April 2, 2008: Rolling Stone Magazine Criticizes Defense of 2003 Torture Memo

Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson berates former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo for his defense of his 2003 advocacy of torture (see April 2, 2008), joining retired military officials (see April 2-4, 2008) and legal experts (see April 2-6, 2008). Dickinson writes, “I’m literally sick” over Yoo’s memo. He characterizes Yoo’s “evil circularity” of logic as: “The Fifth Amendment’s due process protections and Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions against cruelty do not apply a) to aliens abroad and b) are rendered meaningless by the president’s totalitarian powers during time of war. And if the president is above the constitution, he’s certainly above the law.” Dickinson notes that some of the federal statutes rendered inoperative by the power of the commander in chief, Yoo wrote, include assault, maiming, interstate stalking, war crimes, and torture. Furthermore: “If foreign detainees held on foreign soil have no protection from US law, what about international law? Well, says Yoo, the Geneva Conventions do not require anything more of the United States than what is provided for in the Fifth and Eighth Amendments, which as we just learned do not apply to foreign detainees. Furthermore: ‘international law is not federal law and the president is free to override it at his discretion.’ To recap: The president is unbound by international law—ever—and not constrained by either federal law or the Constitution in his role as commander in chief, which gives him carte blanche authority to have illegal enemy combatants who are detained on foreign soil assaulted, maimed, tortured, and otherwise subjected to war crimes, so long as the president deems it necessary or in ‘self-defense’ of the nation.” [Rolling Stone, 4/2/2008]