Yoo 2

A couple of days ago I wrote about John Yoo, but I felt my post was kind of missing something. Blaming those memos squarely on Yoo misses the point. Glenn Greenwald explains it well in his blog post John Yoo: Spearhead or Scapegoat:

Directing moral outrage uniquely at John Yoo and demanding that he be removed from Berkeley, while highly understandable in one sense, poses the danger that this broader responsibility will be obscured and that real accountability need not take place. If we don't have the political will to prosecute our highest political officials for war crimes or even remove them from office -- and we unquestionably did not and do not -- how can we simultaneously insist that John Yoo is beyond the pale? For better or worse, what John Yoo did, while revolting and radical, was within what became -- and still is -- the American political mainstream in the years after the 9/11 attacks.

And what could be even more revolting and radical? President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday. I guess this shouldn't surprise me. Bush is on the record saying the U.S. "does not torture people," and I know he lies. Is that why the media has responded to this story with a yawn?

They can't get enough of that teen beating video though.