American Torture: The Heat’s on Yoo
Scott Horton; 24/4/08
John C. Yoo likes the limelight, but it’s causing him some grief. Of the half-dozen lawyers who played important roles in a Bush administration decision to legalize the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques, only Yoo has emerged as the public face — and target — related to the policy. In 2002 and 2003, Yoo was second in command at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and wrote two memos, one for Alberto R. Gonzales and one for the Pentagon, that provided broad legal authority for the use of extreme measures in the questioning of wartime detainees. Yoo is now a tenured professor at Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley. Recently, the National Lawyers Guild launched a campaign to have him fired because of his role in the torture issue. If Yoo were fired on the strength of a public outcry about his ideas on torture, it could send a chill through academia.
See: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=109256&d=24&m=4&y=2008