If I were ever to write a movie or play, the guy I would focus on is Yoo.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Your boss comes to you one day and asks you to legitimize torture in a legal memorandum. What is the internal struggle versus the external one? Does he ever feel like saying "F!@K no, let someone else do it, I'm off back to Berkeley!" or is it "Sure, is Tuesday soon enough?"

Is Yoo a tortured soul? (Intentional irony)

or a

soldier of torture, happy to march down the predetermined paths dictated by his superiors?

I see him as an Oppenheimer sort of figure - one whose intellect is used for nefarious purposes, but clothed in a shield of patriotism.

[Schema Thing]

1. well that's sweet. Thank you. I might write about Yoo too one day.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

3. He's one of the most interesting characters in this whole debacle -

An underling who was asked to legitimize the undermining of the ethos of an entire democracy.

[Vattel]

2. I've often pondered

whether he's stupid, utterly self-deluded, or a complete fraud. Maybe a combination.

[Occam Bandage]

7. Or, and this is a crazy thought,

an extraordinarily intelligent person with a deep, inquisitive, probing mind, who has dedicated his career to advancing a particular legal theory that he believes is for the benefit of the entire United States, but which many other people believe is dangerous and is often used as a flimsy shield for brazen criminality.

Or, you know, he could just be some dummy who accidentally framed, defended, and enacted a comprehensive legal theory.

[EFerrari]

9. He's all of that and a sociopath, too. n/t

[Vattel]

15. Where does he defend a comprehensive legal theory?

He defends a certain sort of originalism if that's what you mean. He also defends many obviously false historical claims about the original understanding of the scope and nature of executive power, the declare war clause and other parts of the Constitution. That's what leaves me wondering whether he's stupid, self-deluded, or a fraud.

[stillcool]

17. not crazy to me....

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me their job is to find law, or a way to interpret law that benefits the aims of their client. I'm sure that our country has used the practice of torture before, and will do so again. After all we teach it in the School of the America's. I'm sure the wide-spread use necessitated finding a legal theory as a defense when the shit hit the fan. The only anomaly of this Administration was the brazen and dangerous way they engaged in the practice.

[Warpy]

11. ...Or just easily bullied

by heavyweights like Cheney and Addington.

If he starts to sing, we'll know.

[hay rick]

4. Mee? Thank YOO!

[Patsy Stone]

5. Me too.

I've always loathed him the most out of all the Bushies. There is a special place in hell for John Yoo.

[Occam Bandage]

6. Yoo has long been a proponent of the unitary executive theory,

and as such I'm pretty sure that he did his job efficiently and enthusiastically, happy that he had a chance to expand the powers of the Executive and thus strengthen the United States of America in his mind. Not the most interesting story.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

8. When you say "has long been a proponent of the unitary executive theory"

I wasn't aware that there had ever been such a theory until it started being unleashed by the Bush administration - averring that all that stuff we had all previously believed about 3 separate but equal branches was all wrong, and that a "unitary executive" trumped them all.

Are you saying that Yoo had been a proponent of that previously unknown theory even before he became a part of the Justice Department? Fascinating. Of course I have to ask for the obligatory sources, but only because I am sincerely interested.

[annabanana]

14. Ah.. A Monarchist.

What about that, um . . unpleasantness back in the late 18th Century?

[Occam Bandage]

22. Yes, the theory was not commonly called "unitary executive" until recently.

However, the key concepts of the theory, being the President's inherent immunities from oversight, have been argued by conservatives since at least the late 1980s. Yoo is a member of the Federalist Society; it's hardly shocking that he would believe that the Presidency has been dangerously eroded since Watergate.

No need to get snippy. Not my fault your idea for a movie is a bit...er...flat.

[Vattel]

18. I doubt that his story would make a good movie,

but his role in providing legal cover for Bush's trashing of the Constitution is interesting to me.

[EFerrari]

10. Yoo and Gonzales. I'm convinced that Gonzales would never have

had a shot at attorney general except he was the one to physically sign the order that Ashcroft wouldn't sign. After that, they had to promote him and so, retro him into legitimacy.

[Nevernose]

19. Ashcroft quitting was like Macbeth backing out at the last minute

Actually, there are parallels. I see Ashcroft as a not-too-bright, easily swayed and easily bullied, overly ambitious man. Not evil, exactly, but the moral line for him to cross was a lot farther back than the moral line most of us have. Except when Ashcroft finally "screwed his courage to the sticking post" it was to back out of the whole thing.

[EFerrari]

21. Oooo! The hospital visit, "what are these face?!"

Yes, with so much corruption and betrayal, there are parallels.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

12. How does he become refolded back into the Berkeley community?

Berkeley and Yoo? How do they begin to co-exist? What do the students think? His department co-horts?

[kwassa]

13. I think David Addington was the chief mover and shaker

who gave the pseudo-legal rationale for everything Dick Cheney wanted to do.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

16. But Yoo wrote the memos. Although . . .

Perhaps we can portray Addington as a pair of monogrammed boots, "DA", shown only from knees and below, giving Yoo a sheaf of memos and saying tersely "Sign these and make it snappy, Unitary Guy".

[deaniac21]

20. I'm getting sleepy.