Permissible Assaults Cited in Graphic Detail

[FourScore]

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?

These assaults are all mentioned in a U.S. law prohibiting maiming, which Yoo parsed as he clarified the legal outer limits of what could be done to terrorism suspects as detained by U.S. authorities. The specific prohibitions, he said, depended on the circumstances or which "body part the statute specifies."

But none of that matters in a time of war, Yoo also said, because federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes by military interrogators are trumped by the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief.

The dry discussion of U.S. maiming statutes is just one in a series of graphic, extraordinary passages in Yoo's 81-page memo, which was declassified this past week. No maiming is known to have occurred in U.S. interrogations, and the Justice Department disavowed the document without public notice nine months after it was written.

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..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/05/AR2008040502099_pf.html

[notadmblnd]

1. He cited his own opinions to bolster his case

These people are just so full of themselves.. Then, in the article it he goes on the defense and suddenly it changes from I could have written, to we could have written. I wonder who the "WE" is?

Yoo defends the memo as a "near boilerplate" argument in favor of presidential prerogatives, and says its fundamental assertions differ little from those made by previous presidents of both parties. In comments to The Washington Post and other news organizations, Yoo has also criticized the Justice Department for issuing new legal opinions that do not include detailed discussions of specific interrogation tactics, which he views as crucial to defining the boundaries of what is lawful.

"You have to draw the line," Yoo said in an Esquire magazine interview posted online this past week. "What the government is doing is unpleasant. It's the use of violence. I don't disagree with that. But I also think part of the job unfortunately of being a lawyer sometimes is you have to draw those lines. I think I could have written it in a much more -- we could have written it in a much more palatable way, but it would have been vague."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/05/AR2008040502099_pf.html