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• Tuesday, May 15, 2007 08:22 PM

  Re: Frontline on Domestic Spying

  They would be scared if they knew who John Yoo was.

  From Wikipedia:

  John Yoo contributed to the PATRIOT Act and wrote controversial memos in which he advocated the possible legality of torture and that enemy combatants could be denied protection under the Geneva Conventions.

  His positions on executive power, collectively termed the Yoo Doctrine or Unitary executive theory, are controversial since it is suggested the theory holds that the President's war powers place him above any law.

  In explaining the Yoo Doctrine, Yoo made the following statements during a December 1, 2005, debate in Chicago, Illinois, with Notre Dame Law School Professor Doug Cassel:

  Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?

  Yoo: No treaty.

  Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.

  Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

  On 14th November 2006, invoking the principle of command responsibility, German attorney Wolfgang Kaleck filed a complaint with the German Federal Attorney General (Generalbundesanwalt) against Yoo, along with 13 other "co-defendants" for his alleged complicity in torture and other crimes against humanity at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo

  —Michael Harold Read Michael Harold's other letters
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