[Mb-civic] Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

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

The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us

Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where 
in the
Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children 
?
As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution 
makes the
President the 'Commander-in-Chief,' no law can restrict the actions he 
may
take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be 
entitled
by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished."

What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of 
children,
since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the
President's right to order the crushing of a child's testicles?

This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo 
has
argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and 
adopted by
the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their 
homes
in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. 
People
have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to
death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and 
Guantánamo Bay.
And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in 
Europe
or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can 
explain this
sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill
widespread fear among people all over the world?

It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to
torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush 
administration
policies, based on his legal memo's, being equated to those during 
Nazi
Germany.

Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the 
Nazis
and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves 
against
Al Qauueda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you're
trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who 
committed
atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too.I think to equate
Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible."

If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to
order the torture of innocent children, isn't sufficient basis for drawing
such a "moral equivalence," then I don't know what is. What would be
irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake
society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. 
We
must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot 
wait.
While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I'll find myself
along with many thousands across the country declaring "Bush Step 
Down And
take your program with you."

Philip Watts - pwatts_revolution at yahoo.com
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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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