Notes

The New York Times asks John Yoo: “Do you regret writing the so-called torture memos, which claimed that President Bush was legally entitled to ignore laws prohibiting torture?”

He answers: “No, I had to write them. It was my job. As a lawyer, I had a client. The client needed a legal question answered.”

It’s a half-ass answer to a half-ass question. They gave him a way out by failing to ask a stronger question, like this one: “Do you regret advising President Bush that he was legally entitled to ignore laws prohibiting torture?” Instead, the question is just, “Do you regret writing the memos?” And the part about the president being “legally entitled to ignore laws prohibiting torture” just identifies which memos they are talking about.

So Yoo could just point out the obvious: the simple fact of writing the memos was part of his job. But what people want to know, and what the Times failed to ferret out, is whether Yoo feels any remorse for specifically advising President Bush that he could “ignore laws prohibiting torture.” Even though Yoo had a client with a legal question that needed answering, he did not have an obligation to answer that question in a certain way. He could have written those memos to argue that laws prohibiting torture are still applicable, no matter the people you’re dealing with, even when they’re in a newly made-up category like “enemy combatants.”

People like John Yoo should never be asked softball questions by journalists. And I’m not saying that just because I think Yoo’s political views are inhuman; people who assert hardball positions, no matter where they fall on the spectrum, should get hardball questions from journalists. If we’re going to have a free press, we should have a useful press, too.