The profession of law is in danger of losing its dignity. When it does, lawyers will say with one voice: we are all just instruments of somebody's policy -- judges, advocates, all just somebody's hired guns. This new batch of memos about torture is so transparently: "advice about how to do what you want to do without getting prosecuted." (A simple test: suppose the terrorists kidnap your daughter and promise to abide by these standards of civilized behavior. Just how much better do you feel?)
And then there's this guy Yoo, who allegedly helped write some of these things, quoted thus in the New York Times today, "This is an unprecedented conflict with a completely new form of enemy that fights in unconventional ways that violate the very core principles of the laws of war by targeting civilians," Professor Yoo said in an interview yesterday. "We should want the executive to ask what rules apply to that conflict before they enact policy, not after."
I feel like sending this guy some books: about Hiroshima, My Lai, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, El Salvador, Dresden. It would be fun, if one had Gates' money, to make a couple of semis pull up at Yoo's door, with books pouring out the back, and the word "unprecedented" stencilled on the side of the trucks. It's as if Yoo believes the law on torture was thunk up by some pet store owner in Oshkosh who never reads the newspaper.
Posted by shea0017 at June 24, 2004 10:34 AM