Protest planned at UC Berkeley for John Yoo's first day of classes

"Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are fucked up places, I will not deny that... but they have results. Life saving results, at the inconvenience of a man willing to kill as many soldiers, politicians, and civilians as he can."

Who told you that? Cheney? Powell? I have searched for an instance where our torture saved lives, and haven't found one. All I've found is that torture creates false confessions, which have KILLED people. Anyone who knows anything about torture will tell you that people will say anything to get the torturers to stop.

Here's an example. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was waterboarded repeatedly, and what did we get? We got information, all right--bogus information. He tied Al-Qaeda to Iraq and said Iraq had WMDs, and we used that as an excuse to invade Iraq. As a consequence, millions of innocent people have died, plus thousands of US soldiers. I can't include the latter among the innocents, just the ignorants, at best.

Maybe the Iraqis and Afghans would be a tad less violent if we stopped invading their countries, bombing out their infrastructures, killing their citizens, spreading depleted uranium all over their land, and generally brutalizing them back to the stone age or worse. Gee, you think?

These aren't wars, they're illegal invasions, so what happens in wartime isn't even relevant. The vast majority of people in Abu Ghraib, GITMO, and our many other torture chambers have been innocent victims. No, I won't call you unethical. You're too ignorant to even consider ethics. I doubt you even know what the word means. You're a typical US barbarian, gleefully uninformed and a danger to civilization.

When al-Libi was captured in 2001, he begged to be smothered with a pillow. In 2009, he finally managed to commit suicide. Or so we're told. He was never even given the dignity of a trial.

Can we please keep the personal attacks to a minimum? You don't know me, and have no clue on what kind of a person I am, just as I don't know you, so I will continue to reserve my judgment on you and respect your opinion. I've seen both sides of the argument before, both aren't pretty, but one of them, although it's horrible, is the better outcome of the two.
The WMD theory was fabricated by the Bush administration to get our hands on Iraqi Oil, they had been looking for an excuse to invade Iraq since they came to power, and 9/11 gave them a convenient excuse to do so. I doubt it that the man you referenced actually said anything about the Iraq WMD fiasco, I'm willing to say that too was fabricated by the Bush administration to give some sort of "evidence". We do, however, have to remember that at one time Saddam did have stockpiles of chemical weapons he used against his own people, so those claims are not entirely false, although the UN had found no weapons after 1997 I believe. This is not an argument over whether the war was illegal or not (in my own personal opinion it is an illegal war, as the UN never gave us the support or the go ahead, plus all the falsified "evidence'), however that is besides the point, yes the Coalition troops are over there, and yes, they are fighting. That constitutes as a war, whether it's illegal or legal. Back to the main point...
You basically have two options, you let the man you have just captured live in the relative comfort of his cell, even though he may have information on bombings, planned attacks, locations on Coalition POWs, locations on Insurgent leaders... the list goes on. You don't do anything in anyway to harm him, and he withholds that said information, leading to casualties down the road. But everyone's happy, because his Geneva rights weren't infringed. Except maybe the families of dead soldiers, dead civilians (this has always pissed me off, I've always thought as soldiers as fair game in war, as they have weapons, can defend themselves, are uniformed, trained, and aware of the fact that they are in danger at all times; however, civilians have none of that benefit, the men, women, children, and elderly are just going about their lives, yet they are always targeted by coward insurgents who want to be noticed by bombing innocents), and wounded. Could the attack have been stopped if he had been interrogated? Maybe, maybe not. But if you have a chance to save countless lives, at the inconvenience of one man, that chance should ALWAYS be taken. I assure you, it's the more ethical of the two.
Ever seen a suicide bombing in person? It's enough to drive you insane with nightmares for the rest of your life, seeing the little kid who's arm and legs have been blown off, screaming, still in the hands of his dead mother, whose lying in a pile of blood, body parts, and urine. The wounded Iraqi soldier, who can do nothing but try to comfort the elderly Iraqi man, while he bleeds out in the middle of the street. The singed and charred bodies of what looks like a little girl and her mother still in the seats of the flaming car. The Iraqi street salesmen, who is now lying in a heap, bleeding amongst his fruit, vegetables, and meat. The cries from the poor young man who can no longer see or hear, because his ears have been blown out by the explosion, his face and eyes destroyed by shrapnel. Your fellow soldier, a grown man who can do nothing but collapse against the BuffaloMPV, sit there and cry. The squad medic who doesn't have sufficient supplies to save an elderly man whose main artery has been ripped open from the neck. You breathe in, the scent of burning oil, blood, urine, and charred flesh enter your nostrils. You react to the gag reflex, throwing up right into a pool of blood and oil. You walk over to where the explosion originated from. You find the asphalt cracked, fragments of metal embedded in it. You look around, amongst the bodies, blood, viscera, and see the destroyed and decapitated head of the suspected suicide bomber lying against the gutter of the sidewalk. You wonder what kind of abomination of man could commit such an act as this. Second squad arrives, and you pull out with the remaining Iraqi security forces, along with what wounded you can carry. The mortally wounded are left in the street, medic tells you they are left because there is no chance of saving them. You beat the shit out of the side of the Buffalo with your hands, the only way you can express yourself right now. Half the men in your squad are silently crying. The older guys just stare into oblivion. Your Iraqi interpreter just looks at the ground. He lost his little girl in a suicide bombing last year. You arrive back at Camp Charlie, and hear the screams coming from the medical tent. You want to get away, but there's no where in small 200by300 meter camp you can't hear the screams. Your squad is later debriefed by your CO. Some 73 civilians killed, along with 4 Iraqi security officers, and some 200 wounded. You learn that one of the Insurgents captured 2 weeks prior had information on the attack, he didn't give it up until after he heard of the attack was over though.
Has Humanity Lost It's Mind?

