Hall of Shame: Torture advocate John Yoo

04.11.08 - Posted by AsiansVote

Berkeley law professor John Yoo joins the Hall of Shame for destroying the rule of law and contributing to the deaths of dozens of people by providing legal cover for the Bush Administration's policy of torture at Guantanamo. Scott Horton has the lowdown on Yoo's reprehensible work at Harpers.org:

[Yoo's] memorandum authorized waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, the administration of psychotropic drugs and sleep deprivation in excess of two days in addition to a number of other techniques. Each of these techniques is long established as torture as a matter of American and international law. The application and implementation of these techniques was and is a crime.
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Following the implementation of these techniques, more than 108 detainees died in detention. In a large number of these cases, the deaths have been ruled a homicide and connected to torture. These homicides were a forseeable consequence of the advice that Haynes and Yoo gave.

Now the National Lawyers Guild is calling for Yoo's disbarment and prosecution for war crimes. Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In a memorandum written the same month George W. Bush invaded Iraq, Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo said the Department of Justice would construe US criminal laws not to apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. According to Yoo, the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war.
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"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act," said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn.

Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country's premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal.

Glenn Greenwald provides more justification for the war crimes argument -- along with an explanation of why John Yoo will never be brought to justice:

Since the Nuremberg Trials, "war criminals" include not only those who directly apply the criminal violence and other forms of brutality, but also government officials who authorized it and military officials who oversaw it. Ironically, the Bush administration itself argued in the 2006 case of Hamdan -- when they sought to prosecute as a "war criminal" a Guantanamo detainee whom they allege was a driver for Osama bin Laden -- that one is guilty of war crimes not merely by directly violating the laws of war, but also by participating in a conspiracy to do so.
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The political reality is that high government officials in the U.S. are never going to be held accountable for war crimes. In practice, "international law" exists as a justifying instrument for powerful countries to impose their will on those which are less powerful, and war crimes tribunals are almost always a form of victor's justice. So neither John Yoo, David Addington nor Alberto Gonzales, and certainly not their bosses at whose behest they were working, are going to be sitting in a dock charged with war crimes any time soon -- regardless of whether they ought to be.

But at least House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers has called for Yoo to testify about the memo before Congress on May 6.

In the meantime, watch carefully for any politician or journalist who speaks warmly of John Yoo or provides him a venue to justify himself without challenge. Those are politicians and journalists you can safely write off as deeply unserious people who have no understanding of or respect for the rule of law or the principles upon which this country were founded.

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04.11.08 | Civil Rights & Liberties , Hall of Shame , Issues