Yoo Who

I've started to write about John Yoo on several occasions, but for one reason or another, I've not finished any of my entries. After reading about the latest justification for the "imperial presidency" of King George, I thought it was time to resurrect those pieces.

Yoo has an op-ed piece in the NY Times, How the Presidency Regained Its Balance, in which he tries to reasonably, earnestly explain why Bush needs to "reinvigorat[e] the presidency," and so Bush's recent actions on domestic surveillance and torture, when viewed in that light, are eminently justified. Citing the Constitutional right to "sidestep" the law, which was granted to the President by our Founding Fathers, Yoo explains:

Thus the administration has gone to war to pre-empt foreign threats. It has data-mined communications in the United States to root out terrorism. It has detained terrorists without formal charges, interrogating some harshly. And it has formed military tribunals modeled on those of past wars, as when we tried and executed a group of Nazi saboteurs found in the United States.

To his critics, Mr. Bush is a “King George” bent on an “imperial presidency.” But the inescapable fact is that war shifts power to the branch most responsible for its waging: the executive.

* * * *

The administration has also been energetic on the domestic front. It has re-classified national security information made public in earlier administrations and declined, citing executive privilege, to disclose information to Congress or the courts about its energy policy task force. The White House has declared that the Constitution allows the president to sidestep laws that invade his executive authority. That is why Mr. Bush has issued hundreds of signing statements — more than any previous president — reserving his right not to enforce unconstitutional laws.

A reinvigorated presidency enrages President Bush’s critics, who seem to believe that the Constitution created a system of judicial or congressional supremacy. . . But the founders intended that wrongheaded or obsolete legislation and judicial decisions would be checked by presidential action, just as executive overreaching is to be checked by the courts and Congress.

Glenn Greenwald of Unclaimed Territory gives the short verson, in John Yoo summarizes the last 5 years in two short sentences:

Bob Egelko has an interesting article in The San Francisco Chronicle today examining how U.S. law has changed over the last five years as a result of the 9/11 attack. He includes this truly revealing quote from John Yoo:

UC Berkeley law Professor John Yoo, who as a Justice Department lawyer was one of the Bush administration's chief legal theorists, summarized its view in his forthcoming book, "War by Other Means":

"We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch.''

Actually, I'm pretty sure that it's always the case in America (or at least it used to be) that "Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them." That's pretty fundamental to how our country works. In fact, the whole structure of the Constitution is based on that system -- not just the "Peacetime Constitution" we have, but the actual Constitution itself.

The Carpetbagger Report also adds, in The un-American constitutionalism of John Yoo, that:

Given this worldview, Yoo's formulation of the distinction between wartime and peacetime constitutionalism breaks down and becomes one. If there is only war, there is only wartime constitutionalism. . . . [T]he shift of gravity to the executive branch, to the Oval Office, is total. The presidency rises above Congress and the courts, American constitutionalism is un-Americanized, and such quaint notions as the separation of powers and checks and balances go the way of the Geneva Conventions — they get in the way, and must therefore be abandoned.

In Bush's America, the America dreamed up by people like Yoo and Addington and implemented by people like Cheney and the Republican rubber-stampers in Congress, the president enacts laws, interprets laws, ignores law, and is essentially a law into himself (or herself).

Don't think this isn't possible. It's happening right now.

Yoo is one of the authors of the theory that justifies Bush's Imperial Presidency. These articles provide some insight into the man behind the throne. Scholar Stands by Post-9/11 Writings On Torture, Domestic Eavesdropping and a piece in PERRspectives Blog, Yoo Da Man.

From Abu Ghraib to NSA spying, President Bush's intellectual rationale comes from John Yoo:

On Torture. In August 2002, Yoo argued that physical torture "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." For Yoo, mental torture was limited only to psychological harm that must last "months or even years." In the wake of the Abu Ghraib revelations, Yoo took to the airwaves in May and June of 2004 in defense of the administration.

On Enemy Combatants and the Geneva Conventions. Over the protests of the State Department, Yoo persuaded President Bush in January 2002 to waive the Geneva Conventions and instead recognize Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners as "illegal enemy combatants" rather than prisoners of war. Three years later, Yoo argued that the President has the authority to hold the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely.

On Secret Detention of Suspects. Yoo has been a vigorous proponent of secret detention of terrorism suspects, both in the United States and abroad. Foreshadowing the uproar over the NSA program, Yoo defended secret detentions of suspected terrorism contacts in the U.S. so as to not allow Al Qaeda "to see the methods that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are using to catch them."

On the McCain Anti-Torture Bill. In recent weeks, Yoo, though no longer in the administration, has supported the White House effort to block passage of the McCain anti-torture amendment in the Senate. "While the impulse behind the McCain amendment is worthy", Yoo wrote in November, "McCain's only real effect would be to limit the interrogation of al-Qaeda terrorists."

On the NSA Domestic Surveillance Program. According to the New York Times, Yoo worked on "a classified legal opinion on the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program."

So now the guy that came up with this stuff is no longer in government, so is out there promoting the theory, as though it was always around, rather than a figment of his imagination (and pen). It like a little yo-yo -- that starts and ends with Yoo. Just call it: Yo-Yo Yoo.

For more information on Yoo, read this column from the NY Review of Books:
What Bush Wants to Hear and The New Yorker: Fact.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has a response to the Yoo op-ed, Shrill, hysterical lefty partisan blogger, that, as always, is well worth reading.

Tags: Politics, NSA, domestic surveillance, John Yoo, Law