies, to the extent that they knew about them, as legally dubious acts of executive-branch overreaching. But Yoo's carte blanche constitutionalism suited the ambitions of Dick Cheney and the other architects of Bush's gloves-off response to 9/11. Adherence to legal principles or procedural requirements, they believed, would have forced them to fight ruthless terrorists with one arm tied behind their backs. Legalistic niceties--such as the presumption of innocence and squeamishness about mistaken identity--only played into the hands of the enemy.

Addressing himself to impatient officials bridling at statutory and other restrictions, the 35-year-old government lawyer proved obliging. Laws that cramp the executive, including requirements of transparency and oversight associated with checks and balances, are unconstitutional infringements of the President's authority, he made clear. The Commander in Chief can confidently dispense with rules that had previously governed the intelligence community. Indeed, he should be freed from all constraints that might conceivably cripple the US side in the battle against transnational terror. The President's ultimate duty to protect and defend the nation, the memos collectively advised, gives him the right, if he so wishes, not only to ignore Congress and the courts but also deliberately to deceive them, and the public at large, for the sake of national security.

As a government lawyer, in other words, Yoo focused on the powers of the Commander in Chief during wartime, whether these powers derived from the Constitution or from Congress's authorization of the use of military force against Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and later Iraq. What Cheney and company wanted was unbridled authority to do whatever they deemed necessary in the course of these wars. Yoo worked unstintingly to meet their needs.

Read more.

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Yoo can kiss my Constitution lovin' ass!

Frickin' dumbass!

[Jack Rabbit]

2. He should be put up for membership in the home for retired neocons

United Nations Prison, The Hague