Wall Street Journal:
It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda's inner workings, could not detect its operatives' entry into the country, nor predict where it might strike next.
John C. Yoo News - The New York Times
Freep - Report: Bush program extended beyond wiretapping
Yoo Torture Memo Says Fourth Amendment Doesn't Apply in War on ...
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Yoo does not address the memos about planned attacks on big cities by Al-Qaida. These memos were simply IGNORED. People in New York and Washington lost their lives because Bush&Co. choose to ignore them. There was plenty of information about terrorist organizations. All this information was collected under existing laws.
I cannot imagine why is this guy still a professor of law? He has shredded the Constitution with his interpretations and should not be teaching preschoolers leave alone law students.
Yoo's op-ed is a policy defense, not a legal one. He's not using legal precedent or statutory law to justify the warrantless wiretapping program. You can write a policy statement to justify just about anything. But saying think a program is necessary is not the same as saying it is legal. His job was to tell the president whether or not the program was legal, not desirable.
If this is the quality of "legal" reasoning he uses, then I feel sorry for his students.
To be fair, his t0rture memo that gives Dubya his dream of crushing young boy's genitalia wasn't based on any legal standing either.
Yoo's so-called argument for breaking the law and violating the Constitution are weak, insubstantial, and disingenuous.
And those are its best qualities.
Isn't that a given? He IS a Dubya sycophant, after all.
Yoo writes
"And what president -- of either political party -- wouldn't immediately order the NSA to start, so as to find and stop the attackers?"
Then
"Evidently, none of the inspectors general of the five leading national security agencies would approve. In a report issued last week, they suggested that President George W. Bush might have violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by ordering the interception of international communications of terrorists without a judicial warrant. "
Duh ! So go ask for a judicial warrant, surely ?
If it is so clear cut, you'd have been able to make a good case.
I don't see anywhere the claim that they tried to do this through the proper channels and failed.
The more this cr iminal talks the more he reveals. Good to know that they never intended to get warrants. It will come as good evidence at his trial.
Mr. Yoo is being disingenuous. His arguments are designed to support a decision already made. He's an apologist for their already existing policy.
We know why Yoo. We live in this world. We work with people with ambition. We know why. You are a lap dog. No need to write a column.
As a law school graduate, I repeatedly am shocked that John Yoo is given any role to play as a professor - at Berkeley, no less. If any student had written the so-called legal theories that he has espouses, we would have received a complete F. He continues his ridiculously bad logic with this article, with a title that literally accuses others of exactly what he did - writing a legal position paper based on policy (politics) and not on the legality. Karl Rove was a policy guy in the Bush administration. It's one thing for him to espouse what many of us considerable patently ridiculous policies. John Yoo, however, was commanded to write a legal document interpreting the law. He actually decided to write a legal document that discarded the law in favour of the policy. Even in his op-ed, he doesn't have a single legal citation that reinforces his position. He does just the opposite, citing blatant flouting of the law by past presidents as justification for Bush's flouting of the law.
Excellent distillation of the issue and the man.
What do you think his real motivations were for such a blatant effort to circumvent law, then to hide behind it?
Was Woo a full-fledged Cheney hack?
Was he power hungry?
Was he a member of the C-Street Family?
Had he always been a proponent of unlimited executive power?
To be fair, I don't think he's at Boalt/Cal anymore. He's at the AEI, and his last teaching year was spent at Chapman U in Orange County (a big step down). I'm pretty sure he got denied tenure at Boalt, but if not the academic faculty has to be looking to revoke it over this pathetic stuff.
AEI snaps all the out of work fascist up, a regular neo-con jobs program.
Yoo starts with lies, ends with lies and lies everywhere in between. He is a criminal who rewrote law to hide his crimes and those of the bush administration.
"It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda's inner workings, could not detect its operatives' entry into the country, nor predict where it might strike next."