You have no fucking clue.
And honestly, I really don't give a shit how much they torture heartless bastards such as these. The more the better. Anyone who can plans shit like this deserves to be tortured for the rest of eternity in hell.
Honestly, you have no fucking clue until you see what these fucks are capable of for yourself.

No, I've never seen a suicide bombing, and you paint a horrendous picture. But when we go into countries and reduce them to toxic ruins, what do we expect? It's horrible to see people blown up, but it's more horrible to reduce nations to poverty with sanctions, denying them potable water so their children die, spreading depleted uranium through the country so the cancer rate soars and children are born without heads, destroying the infrastructure, pulling people out of their homes randomly under quotas, torturing them in the hopes that somebody knows something, imprisoning them without charge, shooting random people from helicopters, sending drones to bomb innocents. These are all things we have done, and more, and although much but not all of it is less graphic than the suicide bombing you describe, our actions are far more deadly. So when you wonder if these people have lost their minds, I'd have to say yes, and we've had one hell of a lot to do with it.

But people like you go into the military and can't see why these Iraqis are so violent because you know nothing of the history of US involvement in the region, but you see that they are violent, so you say, let's torture the bastards! Yeah, boy, you've got a handle on the situation. We USians, aren't we there to help? No, we're not, whatever fable you've bought into. Before the US invaded, the Iraqis had drinking water and electricity and schools and medicine, and they would welcome Saddam back over the US goons who have sent them back to the stone age.

Yeah, Saddam had chemical weaponry, and we didn't squawk much when he used it, and we sold them to him. He was our darling, beginning his career as a CIA assassin. We put him in power, like we've put so many monsters in power throughout the world so they can further US interests. We took him out when he stopped playing our game. The Gulf War was a warning. US soldiers bombed the shit out of the place with depleted uranium weaponry, blew up all those chemical weapons, and many came home sick for life, got cancer, bore children with birth defects, and guess what? They got fucked by our government. As usual.

You didn't offer any examples wherein torture saved lives. Again, torture produces false confessions. Our use of torture has been very effective, however, in recruiting people for extremist violence. Torture is a sadistic act, defended by a desperate reaction to violence and mayhem, as you yourself demonstrate.

“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the world--a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer Whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum and that is how history will remember us.” (Hunter S. Thompson)

elizabeth16 -WOW! I can see by all your post that this is a very passionate subject for you. Throwing a little Hunter quote in there...nice. I have to tell ya you seem intelligent. So maybe your smart enough to know that most info your getting comes from very liberal minded media. You call them facts I guess. I being a former "US goon" and "Nazi" as you put it in the first and second gulf missions take offense to those titles. Both my grandfathers fought the Nazis so be careful throwing that term around. WE are nothing like the Nazis. Not even close. In between that I worked in law enforcement. I guess I'm the type of person you automatically hate with out getting to know. Most military and law enforcement are good, honest people. I'm a blue state liberal minded person myself, but there will always be scumbags in the mix. That's just the nature of the beast. There's a lot bullshit that goes on that no one can ever conceive unless they're a part of it. You seem smart enough to know that. And if you don't now someday you will. Torture works in the field if it's done quickly and very violently to get immediate intelligence. Other than that it's almost always useless. And as far as the world hating us you are wrong. 99% love our ass. I've been all over the world since 1988 and I stand by that from personal experience. The guy Yoo is a nobody. He's nothing. Get over small stuff like him. Travel! If you can, travel as much of this world as you possible. It will change your perception of life profoundly.

