BESIDES, WHO HAS EVER HEARD OF BERKELEY?

Furor over UC prof's brief on war (Robert Collier, San Francisco Chronicle, June 7th, 2004)

A UC Berkeley law professor is under fire for his former role as a legal adviser to the Bush administration in its war against terrorism, with critics saying he served as the intellectual author of policies that led to the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers.

As a Justice Department aide, John Yoo wrote a legal brief in January 2002 arguing that fighters captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan are not covered by the Geneva conventions -- the treaties that embody the laws of war.

Yoo's memo led to the controversial decision by President Bush that al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners being held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, do not qualify as prisoners of war and have no right to lawyers or a trial. The result, human rights activists say, has been a legal twilight zone in which abuses against prisoners in U.S. custody abroad have occurred.

The controversy pits a rising star at Boalt Hall School of Law against liberal sentiment on the Berkeley campus. Ever since Yoo's memo was disclosed by Newsweek magazine last month, students and graduates have rallied and petitioned. At the law school commencement ceremony on May 22, about one- quarter of the graduates wore black armbands to protest Yoo's role and called on him to resign. [...]

"(Yoo's) memos were clearly a major contributor to the environment that led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "He not only excused the violation of rights of prisoners at Guantanamo, which was wrong in itself, but he set in motion the legal loopholes that led to coercion on a broad scale."

Now, listen up everyone. As we have said many times, we believe that world affairs should be governed by international law and not the cowboy unilateralism we have seen from the White House of late. We were shocked and angered when Bush joked about calling his lawyer when he was asked about this.

So, now you say it turns out he had a lawyer and got international legal advice. No, no, no! We never meant the international laws that backed U.S. actions as argued by wingnut California crypto-fascist law professors. Those are just nasty little legal loopholes. We meant the international laws that prevent the U.S. from doing what it thinks right as developed by sophisticated French, German and Scandinavian scholars on retainers from the UN. Those are the wise and just foundations of the new world order.

Have you got it? OK, now go away.

Posted by Peter Burnet at June 7, 2004 2:33 PM