World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER | Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Let’s say that President Barack Obama appointed me as his Karl Rove. My advice: Don’t move on. The best way to tie the opposition on the right into a pretzel is to go after the Bush administration for all of its high crimes and misdemeanors. The radical right will fall back to defend its conduct for the last eight years. It will have less time and energy to battle the current agenda. The administration should embrace Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Truth Commission, prosecute the Justice Department lawyers for their torture memos, rake the top Pentagon officials over the coals for war crimes in Iraq, and uncover as much dirt as possible on how the Bush administration subverted the constitution, undermined international law, and hijacked America.
Here’s the catch. Obama doesn’t want his own private Karl Rove. Rahm Emanuel may well be foul-mouthed, rude, and not above sending dead fish to his opponents, but he plays by the rules and works both sides of the aisle. He is Mr. Art of the Possible, just like Obama himself. The new president actually believes in bipartisanship — as opposed to simply mouthing the usual clichés about making nice. For Obama, bipartisanship is not just about trying to win votes from Republicans reluctant to provide them or offering cabinet posts to leading conservatives who say yes and then no. It’s about bridging the larger cultural divide in the country.
Obama is no patsy. He has practical reasons for his desire to move on. First of all, he’s sending more U.S. troops in Afghanistan — a poorly thought-out plan, argue Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributors Farrah Hassen and Phyllis Bennis — and any discussion of U.S. war crimes would complicate his mission. Moreover, any investigation of U.S. conduct in Iraq would run up against the uncomfortable truth that a large number of folks in Obama’s party favored the invasion. A Predator strike on the Republican opposition, in other words, would cause collateral damage on the Democrats.
This collective responsibility relates to the second problem: The legal case for war crimes isn’t a slam dunk. Unlike the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis, lawyers can’t make the argument that the government that authorized the invasion of Iraq was an illegitimate one. “The legislature and the courts continued to function according to the constitution, even though the president tried to shield his actions and those of his administration from review,” writes Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Robert Pallitto in Prosecuting the Bush Team? “In several instances — authorizing military action against Iraq, detainee treatment, denial of court review to detainees, immunity for warrantless wiretapping — Congress approved presidential actions, thus making it harder to argue that the government wasn't operating according to valid law.”
Obama might also worry that an in-depth investigation of the Bush team would catalyze rather than confound the opposition. In the 1970s, after the Watergate inquiries and the Church commission investigations into the misdeeds of U.S. foreign policy, the precursors to the neoconservatives launched the Committee on the Present Danger. It mobilized discontent with the perceived America-bashing of the Democrats and produced the long Dark Ages of the 1980s presided over by Ronald Reagan. Handing over Donald Rumsfeld to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, however satisfying, would in fact hand over to the opposition a major tool for mobilizing the Foxified and Rushized masses.
But here’s the larger and ultimately more disturbing reason why Obama wants to put the past behind us. Peace and justice so frequently go hand-in-hand in progressive rhetoric. Alas, peace and justice often find themselves in grave tension. Demands for justice often get short shrift to secure the peace. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission solicited testimony from perpetrators by providing them with amnesty beforehand. In Rwanda, mass murderers received relatively light sentences to put the past behind and promote reconciliation. Anyone working on human rights issues confronts this tension between peace and justice every day. In the most recent example, Hillary Clinton in Beijing promoted better relations between two potential Cold War rivals (a good thing) but also slighted human rights concerns (a bad thing).
The red-blue divide in the United States isn’t exactly apartheid or Hutu vs. Tutsi. Still, the last several elections revealed the immense gap between north and south, relatively educated and relatively undereducated, and white and non-white. A deepening economic crisis only widens that gap. To push through an ambitious, very expensive domestic program and forestall dangerous right-wing populism, Obama aims to promote peace across warring factions. His conciliatory temperament, in this case, intersects with his tactical game plan. Something, however, has to give. And that will be justice.
But if Obama lets everyone off the hook — the Bush team, the top military brass, Wall Street billionaires — the public will treat his calls for change with pained indifference. Leahy offers a middle course with his Truth Commission: “Rather than vengeance, we need an impartial pursuit of what actually happened and a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past,” he has written. Even if Obama’s domestic revolution doesn’t come with a proper Bastille — a powerful, symbolic renunciation of the past — then let’s at least lay bare the perversions of power. Of course we must all look forward, as the president argues. But as any psychologist will tell you, there’s no true moving on without a serious coming to terms with the past. What applies to patients traumatized by their childhoods applies double strength to countries traumatized by their presidents.
War Crimes Elsewhere
Obama isn’t only forgiving when it comes to U.S. war crimes. He’s willing to look the other way at those of allied countries.