--
bl

I haven't had the opportunity to travel much outside the country, unless you count Canada, but I do talk to many who have. I talk to many from other countries, particularly those from Africa and the Mideast--as much as we talk about how everyone wants to move to the US, we don't see many people from Europe looking to be US citizens--and I talk to a lot of veterans. And no, I don't think they're, by and large, bad people; in fact the veterans I teach tend to be the most thoughtful, informed, and capable of my students. I think the policies of our MIC are wrong and I'll keep saying so. The fact that people go into the military having believed the likes of the Bushes and Cheney and Rumsfield, and now Obama, deeply disturbs me. They should at least educate themselves as to the history of our engagements, and then decide, but that's the last thing our government wants, and the last thing they'll get from the MSM or their high schools. And perhaps I do read a lot of liberal press, but I also read the conservative press. I come from a very conservative family, so I have a pretty good idea what they think.

I don't hate the people of the military or the police (although I must say my dealings with our police and justice departments, albeit minor, have convinced me that justice is somewhat lacking, and having been harassed by police for NO reason three times in my life, I do my best to avoid them). But if you put yourself in the service of sociopaths, you're doing the work of sociopaths, and noone can tell me that the people who lied to get us into these illegal invasions, and appear to be cooking up a new one in Iran, aren't sociopaths.

When controlusplease says of torture, "the more the better," he's reduced himself to goon status, and I can only hope he rethinks. And I didn't use the Nazi comparison--Thompson did. No, we're not even close to Nazis, but when our country's policies start looking sadistic and brutish, which they are, people should respond with outrage, and if I were a woman in Fallujah I wouldn't see much in the way of difference. Hitler would not have been able to do what he did without the complicity of the German people. When I see our civil rights squashed and our economy tanking while the Pentagon gets a blank check to enact and extend illegal invasions year after year, and the US people just go about their business with nary a squawk, I worry about the same thing happening here.

Our politicians lie to us so egregiously that I don't believe a damn thing any of them says without checking it out carefully from all sides. And perhaps the liberal media is lying as much as the conservative media--hell, it seems that telling the truth is the one thing most despised in this sad spiritual wasteland. As far as our political system goes, it's one party with two right wings.

So what your saying is: Politicians are scumbag liars. There are bad people who do sick shit in the military. War sucks. Innocent people are always the majority who suffer the most in conflict.
Go back as far as you can in recorded history and try to find a time when none of this wasn't a reality for most all the time.
The big picture is that humans settle conflict by tribal warfare. And it's always ugly. Every country had it's borders drawn after a conflict.
I know this little brain shit that goes on is frustrating. It has always gone on and it will go on long after you are. I know you don't want to hear this but learn to live your life the best way you can. Don't let the idiocracy get to ya. Fear and Loathing the world didn't end well for Hunter S.

--
bl

Yes, you're right. And wrong. So am I. Thank you for the reminder to live my life the best I can.

Voltaire finally said "tend your own garden." I think of those words often. And it's what people like Stan Goff are saying, literally, now.

Yes, people have always tended toward horrendous brutishness, which is why people have to keep bringing this fact up. Yoo teaching law at Berkeley requires a big squawk because law is supposed to counterweigh our brutal side, not justify it. It seems all too symbolic of our times.

Things are always the same, only always different. When one country with four percent of the world population spends roughly half on the world's military might, that's a rather unusual situation, looking over the history of the world. When that country calls it "defense," you know you're in 1984-land. And when most of the people you talk to are scared out of their wits by those awful Muslims, whom we are by all evidence impoverishing and blotting out, somebody has to say, hey, you might want to look at this from another angle or two, because you are in fact more in danger of lightning than a terrorist attack. So don’t be so scared of those crazy Muslims that you bankrupt your children to give it all to the Pentagon. War is not peace, and lies are not truth.

People will keep bringing such things up, at least I hope so. Fighting against insanity is a necessary thing, although people tend to be happier when they just sit in a park eating noodle salad.

elizabeth I think your troubles are over. Glenn Beck just said God spoke to him and gave him the knowledge to save us all. Praise be to the prophet Glenn.

