I saw another photo of the man in the Chron yesterday, accompanying Matthew Stannard’s story of a Justice Department memorandum written by John Yoo, the Boalt Hall law professor who once claimed that it would be morally justifiable to “crush a child’s testicles” in front of his mother to extract “information” from her.
In the photo, Yoo is wearing a striped tie, wire-rimmed glasses, and a thin smile. It would not be necessary for anyone to obtain legal authority for the crushing of the child’s testicles, nothing beyond the opinion of the President who could legally order or authorize it as “necessary” in the “war on terror.”
I kept staring at the photo, trying to convince myself that I was seeing a human being, a man who had cares and concerns and interests, who probably selected his tie with the thought that it made him look pretty good.
John Yoo’s job at the Justice Department was to craft legal memoranda which would provide cover for George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld in the use of torture and brutality.
Hitler had lawyers like John Yoo. He had a cowardly, complaisant legislature which enacted ‘Patriot Acts’, thus legalizing everything he wanted to do.
Right now in America the surveillance and secrecy policies of the Bush regime are being defended by President Obama’s Justice Department. In federal court, Obama’s lawyers have told a judge that he has no power to enforce his own orders to disclose a secret wiretap document, and they have threatened to destroy it rather than produce it. Meanwhile, prisoners held for years without charges or open trial are condemned in secret by military courts.
On April 27, 1961, another American President forcefully argued a different point of view. Speaking to the American Association of Newspaper Publishers, John Kennedy said this:
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment far outweigh the dangers which are cited to justify it. There is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it –– and there is very great danger that an announced need for greater security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment...”
Sound familiar?
