"To the extent that the petition goes beyond expressing views, I worry that it's an unfortunate effort to interfere with academic freedom," he [Yoo] said.
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Ian better not doubt the tolerance for free speech, absolute adherence to due process, or the natural rights we all enjoy from Reichsjustizminister John (Light Stick) Yoo or else.
It is just shocking that anyone would question the love of freedom, truth, and justice from a former clerk of Clarence Thomas, former Department of Justice legal counsel, former American Enterprise Institute fellow, current professor of Constitutional and International Law at Boalt, and all around great guy.
BTW, where the hell is Justin these days?
CG --------------
Press Trust of India New York, May 17
In yet another startling revelation, a leading news magazine has said US President George W Bush, along with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, had signed off a memo on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door for abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
While there is no telling where the scandal will bottom out, 'Newsweek' said US soldiers and CIA operatives could be accused of war crimes and of charges which could include homicide involving deaths during interrogations...
...By January 25, 2002, according to a memo obtained by 'Newsweek,' it was clear that President Bush had already decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
...In the memo written to Bush, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales laid out the argument that the Geneva Conventions were obsolete in the new paradigm...
...On December 28, 2001, the magazine said, the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel weighed in with another opinion, arguing that US courts had no jurisdiction to review the treatment of foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
The appeal of Guantanamo Bay from the start was that, in the view of administration lawyers, the base existed in a legal twilight zone -- or "the legal equivalent of outer space," as one former administration lawyer described it.
And on January 9, 2002, Newsweek said, John Yoo of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel co-authored a sweeping 42-page memo concluding that neither the Geneva Conventions nor any of the laws of war applied to the conflict in Afghanistan.
When State Department lawyers first saw the Yoo memo, "we were horrified," said one. Two days after the Yoo memo circulated, the State Department's chief legal adviser, William Howard Taft IV, fired a memo to Yoo calling his analysis "seriously flawed."
Similarly, when Secretary of State Colin Powell read the Gonzales memo, he "hit the roof," a State source told the magazine. Desperately seeking to change Bush's mind, Powell fired off his own blistering response the next day, January 26, and sought an immediate meeting with the president.
On February 7, 2002, the White House announced that the US would indeed apply the Geneva Conventions to the Afghan war -- but that Taliban and Qaeda detainees would still not be afforded prisoner-of-war status.
The White House's halfway retreat, also set the stage for the new interrogation procedures ungoverned by international law. With the legal groundwork laid, Bush signed a secret order granting new powers to the CIA.
Newsweek quoted knowledgeable sources as saying the president's directive authorized the CIA to set up a series of secret detention facilities outside the US, and to question those held in them with unprecedented harshness.
Washington then negotiated novel "status of forces agreements" with foreign governments for the secret sites. These agreements gave immunity not merely to US government personnel but also to private contractors...
...The administration, it says, also began "rendering" -- or delivering terror suspects to foreign governments for interrogation...
By 2004, the United States was running a covert charter airline moving CIA prisoners from one secret facility to another, sources say. It was judged impolitic (and too traceable) to use the US Air Force.