Althouse: John Yoo gets a sympathetic ear...

February 4, 2010

John Yoo gets a sympathetic ear...

... from Right Wing News.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...: Their site is unreachable.

An Althousealanche?; 2/4/10, 10:27 AM
MadisonMan said...: Should anyone be surprised that he doesn't answer the questions asked?; 2/4/10, 10:42 AM
Anonymous said...: Good grief! I love the convoluted and manipulative word game he-- and other Rightists-- play in order to justify "torture" without using that word.

Take this question, for instance:

"...whether he thought Zubayda being stuffed in a box to the point that his gunshot wounds reopened was "well beyond the line."

So did that happen or not?

Yoo doesn't say it didn't happen. He doesn't say it did happen. Instead, he says it "wasn't authorized". And then he says so again:

I don’t believe that the Justice Department ever advised that someone could do that. Now the problem is that there are all these claims and allegations of things that critics of the administration imagined that the Bush administration did, which it never did.

So did the Bush administration do this-- put this guy in a box until he gunshot wounds reopened? YES or NO??! THEY WON'T SAY YES OR NO! Yoo will only say that some of the thing that have been claimed are not true. Well, no shit, because the Bush thugs are just covering their asses and won't clarify what is true and what is not.

Why? They don't want YOU and I to know!

Put two and two together, and you get that this did indeed happen, that it was torture, and that Yoo is saying that this sort of stuff wasn't authorized by his legal opinions.

But they just can't be fucking honest and say this, can they?! Bush & Co are so invested in the idea that "we don't torture" that the facts and what actually happened doesn't matter-- the only thing that matters is that the word games continue on.

Bush & the Republicans opened the door to political doublespeak, just like they opened the door to massive and unaffordable government spending... then the Democrats walked right in!

I cannot understand how those on both the Right and Left can justify having a dishonest government where the President lies, lies, and lies...; 2/4/10, 11:28 AM
traditionalguy said...: Yoo gets to the point quickly. Every war decision of Obama so far has been against the interests of the USA and, using some altruistic ideal as a cover, has gone right to doing the very best thing to facilitate AlQaeda's war effort against us. Obama's decision on the NYC civilian criminal trial for the 9/11 mastermind has no other valid explanation. That is where this President proved that he is a fifth columnist. No President could capable of making that descision for any other reason. The Democrats are toast. Patriotic Liberals had better start their own Tea Party.; 2/4/10, 11:30 AM
Freder Frederson said...: Why didn't Hawkins ask him if the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment applied to the detainees? He only asked about the Geneva Conventions.; 2/4/10, 11:55 AM
Balfegor said...: So did the Bush administration do this-- put this guy in a box until he gunshot wounds reopened? YES or NO??!

Yoo would not be the person to ask about that. Why would he? He worked in DC, in the Office of Legal Counsel. He wasn't on location in Cuba or wherever. And it's not like we had a London Cage equivalent in the middle of DC for him to peek in on, to see for himself what was being done.; 2/4/10, 12:37 PM
Robert Cook said...: One's impulse is to say, "Of course something called 'RIGHT WING NEWS' will be sympathetic to Yoo," except that there are ethical conservatives who recognize that torture is always wrong, aside from being illegal, and that, Yoo's "tortured" (sorry) reasoning aside, what we have done is torture. He was tasked specifically to write an opinion that would allow torture under another designation, (i.e., "enhanced interrogation," which the Nazis also termed their own torture practices).

And of course Yoo will offer self-justifying non-answer answers, as do most people who have done wrong or have facilitated wrongdoing.; 2/4/10, 1:26 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Julius give Yoo a chance.; 2/4/10, 1:30 PM
Fen said...: Robert: there are ethical conservatives who recognize that torture is always wrong

No. There's nothing "ethical" about allowing thousands of innocents to be murdered because you don't want to stain your soul with "torture" like waterboarding.

And stop pretending that you care at all about torture. Its only a political prop for you. First time Obama has to waterboard a perp, you'll be staring down at your shoelaces trying to pretend this instance is "different".; 2/4/10, 7:55 PM
Anonymous said...: @Lem- Thanks for that link. Yoo certainly appears more equivocal about the whole issue there. And I never knew Tavis Smiley could be such a hard-dog interviewer.; 2/4/10, 10:36 PM
Robert Cook said...: "First time Obama has to waterboard a perp, you'll be staring down at your shoelaces trying to pretend this instance is 'different.'"

Not surprisingly, Fen, you know not of which you speak.

I already consider Obama a war criminal and a murderer, so I certainly would have no hesitation condemning him if it were revealed he had waterboarded or otherwise tortured prisoners of our terror war.

Torture is against the law and it is always wrong. No matter who perpetrates it or what the justification.; 2/5/10, 8:19 AM