Yoo's Memo Probably Not First Pass At Legal Rationale For New Definition of Torture

THIS DECADE'S TRUTH COMMISSION(S) FOLLOWING SORDID GOP GOVERNANCE

So, the unraveling of the GOP's biggest black-eye for the Republic continues.

AS suggests that Yoo has a "problem" with the chronology.

Two things.

David Addington, raconteur

1. It's not clear this is Yoo's problem, or someone else's. [Including an election year problem for the Democrats.]

Was Yoo certainly in the loop? Recall, he is not nearly at the level of David Addington, in the scheme of things (Addington is lawyer-liege of Cheney and prime mover). Sands reports that Addington "assisted" Yoo-Bybee in their memo. Nor are they at the level of William "Take the Gloves Off" Haynes II (lawyerly tight-end of Don Rumsfeld), who gained that epithet a year before the first USA torture session (Nov '02-Jan'03), so it seems, as was Douglas Feith ("the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth", as Sands reports Tommy Frank's recollection of him).

Oh, and Haynes, himself? "Friend and protégé of Addington", according to Sands. Haynes was apparently "tied at the hip" to Jay Bybee, Yoo's co-author on at least one memo. I don't know if Yoo is somehow part of the club, other than being a Federalist Society swell.

Jay Bybee, Federal
Judgeship by Bush

Whatever the case, it's clear that they have lied to the public about how it has transpired, at a minimum, given Sand's reporting. It is highly dubitable that all that transpired was merely the result of a request for clarification passed up the chain. What's more, the stories about who made the requests of Justice, to OLC, appear to involve a bit of "not me".

2. They didn't start out with a revised statement on torture.

If you go all the way back to the day when hostilities were declared/outlined by the White House, there is specific public mention of the treatment of people captured.

William "Jim" Haynes II,
"take the gloves off"

If that was boilerplate, then clearly something changed quickly thereafter, and it is unlikely that the impetus for that kind of change would have come from the ground up.

The general idea that "they" wanted information and were willing to do most anything to get it, without legal encumbrances, shaped quite a lot, perhaps the very choice of Gitmo (assumed to be outside jurisdiction for habeus petitions), foreign detention centers, and ultimately a bogus legal analysis.

[+/-] Show Full Post...

[+/-] Hide Full Post...