David Cole puts John Yoo on the rack over torture

For those who aren't that into politics the name John Yoo will likely be followed by the question, 'whose he.' In many ways he is the architect of the Abu Ghraib, GTMO, extraordinary strategy in the war on terror. He has a new book, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11, making the case for why torture is a good thing when America does it. I've seen him in interviews most recently on Frontline.

He is an originalist but that doesn't seem to square with his views for a strong executive branch. David Cole, a Georgetown law professor and author of a competing view Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, takes up the case against Yoo's originalism and his legal opinnion on torture in The New York Review of Books. The article can be read in its entirety on TomDispatch toward the bottom of the page.

While in my personal opinnion Yoo's legal reasoning is contradictory and baseless in cited precident, when he bothers to quote it, his book gives insight into the White House's thinking. Won't buy it but may pick it up at the library along with David Cole's book.