Bush Administration monsters
Dick Cheney just confessed — freely, not under torture — to a war crime punishable under U.S. law and under international law, including the U.S.-signed UN Convention on Torture and the Geneva Conventions. As Andrew Sullivan writes, “the former vice-president has just confessed to a war crime. I repeat: the former vice-president has just confessed to a war crime.”
And now we learn from p. 64 of this Department of Justice report that John Yoo — Bush’s deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel — not only wrote memos justifying torture but even argues there’s nothing wrong with the President “ordering a village of resistants to be massacred”:
A: Because this is an option that the President might use in war.
Q: What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? … Is that a power the President could legally —
A: Yeah. Although, let me say this. So, certainly that would fall within the Commander-in-Chief’s power over tactical relations.
Q: To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?
A: Sure.
What’s Yoo’s punishment for green-lighting torture? About the same as Cheney: Yoo’s serving a long sentence as Professor of Law at UC Berkeley.
Posted by James on Saturday, February 20, 2010