John Yoo
John Yoo
John Choon Yoo is a Korean-American attorney, law professor, and author. Yoo is currently the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, he served as a political appointee, the Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, during the George W. Bush administration. He is best known for his opinions concerning the Geneva Conventions that legitimized the War on Terror by the United States. He also authored the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth10 June 1967
CountryUnited States of America
This means that the U.S. can pursue different interrogation policies in each location. In fact, Abu Ghraib highlights the benefits of Guantanamo.
I'm not talking policy. I'm just talking about the law.
It's a document that reinforces tradition, ... incremental changes.
It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks.
The Bush administration policy is against torture of any kind; it's prohibited by federal criminal law.
The national government has certain kinds of compelling interests that conflict with the right of the press to keep their sources confidential, like national defense and security.
A decision by the Supreme Court to subject Guantanamo to judicial review would eliminate these advantages.
If the Court were to extend its reach to the base, judges could begin managing conditions of confinement, interrogation methods, and the use of information.
Nonetheless, Article 5 makes clear that if an Iraqi civilian who is not a member of the armed forces, has engaged in attacks on Coalition forces, the Geneva Convention permits the use of more coercive interrogation approaches to prevent future attacks.
Punishing abuse in Iraq should not return the U.S. to Sept. 10, 2001, in the way it fights al Qaeda, while Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants remain at large and continue to plan attacks.
Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions.
Without territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured POWs.
Congress's definition of torture in those laws - the infliction of severe mental or physical pain - leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation.
Unlike previous wars, our enemy now is a stateless network of religious extremists. They do not obey the laws of war, they hide among peaceful populations and launch surprise attacks on civilians. They have no armed forces per se, no territory or citizens to defend and no fear of dying during their attacks. Information is our primary weapon against this enemy, and intelligence gathered from captured operatives is perhaps the most effective means of preventing future attacks.