Many people know the name of John Yoo, but most do not know his full role in the criminal enterprise known as the Bush Regime. Yoo is associated with the infamous 81-page "torture memo" written while he was a Department of Justice lawyer, on a two-year leave from the UC Berkeley Law faculty. He is one of the many Bush administration attorneys who provided legal justification and cover for the illegal actions of the Bush regime during its eight years in power, including the lies prefacing the immoral and illegitimate war on Iraq.
Well guess what, no surprise, John Yoo is at it again, promoting an exaggeration of Iran's nuclear capabilities and agitating for U.S. military action against Iran.
"It's amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, and then act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you'd simply told the truth." - 'The Client' by John Grisham
The University of California's advocacy for the current U.S. Torture State began with a rather banal defense of its employee John Yoo, whose conduct and work at the Bush/Cheney Justice Department fell far outside established ethical standards. Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley sticks with his misapplication of the principle of "academic freedom" to provide safe harbor to his subordinate, despite repeated rebuttals from those, including numerous constitutional lawyers, who correctly understand that unethical, criminal and immoral action in the service of government are not protected.
Dean Edley taught Barack Obama at Yale and provided consultation services for his presidential campaign, and has upheld the President's decision to avoid investigation of criminal actions of the Bush administration. But political calculation must not be the basis for decisions involving the most basic principles of universal human rights. World Can't Wait urges people of conscience to reject the pretext of Fear being sold to the American public and to repudiate the illegal practices being used in the global "war" on terror.
Christopher Edley (or John Yoo for that matter) is not solely responsible for the disgraceful enablement of torture advocacy at Boalt Hall. For far too long, academe (and other schools employ war criminals, see warcriminalswatch.org) has neglected its responsibility -- to pursue and explore truth. And it's been this failure that has led to an impasse in closing the most ignominious example of U.S. cruelty, Guantanamo Bay.
The above is a legacy that must be undone. But in the absence of accountability for past crimes, we have allowed an escalation in what amounts to a U.S. war OF terror: the state-sponsored torture and terrorizing of whole populations (think Afghanistan and Iraq, think Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Bagram). And because Dean Edley, Chancellor Birgeneau ("We're actually a fairly broad church here... we've got the law professor John Yoo, who has been a prime advocate of the U.S. government's torture policy"), administrators, professional associations and yes, faculty, practitioners and alumni have been remiss in ignoring their purported ethical obligations, the entire UC community finds itself in the predicament of watching someone whose veneer of legitimacy should have been stripped away years ago, promoting the ultimate war crime, the invasion of another country which is not an imminent threat to the security of the U.S., in this particular case the sovereign state of Iran, writing in the National Review:
"[current Republican presidential candidates] must begin preparing the case for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear program..." - John Yoo
We continue to expose the history of our government's crimes. And recognize Berkeley Law's complicity in continuance of U.S. torture policy specifically. Say NO! to employment of war criminals and justification for war crimes. Join us in our campaign to "Fire, Disbar, and Prosecute John Yoo."
