Greenwald has some strong things to say about John Yoo:
The fact that John Yoo is a Professor of Law at Berkeley and is treated as a respectable, serious expert by our media institutions, reflects the complete destruction over the last eight years of whatever moral authority the United States possessed. Comporting with long-held stereotypes of two-bit tyrannies, we're now a country that literally exempts our highest political officials from the rule of law, and have decided that there should be no consequences when they commit serious felonies... That John Yoo is a full professor at one of the country's most prestigious law schools, and a welcomed expert on our newspaper's Op-Ed pages and television news programs, speaks volumes about what our country has become. We sure did take care of that despicable Pvt. Lyndie England, though, because we don't tolerate barbaric conduct of the type in which she engaged completely on her own... This incident provides yet more proof of how rancid and corrupt is the premise that as long as political appointees at the DOJ approve of certain conduct, then that conduct must be shielded from criminal prosecution. That's the premise that is being applied over and over to remove government lawbreaking from the reach of the law... The DOJ is not the law. They are not above the law and they do not make the law. They are merely charged with enforcing it. The fact that they assert that blatantly illegal conduct is legal does not make it so. DOJ officials, like anyone else, can violate the law and have done so not infrequently. High DOJ officials -- including Attorneys General -- have been convicted of crimes in the past and have gone to prison... Embracing this twisted notion that the DOJ has the authority to immunize any conduct by high government officials or private actors from the reach of the law is a recipe for inevitable lawlessness. It enables the President to break the law, or authorize lawbreaking, simply by having his political appointees at DOJ -- including ideologues like John Yoo -- declare that he can do it. As these incidents ought to demonstrate rather vividly, the mere fact that Bush officials at the DOJ declare something to be legal cannot provide license to break the law with impunity.
I agree and, as I've stated previously, it's situations like this that are the primary driver of my voting decision this year. Who do I trust most to break from these practices? Who has best demonstrated the willingness to break from these practices?
We know that the officials responsible for this will never be brought to justice, we'll all be forced to "turn the page" or "get over it" or "not carry a grudge". The country will move on. The story will be about Obama's bowling, or Clinton's shrillness, or McCain's general awesomeness. Talk of what's been done in our name, by those we've elected to represent us, will cease, be pushed under the carpet with all the other embarrassing failures we don't like to talk about.
What we're left with is the hope that we can do better in the future, judge people better, listen to what they say and evaluate that against what they do. To do everything in our power to ensure that someone dangerous and reckless and careless and unqualified never, never ever, gets this degree of power again. And hope that someday we can undo the damage we let happen over the last 8 years.
