Bybee and Yoo Exhonerated?

This is an excerpt from a longer post by Sherrilyn A. Ifill at "The Root." You can read the entire post here. I whole-heartedly recommend that you do so.

"The story is not, as many commentators have reported, that Yoo and Bybee were somehow cleared by the OPR investigation. To the contrary, the Margolis memo is a depressing study in how the technicalities of a review process can cloud the most relevant facts and conclusions. Although Margolis refuses to find Yoo and Bybee guilty of professional misconduct, his review of the "torture memos" is perhaps the most detailed evidence of how far this nation strayed from the rule of law during the Bush years. This memo, demonstrates why today former Vice-President Dick Cheney can assert that waterboarding ought to "be on the table" for alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Margolis' review of the Bybee/Yoo memos helps explain why today, the press is still loath to actually use the word "torture" to describe the actions of U.S. authorities who questioned detainees. Instead, the Justice Department's adoption of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the collusion of the press in using it is a chilling concession, to a period when the highest legal authorities in the executive branch shredded the soul of our nation - giving legal cover to acts recognized around the world as violative of human rights and dignity.

The Bybee/Yoo memo explains why at his confirmation hearings, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey's response to the very simple question of whether waterboarding constitutes torture, answered repeatedly that he'd first need to determine whether U.S. officials had engaged in waterboarding. Then and only then, would he know if it was illegal.

When lawyers at the highest levels of government twist, obscure and ignore legal principles to reach the conclusions they want, when a legal analysis of detainee treatment is focused not on the prohibition against torture in both the United Nations Convention Against Torture and America's own domestic statutes, but on finding legal justification for inflicting the maximum mental and physical pain, a nation is well on the way to losing its soul.

The Office of Professional Responsibility may ultimately have decided not to issue a finding of professional misconduct against John Yoo and Jay Bybee. But the OPR memo is not an exoneration. Read in its entirety, it is an indictment. And the indictment is not just of Bybee and Yoo. It is an indictment of a nation that tragically and unquestionably lost its way."

I agree.

Joe H.