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UC Law Prof John Yoo Promotes Torture in PBS documentary

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UC law professor John Yoo wrote memos supporting torture while deputy assistant attorney general, as more fully described in a 10/18/05 PBS documentary, and his presence at UC was protested on 10/25/05, according to a KPFA news report on Flashpoints, 10/25/05.
UC law professor John Yoo wrote memos supporting torture while deputy assistant attorney general, as more fully described in a 10/18/05 PBS documentary, and his presence at UC was protested on 10/25/05, according to a KPFA news report on Flashpoints, 10/25/05

This Nazi professor, John Yoo, claiming to teach constitutional law, while being well-known as an author of torture memos, needs to be kicked off our payroll today. The students were right to protest his presence at UC; they are wrong to support jailing him as we need to abolish jails. Someone like Yoo needs to be kicked off the public payroll and disbarred, that is, forbidden to practice law, as he is clearly a dangerous criminal.

From: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/pbs-o26.shtml, a 10/26/05 article on the World Socialist Website by Joanne Laurier entitled "PBS film documents Rumsfeld’s role in authorizing torture":

"Featured prominently is John Yoo, who was a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003. Yoo was the principal author of the Justice Department’s memos arguing that President Bush had unlimited powers to prosecute the so-called “war on terror,” dismissing the Geneva Conventions as outdated, and justifying a policy of state-sanctioned torture."

"Coldly defending his views, Yoo tells “Frontline”: “The one thing I think we don’t want is for the government to be hamstrung in the way it interrogates people who have knowledge of pending attacks on the United States because we have so much disagreement about what those phrases mean and that we can’t do anything. So I think it’s important that the government do figure out what that language means and how to apply it rather than operating [in] this sort of vague fog of uncertainty.” Yoo lauds Israeli ‘coercive’ techniques as the model for American interrogation methods."

"Yoo also discusses the infamous August 1, 2002 Justice Department memo that sharply narrowed the definition of torture. The memo stated that physical pain must be “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” and that inflicting such pain must have been the “specific intent” of the defendant to amount to torture. It also claimed that US ratification of a 1994 anti-torture statute could be deemed unconstitutional because it infringed on the president’s power as commander in chief."

We should also proceed to indict Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice for not only perpetrating torture and illegal wars, but also for the 9/11 Inside Job, their Reichstag Fire, which they use as an excuse to promote war and fascism. This whole criminal gang needs to be kicked off the public payroll, have all of their wealth taken from them, and put on a Social Security retirement check that is the same as any workingclass person receives. The evidence that 9/11/01 was an Inside Job was not only obvious as it happened when there was no air defense, but is also well-documented in the following required reading:
1. Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert
2. The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions & Distortions by David Griffin
3. The New Pearl Harbor by David Griffin
4. Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid
5. 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions by Rowland Morgan & Ian Henshall
6. Waking Up From Our Nightmare by Don Paul and Jim Hoffman
7. 9/11 Facing Our Fascist State by Don Paul
8. 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Tarpley
9. Body of Secrets by James Bamford
10. The War on Truth by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
§Past Indybay Coverage
by link
See
http://www.indybay.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=2235&category_id=18
For Photos from the 6/25/2005 protest
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KQED's Forum loves Yoo!
Wed, Oct 26, 2005 12:58PM
e.
Wed, Oct 26, 2005 12:06PM
John Yoo is an idiot, seen him speak
Wed, Oct 26, 2005 8:35AM
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