Enabling torture, legally
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
The
basic content of former U.S. Justice Department lawyer John Yoo’s
infamous “torture memo” has been known for some time. But it was
only last week that the shocking document was declassified and made
public in its entirety.
The
81-page memorandum, written in March 2003, is a testament to the
depth of depravity to which the Bush administration and its legal
enablers in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department,
whose opinions have the force of law within the federal government,
sank in the pursuit of the so-called Global War on Terror.
According
to Yoo’s legal reasoning, at a time of war a president’s
prerogative to authorize any and all interrogation techniques,
including maiming and assault, overrides any law, international or
domestic. Thus, according to Yoo’s chilling logic, neither Congress
nor international law can prohibit the president from authorizing,
for instance, the pouring of acid over a prisoner, the slitting a
detainee’s ear, or the gouging out of an alleged terrorist’s
eyes.
There
is no evidence that any of these abuses actually occurred. But the
Yoo memo suggests the lengths to which some Bush administration
officials were willing to go to give the President legal cover to
order unconscionable and illegal acts. Moreover, interrogation
techniques were only one of many areas in which the Bush
administration redefined legality to suit its purposes.
For
example, in 2001, an Office of Legal Counsel opinion stated that the
Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and
seizures does not apply in the case of military action on U.S. soil
in the fight against terrorism. In 2002, the same office ruled that
neither the U.S. War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions applies to
al-Qaeda prisoners. Later the same year, another Office of Legal
Counsel memo, authored by Yoo, redefined torture in an extremely
narrow fashion to include only the infliction of extreme pain such as
would be experienced during physical injury, organ failure, or death.
(http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/doj/bybee80102ltr.html.)
The
American people have become so accustomed to an endless succession of
scandals under the Bush administration, from an illegal war in Iraq
to the Katrina debacle to Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, that the
outrage following release of the 2003 Yoo memo was muted. Still, some
people did take notice.
On
the Chris Matthews television show, for instance, political pundit
Andrew Sullivan, a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, said the Yoo
torture memo
means “that Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, and John Yoo should
not leave the United States anytime soon. They will be at some point
indicted
for war crimes.”
Kansas
City Star
columnist Rhonda Chriss Lokeman wrote in response to release of the
Yoo memo:
“Since
Sept. 11, George W. Bush’s apparatchiks have helped him further
questionable policies through the misinterpretation of laws,
nullification of the Bill of Rights and unwarranted grants of
executive privilege.
“What
these Bushofascists have done in the so-called terror war has been
horrifying in scope and reckless in its disregard for military codes
of conduct, civil laws and order.”
And
Dawn Johnson, a law professor at Indiana University and former head
of the Office of Legal Counsel under President Bill Clinton told The
Washington Post:
“Having
81 pages of legal analysis with its footnotes and
respectable-sounding language makes the reader lose sight of what
this is all about. He [Yoo] is saying that poking people’s eyes out
and pouring acid on them is beyond Congress’s ability to limit a
president. It is an unconscionable document.”
John
Woo is now a professor of law at the University of California,
Berkeley. Reading his dry legalistic justification for unspeakably
cruel acts and unchecked executive power recalls Hannah Arendt’s
concept of the banality of evil.
Yoo,
who tried to craft a legal shield to ensure the impunity of top U.S.
policy makers and those who carried out their illegal orders, should
not benefit from the climate of impunity that he helped create. At
the same time, Yoo was a cog in a much larger power machine intent on
subverting U.S. and international law in the pursuit of a project to
mete out punishment and reestablish absolute U.S. dominance. That
project has proved to be not only a moral disaster but a military and
political one as well. Yet no has paid a price for this debacle.
Ultimately, not only Yoo but also his political masters must be
called to account for thrashing the law, the Constitution, and the
good name of the nation.
