Has a major American newspaper ever given a monthly platform to a former public official so he can regularly seek to thwart or at least criticize a criminal probe into the very program that he authorized while in government? Comes now Exhibit A, John Yoo, who is back in the Philadelphia Inquirer today and returns to his favorite topic: How America as we know it will be destroyed by an investigation into any aspect of torture and other war crimes that were authorized by his own legally dubious memoes.
Is this really ethical? Borderline, and I only say that because so far the smoke signals from the U.S. Justice Department is that they are only investigating extreme torture by rogue CIA agents and not thet actions by Yoo and his superiors like David Cheney and David Addington to apporve waterboarding and other torture tactics that had long been considered illegal. This even though a separate probe by internal Justice Department investigators reportedly accuses Yoo of "sloppy legal analysis, misjudgments and possible political interference in the process" and recommends possible disbarrmant.
Is it still highly disappointing to see Yoo use his newspaper-granted real estate mainly for his personal vindication crusade, You bet.
He writes:
Last month, the president and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. launched a destructive investigation into the CIA's detention and interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders. Several of the detainees were directly involved with the planning and execution of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. They were captured at a time when our government feared a second wave of attacks.
Our nation's leaders made the difficult decision to use coercive interrogation methods to learn as quickly as possible what these hardened al-Qaeda operatives knew. As one of many government lawyers who worked on these counterterrorism programs, I can attest to the terrible pressure of time and events in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Yoo's "Closing Argument" (as his column is called, perhaps in anticipation of his eventual day in court), however, is patently absurd: It makes the massive and unwarranted leap of logic that the decision to investigate the work of rogue CIA agents and contractors -- that is, the interrogators who went even beyond the legally and (more important) morally dubious standard established by Yoo and his colleagues -- is somehow an assault on the entire agency. To bolster his case, he takes something that happened 30 years ago that really has nothing to do with the issue at hand -- cutbacks in the CIA staffing in the wake of the scandals of the 1960s and '70s -- and seeks to muddle the issue by conflating that with the torture probe.
Staffing at the CIA is a political argument that is worth having, but torture is a crime, pure and simple. They have nothing to do with each other. To mix apples and oranges this way is an example of what several people joked that Yoo's Inquirer column should be called: "Tortured Logic." To make his muddled argument, Yoo yet again finds it necessary to turn America's core values on their head.
He writes of how a presidential candidate (Jimmy Carter) once said "[o]ur government should justify the character and moral principles of the American people..." -- which to Yoo is a bad thing, get it? Sigh. The Inquirer has hired two controversial conservative columnists in recent years -- one of them is now campaigning for president, while the other is campaigning to stay out of jail.
I hope they fail.
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I think John Yoo has a valid concern: We need talented, motivated intelligence gatherers to defeat the asymmetrical foes we will continue to face in the future. The CIA should evaluate methods and review their interrogators performance, and weed out those who don't do a good job, but we don't need to bring down the entire Agency -- we need to build it up. Clumsy investigators like Holder will bungle that balncing act. In fact, he already has bungled it. Articles like those of John Yoo are important to protecting the future viability of our intelligence agencies -- if it is open season from all sides on the CIA, things aren't going to get better... I feel sorry for Leon Panetta -- Obama isn't giving him the support the CIA needs.— Mr. Smith- Comment removed.
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Yeah - but what about job creation, bryane? I notice that you forgot to mention that measure when talking about the disaster that was 8 years of a Republican administration. Now why did you forget to mention jobs, bryane? Could it be because Bush created jobs? Let's look, shall we? Clinton, 1993-1997, +11.5 million jobs created, annual increase of +2.6%; Clinton, 1997-2001, +11.2 million jobs created, annual increase of +2.3%; Bush, +0.01 million jobs created, +0.002%; Bush, 2005-2009, +1.9 million jobs created, 0.3%. Hmmmmmm. Clinton, 22.7 million jobs created and Bush, 1.91 million jobs created. WOW!— Talking point sleuth- It's nice to see that the Sloth now thinks that Bill Clinton invented the Internet, and not just Al Gore.— Mr. Smith
- Good point, Mr. Smith. Clearly, the Internets accounts for 11 times as many jobs. We can always find external factors to explain the failures of a Republican administration, right? I mean, it's not like Republicans are pathetic whiners that fail to hold their elected officials accountable, or anything like that. No. No. No.— Talking point sleuth
- What the toadies can't bring themselves to admit is that their hero panicked. That's just all there is to it. The incompetents pushed aside the people who gave them the warnings they ignored and waged a war of expedience. It was all tactics and no strategy.— SteveMG
- Little Dickie is back at it again. If water boarding is such a terrible form of torture, why is it that the marines and Army actually water board soldiers as part of their training so they have an understanding what captures could do to them? If it was illegal, than it has been done to our own people HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TIMES. little Dickie seems to have a lot of trouble understanding that we are not playing a card game called war, but really are at war with thugs who see nothing wrong with killing children, etc.— oldduchman
- Ah, the spineless cowardly Democrats are now crying racism for the reason for any opposition to Obama. It didn't take long, did it? Funny, it was Democrats who ridiculed Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice in stereotypical cartoons published in "respectable" newspapers and magazines. I don't know one Republican who isn't thrilled with Thomas nor do I know one Democrat who is? Are those Democrats racists too??????????? How bout you Wilbur, you like Thomas? Are you a racist?— WriteWinger
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
E-mail Will by clicking here.
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