Ten Years and Counting: He’s “OK” with Torture* – Are You?

Last year, the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) found Berkeley Law professor John Yoo to be an incompetent lawyer engaged in "professional misconduct”, but failed to hold him accountable for his key role in the Bush administration’s torture program. His legal memos provided not just the “legal cover” for torture, but also for war, indefinite incarceration without trial, rendition, and massive spying.

 

But regardless of the conclusions of the OPR report, it is clear that this “hired gun” attorney went beyond poor judgment. His actions deserve public condemnation and Yoo should be disbarred, fired as a law professor, and prosecuted for his actions.

 

Why should an attorney be prosecuted for providing legal advice?  Yoo’s infamous 2002 torture memo came about as a result of a refusal by Michael Chertoff, then-chief of DOJ’s criminal division, to give a guarantee to the CIA not to prosecute its employees for torture. Yoo was also involved in provision for illegal surveillance, the effects of which we continue to suffer under president Obama.

  

Yoo’s memos permitted the Bush regime to launch wars; conduct massive surveillance; to imprison, torture, and abuse prisoners; to hold prisoners indefinitely without legal protections including habeas corpus; and to generally disregard various provisions of the Constitution and international law. All of this patently illegal advice flows from Yoo’s notorious theory of the “unitary executive” – better described as “If the President does it, it’s legal…..”

 

Legal scholar David Cole writes: "Yoo had a hand in virtually every major legal decision involving the US response to the attacks of September 11, and at every point, so far as we know, his advice was virtually always the same—the president can do whatever the president wants."

 

Torture is a war crime and a crime against humanity. International and U.S. law both prohibit torture, under any and all circumstances, without exception. Yet while the Bush-Cheney torture state was being built, people in this country were told that torture is necessary to keep Americans safe, and acceptance of this “excuse” has spread widely in society.

 

Under cover of Yoo’s memos, thousands have been subjected to torture, tens of thousands incarcerated, tens of millions spied upon, and a million have died in U.S. imperialist wars. Without the provision of “legal cover,” many of these crimes would not have been possible.

 

We stand here today to repudiate the crimes of the past ten years. If we fail to hold our government accountable for the creation of a national security state that utilizes torture and destruction of civil liberties to silence resistance, we are condoning these crimes. Together we say NO! to Torture in our Name.

 

sf@worldcantwait.org       www.FireJohnYoo.org       415-864-5153

 

*see “Living the California dream” interview by John Crace, The Guardian, July 11, 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/jul/11/highereducationprofile.internationaleducationnews