JOHN YOO, DICTATOR'S ENABALER

Gordon over at Alternate Brain has a post up this morning about Bush's dirt-bag at the DOJ, John Yoo. Here's the link to that: John Yoo’s growing disgrace.

That got me to thinkin', so I did a little diggin' on the SOB.

This is from almost a full year ago but it is very relevant today. Found this in the Washington Post.

2003 MEMO ON INTERROGATION

Permissible Assaults Cited in Graphic Detail

Drugging Detainees Is Among Techniques

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 6, 2008

Thirty pages into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations in 2003, senior Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked by American policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner's eyes poked out?

......... could he have "scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance" thrown on a prisoner? How about slitting an ear, nose or lip, or disabling a tongue or limb? What about biting?

These assaults are all mentioned in a U.S. law prohibiting maiming, which Yoo parsed as he clarified the legal outer limits of what could be done to terrorism suspects as detained by U.S. authorities. The specific prohibitions, he said, depended on the circumstances or which "body part the statute specifies."

Which body part? Does it matter, it's all illegal.

.....Yoo also said, because federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes by military interrogators are trumped by the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief.

So, was he trying to make Bush God? Oh wouldn't the radical Christian Right just love that!

Yoo, who is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, also uses footnotes to effectively dismiss the Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution, arguing that protections against unreasonable search and seizure and guarantees of due process either do not apply or are irrelevant in a time of war. He frequently cites his previous legal opinions to bolster his case.

Just why the hell did University of California at Berkeley hire this jerk!

The interrogation memo was considered a binding opinion for nine months until December 2003, when OLC chief Jack Goldsmith told the Defense Department to ignore the document's analysis.

In his 2007 book "The Terror Presidency," Goldsmith, who now teaches law at Harvard University, said that some of the memos written by Yoo and his colleagues from 2001 to 2003 were "deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President."

Deeply flawed? Sloppily reasoned? Overboard? How about totally illegal!

Here's the link to the rest. Sorry it came through like this, but it's the best this ol' fart could do. So deal with it!

http://www.evri.com/log/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2008%2F04%2F05%2FAR2008040502099.html%3Fnav%3Drss_nation

Go read the rest, there's much more.