1 Boring Old Man

Yoo and Bybee war memos revealed
Marisa Taylor of McClatchy’s D.C. bureau reports:

Former Justice Department attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee are known for their memos on torture, but little was known about their role in the lead-up to war with Iraq. Until now.

A string of previously secret memos recently released to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Justice Department reveals Yoo’s and Bybee’s part in crafting the controversial legal justification for going to war.

In a memo dated Oct. 23, 2002, Bybee argues that President Bush "possesses constitutional authority for ordering the use of force against Iraq to protect our national itnerests." In fact, he says, the president never lost the power to declare war on Iraq because Congress gave it to the president’s father in 1991. 

Yoo supplements those arguments in two other memos dated November 8, 2002 and December 7, 2002. He concluded that the could argue that Iraq committed a “material breach” of a United Nations Security Council Resolution, an assertion that would become one of the administration’s main justifications for going to war. In one lengthy section, Yoo expounds on the meaning of the word “and” and concludes that it should not be construed as a conjunction.

Scott Silliman, a former Air Force judge advocate who has been critical of the administration’s sweeping assertion of executive powers, said the memos appear “designed to give the president the answer he wants.” 

“What they did was construct an argument to support the answer,” he said.

 See memo here and another memo here.

Yet another memo, written by former Office of Legal Counsel head Jack Goldsmith, it asserts that prisoners in Iraq can be transferred outside the country for interrogations. The memo was used by the CIA to justify the practice known as rendition, in which the CIA moved prisoners to secret prisons. Many international law experts have since criticized the practice as violating the Geneva Conventions.

Specifically, paragraph 3 requires Iraq to provide to the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Security Council a ··currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its WMD program. Id.,’ 3. Paragraph 4 provides:

^{that false statements or omissions in the declarations submitted by Iraq pursuant to this resolution and failure by Iraq at any time to comply with, and cooperate fully in the implementation of, this resolution shall constitute a further material breach of Iraq’s obligations and will be reported to the Council for assessment in accordance with paragraphs 11 and 12 below.}

I’m of course sorry to see that Jack Goldsmith also drank the Koolaide. This memo is from the same month that he and James Comey kept Alberto Gonzales from getting the ailing John Ashcroft to certify the NSA Domestic Spying policies. So maybe that’s when he caught on to how crazy the Administration he was working for really was. But he did certify rendition. Shame on Jack.

CHENEY: I would hope [Obama] would avoid doing what others have done in the past, which is letting the campaign rhetoric guide his judgment in this absolutely crucial area… We were very careful, we did everything by the book, and in fact we produced very significant results

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.