A President Can Pull the Trigger by John Yoo

[Clara T]

A President Can Pull the Trigger
By John Yoo

ARTICLES
Los Angeles Times  
Publication Date: December 20, 2005

Iraq seems to have the imperial presidency in retreat. Last week the White House accepted Sen. John McCain's proposal to prohibit cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of enemy combatants. President Bush is under fire for authorizing the NSA's warrantless interception of international phone calls and e-mails that were linked to possible terrorists and that ended or originated in the U.S.

My name has come up for criticism over these issues because of my service in the Justice Department during Bush's first term. I've defended the administration's legal approach to the treatment of Al Qaeda suspects and detainees. I cannot address the National Security Agency's program, which remains classified. But both instances bring up the issue of presidential power in times of war, and I can speak directly to that: The Constitution creates a presidency that is uniquely structured to act forcefully and independently to repel serious threats to the nation.

Let's consider the president's right to start wars. Liberal intellectuals believe that Bush's exercise of his commander-in-chief power has exceeded his constitutional authority and led to a quagmire in Iraq. If only Congress had undertaken the solemn process of declaring war, they have argued, faulty intelligence would have been smoked out, the debate would have produced consensus, and the American people would have been firmly committed to the ordeal ahead. But they are off the mark.

<snip>

Critics of these wars want to upend this long practice by appeals to an "original understanding" of the Constitution. The Constitution, however, does not set out a clear process for starting war. Congress has the power to "declare war," but this clause allows Congress to establish the nation's legal status under international law. The framers wouldn't have equated "declaring" war with beginning a military conflict -- indeed, in the 100 years before the Constitution, the British only once "declared" war at the start of a conflict.
Further, the Constitution specifies no step-by-step process to govern war-making, yet it is specific every other time it imposes shared power on the executive and legislative branches.

http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.23600/pub_detail.asp

[Bonhomme Richard]

1. "Liberal intellectuals " That phrase alone speaks volumes.......

of where he comes from. At the least, it puts him into the extreme conservative camp and therefore he can not be trusted to interpret the constitution in any fair, even-handed way.

[tavalon]

6. Even more so his title and the first sentence

A President Can Pull The Trigger

and

Iraq seems to have the imperial presidency in retreat.

The only useful phrase in this whole article is:

Instead of specifying a legalistic process to begin war, the framers wisely created a fluid political process in which legislators would use their funding power to control war.

Congress, are you listening? The great and grand John Yoo has told you what you need to do.

[Skittles]

18. exactly my thoughts

they act as if intelligence is a friggin' crime

[yourout]

2. Right Wing BS to justify the power grab......

of the Liar and Chief. Unconstitutional and Illegal......nothing more....nothing less.

[Cocoa]

3. the scary part

he meant it literally.

[David Dunham]

4. Yoo is un-American. He should be denaturalized and deported.

He has earned the nickname "F-uck Yoo".

[Cha]

19. Yeah, what a front he has..

siding up with someone like bush who hates America but through a power coup and fearmongering is up there in the American power seat..talk about the perfect perch for undermining America.

Fuck Yoo, is right!

[tularetom]

5. I saw Mr Yoo's picture

and he looks sorta soft and effeminate. He better hope I never become president because I will use my implied powers under the constitution to send his ass to Guantanamo and make him pick up soap in the shower 24/7.

[0007]

22. Can you spot Fuck Yoo in this picture? "Ship of Fools"

[notadmblnd]

7. I thought the intent behind the founding fathers philosophy

was not to be like England?

Here's a good review of his book, I posted a couple of paragraphs in another thread last night. The reviewer, IMO rips to shreds John Yoos' logic in his argument.


Snip:

Many of the framers passionately defended the decision to deny the president the power to involve the nation in war. When Pierce Butler, a member of the Constitutional Convention, proposed giving the president the power to make war, his proposal was roundly rejected. George Mason said the president was "not to be trusted" with the power of war, and that it should be left with Congress as a way of "clogging rather than facilitating war."<2> James Wilson, another member, argued that giving Congress the authority to declare war "will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large."<3> Even Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders most in favor of strong executive power, said that "the Legislature alone can interrupt by placing the nation in a state of war."<4> As John Hart Ely, former dean of Stanford Law School, has commented, while the original intention of the Founders on many matters is often "obscure to the point of inscrutability," when it comes to war powers "it isn't."<5>

In the face of this evidence, Yoo boldly asserts that a deeper historical inquiry reveals a very different original intention—namely, to endow the president with power over foreign affairs virtually identical to that of the king of England,

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18431?email


Much Much more....

[tavalon]

14. Well, I'll skip John Yoo's book

and just read this. It's really long though, so I've bookmarked it. Thanks!

[emald]

8. was this idiot born here?

I mean naturalization is one way to worm an agent into the fabric, right? Working from inside to destroy the nation with rotten legal advice? I suppose I just have my tin hat on today but if it were me directing the destruction of the US I would do it from within especially if I had the ear of the stupid monkey running things. I'd tell him just what he wanted to hear, give him lots of lead to hang himself with.
Can someone please explain why this Yoo-Yoo is allowed such an influential voice? What makes his arguments worth so much more weight than others? Why is our supposedly elected president listening to some stuffed shirt lawyer instead of the people?
Yooshit. Weshit. Weallshit for bushit.

