The John Yoo memo: Cole-Greenwald-Daily Kos & etc "Circle Jerk"

The phrase above is not really mine. It's actually a typically foul pet phrase the blogger John Cole brings up when any meme runs through right-wing blogs. He complains that when one conservative picks up on a story the rest all the rest pick it up and run with it. Problem is, he doesn't seem to notice that liberals do the exact same thing, and when I pointed that out in his comments section, I was not exactly welcomed with open arms...

Case in point, a long legal opinion piece written in 2003 by former Department of Justice attorney John Yoo was released this week.

Although it doesn't tell us anything new, the leftist blogosphere falls all over itself to display more righteous indignation, claiming the US legalized torture. Right on cue, Cole, Greenwald, Daily Kos (some of them even calling for Yoo's execution, which is ironic for a blog where most people are death penalty opponents). These are just a few - there are actually too many for me to list all here.

Unfortunately, they leave out some key points and distort others, starting with the fact that Yoo's memos were not law, but also opinion pieces, and were rescinded nine months later.

But the biggest problem is the constant whining that we didn't give Geneva Convention status to prisoners in the war on terror. Well, if anyone takes the time to actually read the Third Geneva Convention, it is very clear on who is or is not considered a prisoner of war. Some of the applicable criteria here:

2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

and:

(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

I don't see how any of these apply to Al-Qaeda. If you want to give POW status to these guys, then you would have to afford it to people like Timothy McVeigh as well.

Meanwhile, media opinionators like Keith Olbermann try to whip up hysteria by spinning this to falsely claim that John Yoo "wrote Bush a memo telling him he could ignore the Geneva Conventions". This is, quite frankly, a bald-faced lie.

In any case, in 2003, the Bush administration concluded that while these prisoners didn't meet the Geneva Convention's criteria for POW status, they were still protected by the eighth amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. OK, then, you might ask, what about waterboarding? I don't support waterboarding, but it was only done to three high-ranking Al-Qaeda operatives in 2003, and never since. If you want to prosecute that, you might be able to, but you will need some luck.

One of the things Yoo was doing was essentially crafting legal arguments to assist the administration if someone tried to file torture charges against them down the line. You might find this unseemly, yet it's strange that no one bats an eye when attorneys pull out every argument to vigorously defend people like Timothy McVeigh, Mumia Abu-Jamal, or OJ Simpson. That's what lawyers do. Now maybe it was inappropriate that he was doing this as a deputy in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, and not a privately retained attorney - I don't know. But he wasn't writing to defend Bush (or anyone) specifically.

What's really ludicrous is when people link John Yoo's writings to Abu Gharaib - as if the guards had copies of Yoo's memos, or could understand them even if they did (moreover, none of Yoo's arguments got them off the hook at their trials. This isn't just ordinary people using the "seven-degrees of separation" link to Abu Gharaib, but well-educated ivory tower denizens like Glenn Greenwald above.

Holy cow, give it a rest. If these legal minds are so confident that they are right, why don't they stop their whining and file charges against John Yoo or anyone in the Bush administration? Or are they worried that, unlike on their blogs, counter-arguments and evidence are allowed to be entered into the record?



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