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Where Was the Military Brass Against the Yoo Memo? The Political Leadership?
Something highlighted in the NYTimes article on the Yoo memo has been nagging at me:
While resembling an August 2002 memorandum drafted largely by Mr. Yoo, the March 2003 opinion went further, arguing more explicitly that the president's war powers could trump the law against torture, which it said could not constitutionally be enforced if it interfered with the commander in chief's orders.
Scott L. Silliman, head of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University and a former Air Force lawyer, said he did not believe that the 2003 memorandum directly caused mistreatment. But Mr. Silliman added, "The memo helped to build a culture that, in the absence of leadership from the highest ranks of the Pentagon, allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere."
Because opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel are "binding on the Defense Department," Mr. Silliman said, Mr. Yoo's opinion effectively sidelined military lawyers who strongly opposed harsh interrogation methods.
As we look further at this, the layers of complicity and silence weigh heavily. What we already know, and have known, is bad enough. But I cannot shake feeling that the worst is yet to come in terms of revelations of misconduct and acquiescence -- every time we've hit the rock bottom of unethical and illegal conduct, we take the next step down to another stomach churning revelation. And top-level officials have yet to feel the heat on any of this, even though it was their policy directive bidding that Yoo was doing.
I agree with Marty, when it rains it pours..."they were willing to throw away our values" pretty much sums it up in a nutshell, doesn't it? Yoo's discussion with Esquire about his memo being declassified and other legal justifications from his perspective does nothing to dispel this and, as Marty aptly notes, the record doesn't sustain his assertions. But this, in particular, from the Esquire discussions with Yoo is deliberately obtuse obfuscation:
I don't [necessarily] agree that the methods did migrate to Iraq, because I don't know for a fact that they did. The analysis of the memo released yesterday was not to apply to Iraq, and we made clear in other settings that the Geneva Conventions fully applied to the war in Iraq. There was no intention or desire that the memo released yesterday apply to Iraq. (emphasis mine)
Tagged as: iraq, torture, pentagon, bush administration, us military, yoo
Christy Hardin Smith is a former attorney, who earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College, in American Studies and Government, concentrating in American Foreign Policy. She then went on to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of political science and international relations/security studies, before attending law school at the College of Law at West Virginia University, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review.
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