I believe Saddam actually did a good job, like you said, he kept the country in better control than we ever could. Why? Because he was a tyrant. He tortured, murdered, even gassed his own people... but he kept them in line. The country was far less of a hellhole before we came in, so in that respect, yes, Saddam did a much better job than us.

To say I have no understanding of the Iraqi situation before I went there is nonsense though. My Father and Uncle served in the 1991 Gulf conflict, My father in Italy repairing vehicles while waiting to be deployed (he never was, fortunately), while my Uncle was USMC. My Uncle had a hell of a time, he was in the burning oil fields for a weeks, breathing that crap in, which is what we suspect gave him lung cancer. Iraq should have never been touched by us, nor should Afghanistan. Which I have extensive knowledge on as well. The only reason they hate us, goes back to the Soviet war in the 1980s, but we won't get into that. A soldier that fights in a conflict must have some sort of knowledge on what he is fighting for. I remember we had one drill sergeant that told us, "We do not train you to think, we train you to kill, I want you to be compliant, with no questions asked", I thought it was the most bullshit thing I ever heard. The reason I enlisted is simple, I felt it was my duty to serve my country for my fellow man, not the sick and twisted agenda of some politician. So there I was, 7 months later in the hot desert right outside of Baghdad city.
The only reason we throw these poor people out of their homes in searches is because insurgents love hiding amongst them, including their weaponry, as well as some unexploded ordnance. We had one 500 pound bomb that exploded inside a house full of people, only because some insurgent had carried it in there, and tried to turn it into a IED. He took out a whole block, killing himself, his family, and his neighbors. It sucks, because they use civilians as a shield. They reason that if they fire from inside a house full of civilians, we will not fire on them. And on most cases we wouldn't. However, sometimes we would be caught unaware of civilians present, and would suppress the building from which the shots were coming from, only to learn later that civilians were caught in the crossfire, and an innocent person had been killed because of the cowardly actions of some insurgent asshole. We've seen this many times before. A couple of times we came across mortar pits that were in the backyard of the insurgents home, using his own damn family as a shield. Either way its a victory for him, because either we won't fire on him for being amongst civilians, or we'll fire on him and some, accidentally killing civilians, and people back home will be all pissed off at us, simply because they don't understand the challenges we face every day.

One added note, the guy I mentioned before, the one that had withheld information on the bombing, he had never been tortured. He wasn't even interrogated, because some lazy asshole interrogators was taking their jobs too lax, and had gotten 77 people killed because of it. If he had been interrogated and tortured, there is no doubt in my mind that the events of that day would have been stopped.

OK, r0nan, now you're just messing with me. I try to keep things civilized, refusing to keep from going down past the midway of Fox scum. This Beck/Palin outrage . . . er . . . I'm not going there. Not you betcha.

Respect you anyway. I like to mess with people too.

You know I was messn around w/the Beck thing. Respect back at ya.

Thank you Elizabeth. You have covered my very thoughts very well, never mind that our callousness goes way back 200 years. I grew up in the country in a one room school completely ignorant of the barbarians i was living amongst. I have just visited Jekyll Island Ga. to view the seat of this worlds violence and where the plot was planned and enacted. I wish I could go back in time and eliminate the root of this worlds genocidal violence. I also stopped at the Cherokee Indian reservation to learn of some more of our early violence. The massacre at Mystic Connecticut in 1637 was the birth of the real bloody slaughters that we Americans did in order to steal this country from the natives. We could expect this horror from the early arrogant religious bodies who have plundered the world since Christianity began, but to commit these horrors in the 21st centuries is proof that the people of this world are not humans but billions of two legged Jackals. Jackals (CIA) are vicious animals and people too are a misnomer since they are all part of this viciousness and do not step up to be counted when its time to hold these creatures accountable. Thank you

Thank you again. I have spent 15 years from 1944 t0 1965 in the Merchant Marines and I too learned a lot about the world and I can tell you I was an ignorant ass for most of my life but like the old adage, "why is it we get old so soon and smart so late." I would like to see the voting age increase to at least 35 years as the youth are looking for idols and entertainment at the conventions and not the lying and corruption in the people they are electing all except the President and vice president whom I believe are selected by the CFR and the the Bilderberg group that also include the CFR gang. Justice would be well served if it were not party politics. Perhaps we could have some accountablility other than accepting the old excuse; "I accept responsibility" and its soon forgotten. I don't buy it. Politicians should be accountable just as the common citizen and should be tried in a civil court and not by their peers.