Predictably, given who he is, Yoo's piece begins with a falsehood. In fact, the presence of AQ operatives and their intention to strike in the US WAS known to the FBI and the CIA and the conduct of some of those operatives had raised red flags prior to 9/11. But the Bush administration, and especially Cheney and the DoJ, had decided that the multiple warnings they had received from the outgoing Clinton administration about AQ plans were manifestations of Clinton-era fantasies and the new administration did NOTHING about the AQ threat until 9/12. Cheney, who had been given lead responsibility for national security, never held a principals meeting until 9/10. Plotting with the energy companies was more important.
After 9/11, of course, they over-reacted and used 9/11 as the excuse to trash the Constitution and to implement the neo-con theory of the "unitary executive," giving the executive virtually unlimited powers, which this essay defends.
Bottom line: not only did the last administration fail to understand the threat AQ presented and use the intelligence available to it to prevent 9/11, but it then violated the fundamental principles of our form of government in the aftermath of 9/11.
Fully agree, except would change the word "over-reacted" in the second to last paragraph to "plotted".
The plan to subvert the Constitution came BEFORE the election and the illegal wiretapping began a month into the Bush Presidency - long before 9/11.
Yoo's capacity for self-delusion is impressive:
"It was to meet such emergency circumstances that the Founders designed the presidency."
Actually, no, it was with the idea the presidency should be an executive well constrained and unable to assume monarchical powers that the Framers designed the presidency.
And it's based upon Parliament's brouhaha with Charles I over his claim the King Can Do No Wrong, in which Parliament settled the dispute by lopping of the King's head. It also explains why the Legislative branch of government is the first among equals, with its power to impeach and remove the other branches of government if necessary.
Why did I rob the bank? Because that's where the money is!
It doesn't matter why Bush trampled the 4th amendment, it just needs to be restored, that's all.
HA!
" Building evidence to prove past crimes, as in the civilian criminal system, is entirely beside the point."
No, innocent until proven guilty is the point.
"The best way to find an al Qaeda operative is to look at all email, text and phone traffic between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the U.S."
No, that is the easiest way; it is the lazy way. And based on the 4th Amendment, it is the unconstitutional way.
Brilliant, Quislet. Well said.
Everything about George W. Bush and his administration revolved around being lazy and taking the path of least resistance.
In the absence of insight and intellectual capacity, the "best" solution is to take the easy way out.
What a tragedy that roughly half of all Americans thought this man was capable of leading this country. Twice.
And if the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, as I suspect they were, it says a lot about us Americans that we didn't react the same way Iranian citizens have.
What's worse, it happened to us twice.
With regard to John Yoo, he sees the writing on the wall and is trying to deflect focus from the real issue.
The real issue is the memos he wrote justifying torture, yet he chooses to do an op-ed piece on warrantless wiretaps. Uh...yeah, right.
Sorry John, we Americans aren't the willing sheep we were several years ago, willing to be lead by anything that came from the Bush Criminal Organization.
The time will come when Yoo will answer for his crimes. He won't be allowed to hide behind tortured reasoning and empty rhetoric.
If we allow that, then there's another government lawyer, lurking in the shadows of bureaucracy as we speak, willing to use the same deceitful tactics and reasoning as Yoo to further minimize our Constitutional rights and protections in order to compensate for the laziness and lack of ability in government.
With a shiny new degree from Regent University.
It's is the unconstitutional with a warrant, a warrant that Bush-Cheney would have zero problem getting after 9-11 and FISA, the real issue is why not get a warrant, and why would a ivy league lawyer and law professor support that? Why would Yoo risk his carrier to support subverting the Constitution? it's warped and has nothing to do with 9-11 or terrorism, Bush had the tools, but didn't want to use them. Remember. " if this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of lot easier, as long as I'm the dictator. I've leaned to take George Bush at his word.
That is why we have lawyers, to be familiar with the law. Anyone can draft up a proposal and step on many toes. Let us try your method in our court system. Why would you, sir, be an exception?
And if he committed rape of a person rather than the constitution, I'm sure he would give a fine legal opinion of why that was a legal,heroic, and moral act for the national greater good.
John Woo -- another BushCreep who deserves to be executed in public.
Correction... We like John Woo the creator of dual pistols and flying doves in movie scenes... John Yoo is the one that you are talking about....
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First Posted: 07-15-09 10:24 PM | Updated: 07-15-09 10:28 PM