Closing Time (In More Ways Than One)

John Yoo has been hitting the op-ed pages alot, lately. The most recent one (that I know of) being this piece in the Wall Street Journal that attempts a critique of President Obama’s order to close Gitmo. While the piece is ostensibly about why closing Gitmo is a bad idea, some have argued that the real money shot is here:

What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks. What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders. On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)

Yeah, catch that?  According to Yoo, President Bush authorized waterboarding on three separate occasions.  This aside seems to have little relation to the more general argument and has caused some to wonder why Yoo inserted it.

Anyway, for a quick and funny fisking of Yoo’s piece, see this post at Attackerman (by Attackerlady).  The post’s ending pretty much sums up the situation:

For his finale, Yoo predictably and preemptively blames President Obama for the next terrorist attack. Of course he does. 

Overall, let me just say this: its closing time. Yoo doesn’t have to go home but he can’t stay here. The Bush administration is over. It’s like the old high school quarterback who’s the reliving his glory days while he’s fixing your furnace.  

Dude. Get out of my house.

UPDATE: My colleague Brian Tamanaha has generated a great deal of commentary over at Balkinization with his post on Yoo’s op-ed, arguing that Yoo is trying to deflect responsibility from himself and onto others.

UPDATE II: Scott Horton weighs in. Here are two snippets:

…his column in the Wall Street Journal and his presentations elsewhere tell us exactly what the defense will be. At its core is the argument that, no matter how mistaken, John Yoo acted in good faith when he issued the torture memoranda. He truly, sincerely believes the analysis of law that is presented in those memos. That’s why from April 2004 forward, Yoo has been unwavering in his adherence to the views put forth in those memos…

Immediately after reading Yoo’s memos it struck me that they were the product of reverse-engineering. The way they drifted through issues, the bizarre choice of precedent, the curious misreading of the Constitution in which the clause granting to Congress the authority to address questions surrounding detainees simply disappears–and the equally tendentious and absurd readings of international conventions and precedents–could be explained if you imagined that Yoo had been approached and told to craft a memorandum that legalized practices already in place.