;

Yeah, well, Sweetie, that's just not what happened. The ticking-time-bomb scenario does not apply to the torture we've inflicted, and the "intelligence" we got was bogus. Find me one piece of torture-produced confession that led to any real information, please.

I'm not condoning torture by any means. I'm anti-torture. It doesn't work most of the time. Water boarding is horrific. Next time you take a shower put a towel over your face and have the water blast you .Try to breath. Then imagine not having any control over when to stop it. A person will say/do anything to make it stop. I was just trying show an different point of view. So... would you ever torture?

I think in the case you describe anyone would attack the perpetrator and try to rip the information out of him. The problem I had with your post is that the "ticking time bomb" scenario is that it is the primary defense of torture.

What's wrong with it? It's meaning can and has been stretched. "I have clear factual evidence that this person has put a person's life at immanent risk and knows how to avoid it" becomes "that person might know something and whatever that something may be might put lives at risk at some point, and who knows, it may be big, because I don't really have any evidence that he knows anything at all." This may seem absurd--and it is--but it was exactly the thinking of US troops when we invaded Baghdad. We pulled thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens out of their homes, tortured and incarcerated them without charge, demanding the whereabouts of Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction. Come on, how inane and brutal and downright sadistic was that? If Obama had gone into hiding and had secretly been amassing weaponry, would you as a citizen of the US have any idea of where he and they were? Of course not, the odds would be astronomical. Yet the thinking is a devolution of the ticking time bomb theory.

That is, unless it’s just simply sadistic brutality. Look up Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment, wherein he arbitrarily designates ordinary young men into prisoners and guards, and despite knowing that it’s a game, the guards quickly become sadistic pricks. Then look at Abu Ghraib, and you see the sadism building. The military took Zimbardo’s experiment as a guidebook, and put the guards in a situation where they would naturally act with senseless brutality. Zimbardo knows it—check out his blog. That’s why there has to be strict rules about the humane treatment of prisoners—to keep the sadism genie in the bottle.

But that's exactly what our military did not want. And Yoo wrote nonsense as law, stretching the meaning of torture to such a degree that the term became meaningless, and defends himself. If Yoo's idea of law is being taught, we are lost. Back to the stone age.

-- Great reply. I'm familiar with the Zimbardo experiment. There was also one done, I believe in the 70's or early 80's, with grade school kids. It involved eye color. The kids were told that it was a class exercise. I think it empowered the brown eyed kids over the blue eyed kids in some way. This obviously would never be done in our PC culture today, but the disturbing thing that came out of it was that even kids let it quickly get out of control, similar to Zimbardo's. As far as the US involvement in the middle east it is very clear now, and to me even then, Iraq was a cluster f#$%. They put hillbilly National Guard troops in charge of a prison. Zimbardo in real life. The harsh reality I think is that all war is sadistic. Is there a kind, gentle way to kill some one in that setting? War is horrific and brutal. I agree with you that it reveals a lot about us in how we conduct ourselves. Systematic torture for interrogation is a step back. The Iraq war had nothing to do with finding weapons of any kind. It was always about who controls the oil. Yoo was nothing but a puppet who let himself be suckered into putting his name on that document. I don't think he's evil I just think he's probably not the brightest bulb on staff at Berkeley.
~bl~

Thanks for clarifying. As for Yoo, I don't know what his motivations were, but he obviously has no sense of ethics. He should be debarred at the very least, but instead he's been rewarded with a professorship at Berkeley. I mean, Berkeley! A place that used to take a hard stand on civil rights.

We as a nation have lost our way.

probably if he was in the those agencys b/c they need to make they're not easily broken.

Gee, following this line of thinking the entire administration and most of Congress would be in the adjoining cells

"Gee, following this line of thinking the entire administration and most of Congress would be in the adjoining cells."

Every damned last one and most of the bureaucrats too!!

Are you going to condemn the thousands of soldiers that kill innocent people? Because they are sing that song too.

do soldiers have a "Get out of Torture" free card?

war is the tool of imperialism, and the foot soldier is playing their part, compliant, and committed no matter the cause.

Just like the foot soldiers, those behind the desk also have to do their part, or "else".

I'm not saying what he did was morally right but don't condemn the man for answering a stretchy question.

idiotic nationalist thugs.

Correct answer Nephwrak.

The guy basically justified torture in his memos. Seriously, where have you been?

It's not just about "opposing views." It's so easy for you to simplify an issue that you obviously don't understand.

It's not just about what he thought -- this is about what he did.

