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"When our group of lawyers visited Gitmo, the Marine general in charge told us that several of the detainees had arrived screaming that they wanted to kill guards and other Americans."
"Many at Gitmo are not in a state of calm surrender. Open barracks for most are utterly impossible; some al-Qaeda detainees want to kill not only guards, but their peers who might be cooperating with the United States. The provision of ordinary POW rights ... is infeasible."
Yoo's argument that only quiet POWs "in a state of calm surrender" should qualify for Geneva protections might be news to many former US POWs, including Sen. John McCain, who have boasted about their various forms of resistance to their captors.
Yoo added that a few weeks after he returned from Guantanamo "the lawyers met again in the White House Situation Room to finally resolve the issue for presidential decision."
"If Geneva Convention rules were applied, some believed they would interfere with our ability to apprehend or interrogate al-Qaeda leaders," Yoo wrote. "We would be able to ask Osama bin Laden loud questions and nothing more. Geneva rules were designed for mass armies, not conspirators, terrorists or spies."
Youngstown
The OPR also investigated whether Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury purposely twisted their legal advice to satisfy the White House and knowingly avoided citing existing case law in order to reach conclusions the White House wanted. It's unknown what the OPR has concluded about that point in its report.
Beyond ignoring the case law on torture, Yoo, as a deputy assistant attorney general, pushed the theory that President Bush could not be bound by laws outlawing torture because of his constitutional authority to use military force at a time of war.
"As Commander in Chief, the President has the constitutional authority to order interrogations of enemy combatants to gain intelligence information concerning the military plans of the enemy," said Yoo in another memo dated August 1, 2002, and entitled "Standards of Conduct for Interrogation."
In that opinion, Yoo failed to cite the key precedent relating to a president's war powers, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, a 1952 Supreme Court case that addressed President Harry Truman's order to seize steel mills that had been shut down in a labor dispute during the Korean War.
Truman said the strike threatened national defense and thus justified his actions under his Article II powers in the Constitution.
But the Supreme Court overturned Truman's order, saying, "the President's power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself." Since Congress hadn't delegated such authority to Truman, the Supreme Court ruled that Truman's actions were unconstitutional, with an influential concurring opinion written by Justice Robert Jackson.
Yoo's Explanation
In "War by Other Means," Yoo offered up a defense of his failure to cite Youngstown. "We didn't cite Jackson's individual views in Youngstown because earlier [Office of Legal Counsel] opinions, reaching across several administrations, had concluded that it had no application to the President's conduct of foreign affairs and national security."
Yoo added, "Youngstown reached the outcome it did because the Constitution clearly gives Congress, not the President, the exclusive power to make law concerning labor disputes. It does not address the scope of Commander-in-Chief power involving military strategy or intelligence tactics in war....
