[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

I can only say that Yoo and all Americans, and still is , dilettante.

I bet Woo wishes he could extend his torture opinion to the Supreme Court. If he had known Roberts was wavering, Woo could have brought his own waterboard.

Woo is a legitimate exception to Godwin's Law. He's our own living embodiment of the head creep in all of those WWII spy movies who walks into a room where a guy is surrounded by thugs and says something like "make sure he cooperates" or "do what you must", then walks away. He never actually says "beat the living shit out of him". It always that civilized, polite circumlocution that allows a fig leaf of deniability and the illusion of a clear conscience - a verbal handwashing that Pilate would approve of.

After he left the Department of Justice, it was revealed that Yoo had authored memos, including co-authoring the Torture Memo of August 1, 2002, defining torture and American habeas corpus obligations narrowly.[34][35][36] In addition, a new definition of torture was issued. Most actions that fall under the international definition do not fall within this new definition advocated by the U.S.[37] Several top military lawyers, including Alberto J. Mora, reported that policies allowing methods equivalent to torture were officially handed down from the highest levels of the administration, and led an effort within the Department of Defense to put a stop to those policies and instead mandate non-coercive interrogation standards. [38][39]
On December 1, 2005, Yoo appeared in a debate in Chicago with University of Notre Dame law professor Doug Cassel. During the debate Cassel asked Yoo, "If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?", to which Yoo replied "No treaty." Cassel followed up with "Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo...", to which Yoo replied "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that." [40][41]