Thursday, February 25, 2010

GOP Sweetheart – 2/25/2010: John Yoo

The sicker he gets, the more the Republicans love him.

yoogift Fresh off a news cycle that saw him define executive power as bestowing the president the right to massacre whole villages, notorious torture lawyer John Yoo has published a new piece in the Wall Street Journal, boldly titled “My Gift to the Obama Presidency.” [Murdoch delinked]

“Barack Obama may not realize it,” he writes, “but I may have just helped save his presidency.”

How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe.

Stunning megalomania aside, it is an eerie thing for John Yoo to declare victory of any kind. Reading his op-ed is a little like listening to Emperor Palpatine crow that Luke Skywalker’s journey to the Dark Side is nearly complete. (”Welcome, young Skywalker. I have been expecting you … “)

Yoo begins by describing Obama’s sad devotion to the rule of law as a newly-inaugurated wet-behind-the-ears president.

“In office only one day,” he writes, “Mr. Obama ordered the shuttering of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, followed later by the announcement that he would bring terrorists to an Illinois prison.”

What follows is a brisk re-cap of what he sees as Obama’s most grievous moments as Commander-in-Chief:

He terminated the Central Intelligence Agency’s ability to use “enhanced interrogations techniques” to question al Qaeda operatives. He stayed the military trial, approved by Congress, of al Qaeda leaders. He ultimately decided to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 attacks, to a civilian court in New York City, and automatically treated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, as a criminal suspect (not an illegal enemy combatant). Nothing better could have symbolized the new president’s determination to take us back to a Sept. 10, 2001, approach to terrorism.

It’s a veritable runaway train of right-wing talking points and, frankly, it merits no rebuttal...

Inserted from <Alternet>

Only a true GOP sweetheart could be party to gathering bogus intelligence, violating the Geneva Convention, committing war crimes, and making the US an international pariah, while calling it a GIFT!!

3 comments:

the walking man said...

Just another mouthpiece trying to validate a wrong perpetrated not only on the citizens of the constitution he was sworn to defend but also them who were tortured to supply information that would have been more easily given through proper interrogation methods.

Damn him too.

Lisa G. said...

Yoo is a war criminal and should be tried as such along with all his friends - Bush, Cheney, Bybee, Rice, etc.

TomCat said...

Right on to you both.