The Archetypal Bad Lawyer?

I don't expend much time on television news shows or dawdle much with the supposed "news" component of newspapers other than those articles brought to my attention by more dutiful scourers such as the able crew at Democratic Underground.

But I have the impression that the "Yoo memo," recently forced into view by an ACLU lawsuit, is getting little if any attention out there where it would do the most good.

This is a memo written back in late 2002 or so seemingly for the purpose of justifying and providing cover for what can only be called a new pro-torture program sanctioned by the Bush administration. The memo was apparently requested as a means of providing cover and a veil of purported legality for what we know to be illegal acts, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and established International as well as domestic law.

While link escapes me at the moment, I have seen some strong opinions offered to the effect that a very important side-issue here is that this appears to amount to a suborning of the established role of the Office of Legal Counsel. The OLC is supposed to provide clarifications on the nuances of the laws passed by congress, namely the implications for the executive branch. In this and other cases involving Yoo in particular but also others, the OLC seems to have been instead conscripted as a sort of law-breaking consigliere-like engine of corruption, encouraging or at least fostering a defiance of established law.

The bottom line is that there is no longer a pretext for the already laughable claim that the torture we have become aware of at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and unnamed rendition sites were merely the result of rogue low-level individuals acting at their own behest. Any dog can sniff out Cheney's sadistic streak. The man is obviously a social deviant and certifiably pathological. Rumsfeld ditto. Without their bravado, hubris, and the absolutely limp lapdog quality of the media these days, these guys would be under oath.

And isn't it astonishing what academic freedom now breeds! Yoo should probably be in shackles, but instead is a part of the faculty of the Berkeley law school! Worse, he doesn't seem to be suffering from much if any shunning from his peers. How can it possibly be that he has any positive recognition or credibility, as a major enabler of torture and law-breaking? Lawyers, please grow spines and weigh in!

At least out here in the connected world, there is quite a bit of Yoo-buzz, if you go looking. And rightly so.

Christy at Firedoglake has more to offer:

Having read through and digested the Yoo memorandum that was recently declassified, the most striking feature of it -- beyond its utter twisting of the law in a "might equals right" stomach churning justification tango -- is that it reads like a document written in an after-the-fact criminal defense posture. Especially Part IV of the memorandum which spends pages outlining potential defenses and the mindset needed therefor should anyone be accused of committing war crimes or criminal acts.

She cites an exceptional Vanity Fair piece that is definitely required reading on this important topic.

That this flies in the face of the UCMJ and the Field Manual appears to have no meaning to Mr. Yoo. That it downgrades the precepts behind all the human rights law advances that the United States used to champion for the betterment of people in more repressive societies is just a minor inconvenience for Mr. Yoo and his "superiors." That we will be generations in the repairing of this, if ever? Not even mentioned.

Whither Donald Rumsfeld in this public discussion? And, for that matter, Dick Cheney, in all of this minion kabuki? Which makes this passage from the Vanity Fair piece on the torture policy drafting all the more infuriating:

The first was a November 2002 “action memo” written by William J. (Jim) Haynes II, the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, to his boss, Donald Rumsfeld; the document is sometimes referred to as the Haynes Memo. Haynes recommended that Rumsfeld give “blanket approval” to 15 out of 18 proposed techniques of aggressive interrogation. Rumsfeld duly did so, on December 2, 2002, signing his name firmly next to the word “Approved.” Under his signature he also scrawled a few words that refer to the length of time a detainee can be forced to stand during interrogation: “I stand for 8–10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”

The second document on the table listed the 18 proposed techniques of interrogation, all of which went against long-standing U.S. military practice as presented in the Army Field Manual. The 15 approved techniques included certain forms of physical contact and also techniques intended to humiliate and to impose sensory deprivation. They permitted the use of stress positions, isolation, hooding, 20-hour interrogations, and nudity. Haynes and Rumsfeld explicitly did not rule out the future use of three other techniques, one of which was waterboarding, the application of a wet towel and water to induce the perception of drowning.

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There's more from Christy that I strongly encourage you to read. This is very important stuff to know about and share. Finishing the lengthy VF article is one of my assignments. Research. Disseminate. Repeat.