It's offensive that this guy is going be teaching at a public university. Sure, we don't have to take his classes, that's a fine way to put it if you're not considering the fact that we're basically paying his salary. That's not a real choice -- in a way, the student body, the university, and the tax payers are being forced to support John Yoo's teaching position.

If they feel strongly that he's on the level of a war criminal (and the evidence is certainly there for that argument) I think they should voice their opinions about him loud and clear.

How is John Yoo justified to be able to teach when he justified torture? I wouldn't want him teaching my kids, that's for damn sure.

And where do you get off calling the protesters who are trying to shed light John Yoo's past "yahoos"? They're part of what make our country a democracy. John Yoo is not. What a total shill for the Bush administration.

Torture is a way of war for every country in the world. Do you think Obama's guys over there are holding back? No way. They are using every dirty trick that the other guys are using. If you don't believe this, you're naive.

War criminal? How about the guys that started that war? Namely, our Presidents in Chief. And no, I am not a Republican, nor am I a Democrat. To me, there is absolutely no difference between them, job one is to get elected. Job two is to stay in office, and keep the money rolling in. Same job, both teams.

And for you to say I "Don't understand" the issues, well you're wrong there. I do understand the issues. I do know what goes on in war. We are not doing anything that the other guys aren't doing. I guess we disagree on methods, but I think that doing whatever is necessary to win, is what needs to be done. My kid just got his Masters from Berkeley, he is probably against Yoo also, but Yoo is a qualified lawyer, he is a Professor of Law, and he IS qualified to teach there. I applaud Berkeley for presenting an opposing viewpoint, although not a particularly popular one. What if Berkeley was like the University that Ken Starr was President of (Pepperdine? I might be wrong), and only hired Republicans, and not the various political factions it hires now? That is one very, very diverse school, from it's student body, to the faculty.

"We are not doing anything that the other guys aren't doing" is not a valid justification.
If a Taliban bomber kills 50 civilians in one go, does that make it all right for the allied forces to do the same thing?

The fact with Yoo is that he was directly complicit in the authorisation and justification of torture, pain and needless suffering of other human beings. For no useful purpose.

Actually, YES, I do think they should kill all the Taliban, their families and anyone that helps or sympathizes with them, including American citizens. No, I'm not very tolerant.

You are a zealot , just like they are .

^'d for truth.

Really? Do you think becoming the enemy solves anything? The idea is for us not to turn into extremist religoids that hurt people to make points.

rofl !!

then they can all sit around debating whether shoe-throwing was torture and John Yoo can write a memo to the Dean to have the student water-boarded or something.

lol hes going back to school... i think he understands torture more then anyone lol

I hope the whole class throws shoes at him. I hope that every time he walks through campus, people throw shoes at him. This is Berkeley, for God's sake, and if he's allowed to walk unmolested through that city, we are truly f**ked.

LOL!! "this is Berkeley, for God's sake". Are you trying to say that Berkeley only recognizes the most left as the truth? You're right, you know. They're blind to the actual truth. They love the most left-wing ideals. How sad that they are not in tune with the real world.

Great interview, The question John Yoo was asked seems to be "How much can we push the limits without breaking them?", i don't see any reason to condemn him because of what the high ups demanded of him.

No, you see, Yoo is a lawyer. He has a responsibility to the law. He broke it to the point where even if an interrogator actually killed someone (which they have), it would be protected if harm was not the stated intent. Google PBS's Frontline's "The Torture Question."

The man is a sociopath, as have been all our leaders, both back in the Bush years and now. Who are we going to convict? So far, the only people who have been convicted are some poor grunts from Abu Ghraib. He broke the law and he allowed the politicians to break the law by doing so. He should be convicted, and if he had any real respect for the law, he would have to agree.

Imagine a bunch of idots with primitive brain functions gathering in mass, some call it the zoo, others call it a herd of cows. But look its just a tea party convention. Just because people oppose torture doesnt mean they are hippies there was a time when our whole nation would have recoiled in shock at what bush did. Perhaps that is the real cost to islam bin laden did not count on, we would become cold calous and very cruel in our wrath.

And why do they have to be stoners? Ignorance.

ooh, somebody sounds cranky. sounds like you need a nap.

"there was a time when our whole nation would have recoiled in shock at what bush did"

And WHEN, exactly, was this? People have always known that sometimes torture methods work and "better them than us". I think "there was a time" when our whole nation realized that sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

Not sure why it wouldn't be working... I tried it and it worked... I posted the entire story here though, so it's all there for people to read.