I'll probably never meet him. What worries me is that literally thousands of people in the US gOvernment and the Armed Forces who have found his formulations adequate to their conscience, in fact, considered it their job to help enact them and carry them out, will be loose in society soon.

They have no moral or legal objection to torture, they have the skills and the experience to carry it out, and they have learned to expect promotion and praise for it.

Don't we need to protect ourselves from them, same as we do from other criminals. Why do we assume they will only murder or torture Iraqis?

They will be working for local police departments before you know it.

Remember, as our Civil Affairs Officers tell us, if they could not agree with the policy, they would have resigned. So I guess they are for it.

I was in Berkeley in the summer and fall of '69 but the real fun was earlier

You're a hard man to please, LWM. Even your sock-puppets know that!

Presidential powers in a wartime crisis,

We're having a crisis? I thought we were discussing US policy.

How the hell did those Iraqis get powerful enough to give us a crisis. Wow! I better go oil my old Springfield, and check my ammo! Maaa! There's a crisis a'comin!

Oh! Isis is coming! Now that's different.

in loco parentis

Oh, that's what they refer to today at my nephew's school as in loco single parentis, right? Times change, and educational theories, too.

summer T-shits at Goodwill Navy Recycle Stores.

100% polyester tank-tops with surplus patch-pocket Navy bell-bottom jeans, all the way, baby! All the hipsters are wearing 'em now.

These individuals might find a congressional investigation embarrassing.

And I'm sure they can count on the delicate sensibilities of the Republicans to spare them any embarassment. Right?

Forget Yoo! In just a few months, this all becomes the new Administrations's problem as they inherit these policies, if not the lawyers who formulated the memos behind them

What do they do? Continue on, and just sign off on the continuation of these policies, or what?

Or is Obama (or Hillary) willing to get impeached for them? Cause they won't hesitate, not for a minute.

What it really is, is the unmitigated and unrestrained use of libel by Glenn Greenwald insofar as he wishes to privately and falsely accuse John Yoo of criminality.

Only the shittiest kind of coward would hide a statement like behind anonymity.

Strange days indeed, but I hereby resolve not to bore Glenn's younger commenters any further.

Gosh, I hope nobody I know sees that. I'll be held to your standard. Of course, they never believe my stories in the first place.

And I don't think that's a tool we want to invent for the GOP against President Obama.

Exactly! I've been screaming about this for months, and getting nothing but "fuck yourself" for it! (Not here)

Screw Yoo, and the rest, Of course, Glenn's post is correct and explicates Yoo's transgressions in detail. But in just a few months, these all become the next Administration's problem.

If they repudiate them, how can they fight the war? If they don't, they are in it up to their necks with Yoo, Cheney and the rest.

There has been a total ban on considering this on many lefty or liberal sites. Torture, unlimited detaining don't suddenly become allright when Obama does it. So should he? What should he (or Hillary) do? We can pretty much figger out what John "Wet Start" McCain will do.

How on earth do we turn back the tide?

I don't even know where to start. We have a whole generation which considers life, even their own, I think, as no more than a collection of pixels. And to top it off, have never suffered more than a pin-prick, themselves. It doesn't auger well. Ad to that an o'erweening sense of existential entitlement, and you got yourself quite an All-American mess.

- Collective responsibility issues...I think the intelligent response is not to focus on the problem of the taint, but on the problem of atonement and rectification. That means defining the problem to completion, spreading the net wide and grabbing all fish in it- who all was tortured, who all was part of the process of inflicting torture, and the fullness of excuses given for it. Politically the issue is really one of atonement- of which there has been none to date. Legalistically and jurisprudentially, there are a lot of dodges and loopholes and lies to expose, rectify, and settle.

And that is exactly what we will do- as soon as there is a Democratic President! The news will be nothing except endless loops of prisoner abuse and Obama will be vaunted as some kind of corrupt African dictator!

Okay, if all of us get together, get a bunch of money and legal talent and sue the shit out of Yoo and company. How long will it be till Yoo is actually sweating imprisonment as a consequence? Years?

Well, if you can't get him indicted, tried, and sentenced by next January this all becomes the Democrat's problem

Will the next administration keep running the war according to Yoo's formulations or will they not?

The Republicans don't love Bush because he's for torture. They love torture because Bush wants to do it.

As soon as there is a Democrat, oh, how they will hate torture and abuse of detainees and the rest. And then the media onslaught begins, as if all of those things have just commenced with the new administration!!!

with this rationale how can we ever have oversight?

Elect a Democratic Administration. You'll see oversight, combined with a media campaign, and endless indictments and trials. What's that you say? That the Repubs wouldn't throw all those people in the Armed Forces and the Contracters who worked for them under the bus. Sure.