[tavalon]

10. Bush is a homegrown fascist

Yoo can be too. Don't focus on the nationality. Fascism is currently firmly entrenched as an American pastime much as baseball once was.

[notadmblnd]

16. They're listening to him because......

are you ready for it?


He is one of the few that is willing to say what they want to hear.

No other reason as far as I can see.

[tavalon]

9. I recommend this topic only because we need to keep an eye on the

roaches.

As far as John Yoo goes, all I can say is STFU John Yoo.

[Clara T]

13. Precisely- And who is John Yoo?

Who is John Yoo?

Groomed by the Right:  John Yoo is the creature of a powerful and wealthy right-wing legal organization, the Federalist Society. Founded in the early 1980s, the Federalist Society is now the ticket to fame, fortune and political influence for right-wing lawyers.

Yoo's career shows its enormous influence. According to the Wall Street Journal (9/12/2005), Yoo joined in 1989 while in law school.  "With help from Federalists, he snared prestigious clerkships: first with Judge Laurence Silberman, an appellate jurist in Washington much admired on the right, and then with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. A good word from the justice, Mr. Yoo says, helped him obtain a top staff job with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  While on Sen. Hatch's staff, Mr. Yoo clashed with Democrats over Clinton judicial nominees. In 2000, he aided the Republican legal contingent that helped win the decisive electoral brawl in Florida."  
 
"Original Intent" and the Law:  Like Scalia and Thomas, Yoo belongs to the "original intent"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Intent) school of constitutional interpretation.  They believe not only that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the intentions of its authors but that they can divine what those intentions were.  As noted by the Wall Street Journal (9/12/2005), "even by the standards of elite Washington legal circles, Mr. Yoo earned a reputation for what Justice Thomas calls 'a very high level of confidence in conclusions he might reach'... Mr. Yoo had an unusual degree of certainty that he knew the 'original intent' of the Constitution's authors, Justice Thomas says. 'We'd kid him sometimes that he was right there at the founding.'"  
 
"Original Intent" and the Yoo Doctrine:  Yoo uses the original intent doctrine to argue that the Consitution's founding fathers intended the President to have vast, inherent powers as commander-in-chief, justifying the Bush Administration's handling of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and use of torture and assassination as weapons in the war against terrorism.

http://zfacts.com/p/103.html
 

[roguevalley]

11. this man is a nazi. he advocates bush's right to torture suspect's

children, including crushing their testicles. Odds that we've already done that? eh?

[MrMonk]

12. I'd like to see a link to your source.

[Clara T]

15. Go here

John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.
This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.

What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

<snip>

This fascist logic has nothing to do with “getting information” as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world?

<snip>

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.
Cassel: 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?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

http://rwor.org/a/028/john-yoo.html

Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the ‘war on terror’ than John Yoo.
The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us go to article to hear it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x78679

[notadmblnd]

17. it was posted here last night.

do a search on including crushing childrens testicles.

[struggle4progress]

20. Maybe Yoo needs his testicles crushed. eom

[CrazyOrangeCat]

21. my best friend is . . .

. . . a 110 pound lesbian. betcha she could crush his nads with a withering gaze.

John Phuck Yoo, is a pasty, rich, little nazi-youth. He is the new, improved (meaning that he can read real books) Georgie Porgie Bush. Guys like him ought to be convicted of SOMETHING, and then made to work in the factories that I did when I was young. Oh, wait a minute. The factories are shuttered. My bad.

:nuke:

[eridani]

27. What about a ball peen hammer?

Wielded by someone who was 210# or 310#?

[yurbud]

23. Can he be prosecuted as a war criminal?

[yurbud]

24. See the story when he said Pres can crush testicles of suspect's kid?

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/01/president-can-torture-suspects-child.html

[eppur_se_muova]

25. WTF? Talk about putting words in our mouths...

"If only Congress had undertaken the solemn process of declaring war, they have argued, .... But they are off the mark."

THEY HAVE ?? NOT! They have argued that * had no freaking business attacking Iraq! Could there be a more obvious example of a 'straw man' argument?

[Clara T]

26. Yoo is sick

And I don't mean you. This guy needs to be put away in a rubber room with all the other AEI assholes.

Prof. Yoo Sees Broad Powers For Presidents at War;
White House Backs Away / New Definition of Torture

By PAUL M. BARRETT, Staff Reporter of the Wall St. Journal
September 12, 2005; Page A1  

In June, about 100 people gathered at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, to hear a lecture by John Yoo on "fighting the new terrorism." Mr. Yoo recommended an unusual idea: assassinating more suspected terrorists.    ....

During a two-year stint at the Justice Department from 2001 through 2003, he wrote some of the most controversial internal legal opinions justifying the Bush administration's aggressive approach to detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists.

Some of those memos have become public, but not all of them. Asked after his AEI talk whether there is a classified Justice Department opinion justifying assassinations, Mr. Yoo hinted that he'd written one himself. "You would think they -- the administration -- would have had an opinion about it, given all the other opinions, wouldn't you?" he said, adding, "And you know who would have done the work." A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment.  ....

At the Justice Department, Mr. Yoo crafted legal arguments for the president's power to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists and their supporters. ... And he interpreted the federal antitorture statute as barring only acts that cause severe mental harm or pain like that accompanying "death or organ failure."

http://zfacts.com/p/100.html