Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait: March 2015 Archives

"Of course, many people in society disagree with the decision [to use torture to interrogate people], and I knew when I was making it that it would be a controversial and difficult decision," Yoo said. "But I still think ... it was still the right decision to make."

The Epitome of Shame

The University of California harbors a war criminal. Please help sustain resistance to the hideous ideology that holds high officials above the law. Contribute generously to the national organization that makes the Fire John Yoo! blog possible: The World Can't Wait.

The Chagossians - the rightful inhabitants of the islands - have sustained a very different sort of torture. They were not beaten or raped, they were not waterboarded or forcibly deprived of sleep, but they were threatened, they were ripped from their homelands (ancestors, communities, schools, homes), they were forced onto the hull of a ship, and they were dropped on foreign islands and forgotten. And this didn't happen in long ago history, it happened only 40 years ago - a slow and pronounced torture that continues today.

illustration: http://inforeunion.overblog.com/2014/05/torture-et-prison-secrete-a-diego-garcia.html

Torture of Neglect and Marginalization Renders a People Invisible

..but after more than a dozen years, we are no closer to an answer. Who exactly Is the U.S. at war with? Clue: "The list is classified and not for public release" says a Pentagon spokeswoman. 

How many people will Obama kill to secure American hegemony? 

The President's embrace of Congress' Authorization for Use of Military Force protects the presumed power of unlimited executive privilege championed by George W. Bush's Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General: At its most basic level, John Yoo's legal analysis restated Richard Nixon's famous line that "when a president does it, that means that it is not illegal." 

see A War Without End: The Untold Story Of The Most Dangerous Sentence In U.S. History  

Bush's 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) set into motion the drone war, torture, and mass warrantless spying. Under Obama's proposed AUMF the government will be free to wage endless, expanding wars all over the world without geographic limits. All of this imperial military doctrine is absolutely illegal, whether Congress approves it or not.

The whole idea [of] fighting or defending against "terrorism" needs to be challenged. Terrorism, particularly inside the borders of the U.S., has been and remains an issue for police, not the military. There is no justification for defining the U.S. as a "war zone" -- much as today's militarized cops might pretend it is... terrorism is not an issue for the military anywhere in the world.

The Senate Torture Report gave a pass to culpable actors beyond the CIA, especially in the White House, the Cabinet, and the Justice Department. At every point where the White House and the DOJ could have and should have said no to tactics that were patently illegal, they said yes.

see New Torture Files by David Cole