BUSH AIDE MADE LEGAL CASE FOR VICIOUS DICTATORSHIP [View All]

[kpete]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/05/AR2008040502099.htmlSunday, April 6, 2008
BUSH AIDE MADE LEGAL CASE FOR VICIOUS DICTATORSHIP


DAN EGGEN WASHINGTON POST Thirty pages into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations in 2003, senior Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked by American policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner's eyes poked out?


Or, for that matter, could he have "scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance" thrown on a prisoner? How about slitting an ear, nose or lip, or disabling a tongue or limb? What about biting?

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In the sober language of footnotes, case citations and judicial rulings, the memo explores a wide range of unsavory topics, from the use of mind-altering drugs on captives to the legality of forcing prisoners to squat on their toes in a "frog crouch." It repeats an assertion in another controversial Yoo memo that an interrogation tactic cannot be considered torture unless it would result in "death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions."


Yoo, who is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, also uses footnotes to effectively dismiss the Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution, arguing that protections against unreasonable search and seizure and guarantees of due process either do not apply or are irrelevant in a time of war.


more at:
http://prorev.com/2008/04/bush-aide-made-legal-case-for-vicious.html