April 02, 2008

Reactions to torture memo

Dan Froomkin has encapsulated much of the initial reaction (in print and from legal bloggers) to the release of the 2003 memo from DOJ to the Pentagon telling it its interrogators were exempt from existing anti-torture law.

Scott Horton has more, including a link to a book excerpt at Vanity Fair with horrific detail. Horton writes:

the torture lawyers fully appreciated from the outset that torture was a criminal act. Most of the legal memoranda they crafted, including the March 2003 Yoo memorandum released today, consist largely of precisely the sorts of arguments that criminal defense attorneys make–they weave and bob through the law finding exceptions and qualifications to the application of the criminal law. But there are some major differences: these memoranda have been crafted not as an after-the-fact defense to criminal charges, but rather as a roadmap to committing crimes and getting away with it. They are the sort of handiwork we associate with the consigliere, or mob lawyer. But these consiglieri are government attorneys who have sworn an oath, which they are violating, to uphold the law.

Once again we see that John Yoo and David Addington were contemptible servants of the Cheney "unitary executive" agenda. Yet Yoo is now teaching at a prestigious law school (UC Berkeley) and is still a "go-to" guy for the broadcast media, and Addington still works for Cheney.

Posted by Linkmeister at April 2, 2008 08:19 AM | TrackBack
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