Amnesty International has called for an arms embargo against both Israel and Hamas in the aftermath of the war in Gaza. The Obama administration shows no signs of honoring that call. “The most Obama might do to express his displeasure toward controversial Israeli policies like the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories would be to reject a planned increase in military aid for the next fiscal year and slightly reduce economic aid and/or loan guarantees,” writes FPIF senior analyst Stephen Zunes in Obama and Israel’s Military: Still Arm-in-Arm. “However, in a notable departure from previous administrations, Obama made no mention of any military aid to Israel in his outline of the FY 2010 budget, announced last week. This notable absence may indicate that pressure from human rights activists and others concerned about massive U.S. military aid to Israel is now strong enough that the White House feels a need to downplay the assistance rather than emphasize it.”
After 20 years of far-right-wing rule, El Salvador appears also to be on the verge of moving on. Later this week, Salvadorans go to the polls, and the frontrunner for the presidency is Mauricio Funes of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). If the left wins, Salvadorans might finally learn the truth of the U.S. role in the civil war of the 1980s. “Washington sent $6 billion in aid to a Salvadoran government whose army and paramilitary death squads were responsible for heinous crimes,” writes FPIF senior analyst Mark Engler in Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador? “Some 75,000 people were killed in the country's civil war during that decade. In 1993, a United Nations-backed Truth Commission determined that the government was responsible for 85% of human rights abuses and that the rebel forces were responsible for 5%, with the remaining 10% undetermined.”
Time for Action
Thousands of young activists descended on Washington at the end of February for the Power Shift conference. Also scheduled was the largest act of civil disobedience on the issue of climate change: a protest in front of the coal-fired power plant on Capitol Hill that provides energy for Congress and other buildings. FPIF contributor Andrée Zaleska was there: “There were about 2,500 of us there, despite freezing weather and heavy snow. It was well organized, with great posters and banners. And it was truly fun.” The crowd and the police were both civil, but there was no disobedience. Read her Postcard from…Capitol Climate Action to find out why.
Here’s a suggestion for the Obama administration: Instead of focusing specifically on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in the Six Party Talks, widen the discussion to address a regional nuclear-weapons-free zone. “Pyongyang might accelerate its own denuclearization if provided with assurances that neither Seoul nor Tokyo would embark on nuclear programs or host the nuclear weapons of other countries — with the proviso that North Korea must first return to the Nonproliferation Treaty,” writes Jon Reinsch in No Nukes in Northeast Asia. “Nothing gives insecure countries like North Korea a greater incentive to pursue nuclear weapons than fear of the nuclear arsenals, potential or actual, of their adversaries.”
Burma is a tough nut to crack. The Bush administration and its predecessors have tried a variety of sanctions. And the military junta has only dug in its heels. Kanbawza Win has a different proposal: Washington and Beijing should hammer out their own bipartisan consensus on Burma. “By teaming up with China, the United States can devise a policy that both respects the democratic opposition and also reaches out to the current Burmese government,” he writes in Dealing with Burma through China. “If the two great powers can resolve their differences over Burma policy, despite different political systems, then they can set an example for the undemocratic Burmese government and the democratic opposition to achieve a compromise that can bring Burma, finally, into the 21st century.”
Links
Chris Cillizza, "Ten Facts You Need to Know about Rahm Emanuel," The Washington Post, November 6, 2008; http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/11/top_10_facts_you_need_to_know.html
Ryan Lizza, “The Gatekeeper,” The New Yorker, March 2, 2009; http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all
Matt Bai, “Yes, More Mr. Nice Guy,” The New York Times Magazine, March 8, 2009; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine/08wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
Farrah Hassen and Phyllis Bennis, “President Obama Has Things Backward in Afghanistan,” Monterey County Herald, via the Progressive Media Project (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5927); He's putting the escalation cart way out in front of the strategy horse.
Robert Pallitto, “Prosecuting the Bush Team?” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5914); Bush’s legal advisors facilitated the administration’s use of torture. Should we drag them in front of the court?
Patrick Leahy, “The Case for a Truth Commission,” Time, February 19, 2009; http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1880662,00.html?iid=tsmodule
Stephen Zunes, “Obama and Israel’s Military: Still Arm-in-Arm,” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5923); Despite some hopeful movement on Middle East issues, the new administration is still lavishing military aid on Israel and, by extension, the U.S. defense industry.
Mark Engler, “Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5915); The prospect of progressive leadership coming to power in El Salvador's March 15 presidential elections should prompt a new U.S. policy toward Central America.
Andrée Zaleska, “Postcard from…Capitol Climate Action,” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5925); With the climate in the balance, it's time to step up the pressure on coal.
