Deconstructing John Yoo, Harpers Magazine

Once again, poor John Yoo, the author of the original torture memorandum and steady defender in public fora of waterboarding and crushing the genitalia of small children, feels he is being persecuted. This has been a steady theme of his writings in the Journal, in which he has lashed out against former Attorney General Ashcroft, the Supreme Court in its Rasul and Hamdan decisions, and his colleagues in academia. This time the victimizer is his own alma mater.

A Yale Law School clinic has supported a lawsuit filed against him in federal court in San Francisco seeking nominal damages ($1 plus attorney’s fees and costs) on behalf of Jose Padilla. The Wall Street Journal and other organs of the Neoconservative world (of which the soft-spoken Yoo is a card-carrying member) reacted promptly and in unison. This law suit is a ludicrous act of harassment, they say, blasting away against Yale Dean Harold Koh and a series of additional windmills who have nothing to do with it.

But John Yoo’s self-defense, published on Saturday, is extremely revealing. It merits a pause and careful read through. In it, Yoo is on the warpath. Moreover, he goes out of his way to describe the nature of his warpath. The war is all about politics, he tells us. Yoo very thoughtfully allows the inner Yoo to shine through. Read the rest of the article