Legal opinions signed by 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee helped pave the way for alleged torture during

[seemslikeadream]

The Half-Life of Torture
Legal opinions signed by 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee helped pave the way for alleged torture during President Bush's war on terror



http://www.law.com/jsp/law/international/LawArticleIntl.jsp?id=1202429821962

Six weeks before Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Chilean government in 1973, Jay Bybee, a 19-year-old Mormon missionary, disembarked in windswept Punta Arenas, nearly 2,000 miles south of Santiago.

"It was a place where you lean on a 45-degree angle to walk around the corner, and then if you don't change your angle, you fall flat," then-mission-president Roland Glade remembers. "It was a place you send somebody who knows what they're doing."

Bybee wasn't afraid to practice his Spanish, and he entertained by imitating Chicago, New York and "New Joisey" accents, fellow missionary David Magnusson said. After the coup, the missionaries learned to allow enough time to proselytize and make it home before the military curfew.

Talking politics with Chileans was verboten. Though Bybee, now a Bush-appointed 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge, liked high school debating, he passed at Brigham Young University, telling Magnusson it was "too contentious."

In the decades to come, Bybee's easy personality would help him recover from life's setbacks -- and serve him well for most of his legal career. But it is also one clue into understanding why Bybee is among the former Bush administration lawyers under review for war crimes by Baltasar Garzon, the same Spanish judge who once ordered Pinochet's arrest.

[Canuckistanian]

1. K&R

Looks like it needs a late night boost.

[leftstreet]

2. That whole article is worth a read

What an asshole!


Thanks for posting.