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IPFS News Link • Bush Administration

Jose Padilla, John Yoo, and Routine Exoneration for Government Criminals

• http://www.antiwar.com, John Glaser
 Yoo of course was in the Bush administration’s office of legal counsel who crafted legal opinions around what the Bush administration wanted to do to so-called enemy combatants, a notion they basically invented in order to deny detainees their rights.

But this week, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected Padilla’s case, declaring Yoo immune from such prosecution. Unfortunately, this is the reality of the country we live in: those in elite political and intellectual circles exist in a special bubble where they can commit radical, far-reaching crimes of the highest order and never be subject to prosecution or punishment. The rest of us poor saps are lorded over by this law.

The Bush administration’s torture regime not only involved the infliction of systematic torment and agony for hundreds and hundreds of detainees, many of whom were guilty of nothing, but it is now known that several (perhaps over 100) detainees died or were killed while in custody. All of this was done without the due process mandated by the Constitution. There can be no doubt that these practices were illegal, then and now. The law is very clear that torture is prohibited and very clear on what qualifies as torture.


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