Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children

[kurth]

Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children
By Philip Watts

01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.

What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

more at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11488.htm

[Trevelyan]

1. This is so sickening. From a post on Daily Kos about Craig Murrey and the

UK Torture Documents everyone posted about a week ago.

Oh please, do these morons think everyone doesn't have a right to know!?? Just confirms the downing street minutes, again. They tortured prisoners to give them fake evidence to go to war.

Uzbekistan; for all your black site needs.

Heh! Remeber these letters next time you see Tony Blair's oh-so-sincere grin. (Hopefully on this side of the pond it ain't too often)

Accountability And Justice In '06

Craig Murray is a British Deep Throat.» Technorati Search for: karimov Uzbekistan... Damning documentary evidence unveiled. Dissident bloggers in coordinated exposé of UK government lies over torture documents his time as Ambassador to Uzbekistan. The Foreign Office has demanded that Craig Murray ...Craig Murray - Weblog ... together with the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who was forced ... If suspects are being taken through the UK to face torture, ...

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/weblog.html

add to del.icio.us. look up in del.icio.us.
results for "Former British envoy releases 'torture' documents on web - Times Online" (10 of 5,540)

Blairwatch - Keeping an Eye on Dubya's Man in London The document, entitled New Transatlantic Agenda, EU-US meeting on Justice and Home Affairs ... We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek ... http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node?from=45

[rodeodance]

2. more disgracing of the US by the BushCo gang!