John Yoo's commentary (Sept. 19) is ridiculous. The man's a former President George Bush appointee, trying cover their tracks. Attacking President Barack Obama's investigations on the one hand, he goes off on a tangent and talks about how Carter eliminated 820 positions in covert operations, which he says led to the fall of the Shah. The Shah was a puppet, held up by American money. But even if cutting the CIA led to his downfall, so what? Obama is not talking about cutting any positions from the CIA. That has nothing to do with the present situation.

Obama merely OK'd an investigation into the illegal activities of the CIA. Yoo would prefer that the CIA be above the law. If he seriously thinks this will improve the CIA's ability to perform, then he is actually against America and the American Way, which all his ilk are so proud of. You can't have a decent law-abiding society built on lies like that.

Yoo is still telling that same old lie, about how our intelligence was wrong about Saddam having WMDs. Our intelligence was a 100 percent dead on. Marine Col. Scott Ridder, on the U.N. weapons inspection team, told Bush before he ever invaded Iraq that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and no capabilities to make any.

But this was not the information that Bush wanted. So he promptly had Ridder declared a loose canon. Then he trumped up the phony intelligence that created that war.

Not only should the CIA be investigated, Bush and Cheney, et al., should be dragged into court, by their heels if necessary, tried, and condemned to incarceration for setting that tone whereby the CIA was allowed to become America's number one enemy.

Frank is a resident of El Sobrante.