Jon Reinsch, “No Nukes in Northeast Asia,” Foreign Policy In Focus
(http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5926); One way to deal with North Korea's nuclear program is to go regional.
Kanbawza Win, “Dealing with Burma through China?” Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5921); Here's one way of breaking the impasse with Burma: Go through Beijing.
. . .
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)
fpif.org: a think tank without walls
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
In Legal Memos, Clearer View of Power Bush Sought; Crafter thereof, JOHN C. YOO
The new Obama administration being shaped up while filling up the empty seats of each governmental organization, many speculations are circulating around within/outside the nation. Vocal ones raised the emphasis on defence alliances, widening FTAs throughout the globe as a mean to breakthrough the economic hardship, regardless of how effective and accurate analysis it was based on, multilateral cooperation concerning the energy and environment. Last but not the least is the issue with human rights. The chairmen of both House and Senate Judiciary Committee have vocalized on the necessity to establish a Truth Commission investigating any human rights violations during the Bush administration. So far Obama took a rather careful stance, trying not to give an impression it may be viewed as politicised issue. But a series of articles published both within/outside the US suggests the attempt is indeed gradually visualized as time goes by. Will this bring more collaborative allianceship between the US and the ROK in terms of human rights issues?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1GT-BZvhrw
March 3, 2009
In Legal Memos, Clearer View of Power Bush Sought
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON — The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.
That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency.
The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.
Some of the positions had previously become known from statements of Bush administration officials in response to court challenges and Congressional inquiries. But taken together, the opinions disclosed Monday were the clearest illustration to date of the broad definition of presidential power approved by government lawyers in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In a memorandum dated this Jan. 15, five days before President George W. Bush left office, a top Justice Department official wrote that those opinions had not been relied on since 2003. But the official, Steven G. Bradbury, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel, said it was important to acknowledge in writing “the doubtful nature of these propositions,” and he used the memo to repudiate them formally.
Mr. Bradbury said in his memo that the earlier ones had been a product of lawyers’ confronting “novel and complex questions in a time of great danger and under extraordinary time pressure.”
The opinion authorizing the military to operate domestically was dated Oct. 23, 2001, and written by John C. Yoo, at the time a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, and Robert J. Delahunty, a special counsel in the office. It was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked whether Mr. Bush could use the military to combat terrorist activities inside the United States.
The use of the military envisioned in the Yoo-Delahunty reply appears to transcend by far the stationing of troops to keep watch at streets and airports, a familiar sight in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The memorandum discussed the use of military forces to carry out “raids on terrorist cells” and even seize property.
“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force.
The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”
Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty said that in addition, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the military from domestic law enforcement operations, would pose no obstacle to the use of troops in a domestic fight against terrorism suspects. They reasoned that the troops would be acting in a national security function, not as law enforcers.
In another of the opinions, Mr. Yoo argued in a memorandum dated Sept. 25, 2001, that judicial precedents approving deadly force in self-defense could be extended to allow for eavesdropping without warrants.
Still another memo, issued in March 2002, suggested that Congress lacked any power to limit a president’s authority to transfer detainees to other countries, a practice known as rendition that was widely used by Mr. Bush.
Other memorandums said Congress had no right to intervene in the president’s determination of the treatment of detainees, a proposition that has since been invalidated by the Supreme Court.
The Jan. 15 memo by Mr. Bradbury repudiating these views said that it was “not sustainable” to argue that the president’s power as commander in chief “precludes Congress from enacting any legislation concerning the detention, interrogation, prosecution and transfer of enemy combatants.”
Mr. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is widely known as the principal author of a 2002 memorandum, separate from those made public Monday, that critics have characterized as authorizing torture. That memorandum, signed by Jay S. Bybee, a predecessor of Mr. Bradbury as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, was repudiated in 2004.
The memorandum issued by Mr. Bradbury this January appears to have been the Bush lawyers’ last effort to reconcile their views with the wide rejection by legal scholars and some Supreme Court opinions of the sweeping assertions of presidential authority made earlier by the Justice Department.
Walter Dellinger, who led the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration and is now a law professor at Duke University, said in an interview that Mr. Bradbury’s memo “disclaiming the opinions of earlier Bush lawyers sets out in blunt detail how irresponsible those earlier opinions were.”
Mr. Dellinger said it was important that it was now widely recognized that the earlier assertions “that Congress had absolutely no role in these national security issues was contrary to constitutional text, historical practice and judicial precedent.”
In a speech a few hours before the documents were disclosed Monday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said: “Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only is that thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good.”
Mr. Holder said that the memorandums were being released in light of a substantial public interest in the issue.
_______________________________________________________________________________
John C. Yoo served for only two years in the Bush administration Justice Department and never rose higher than the rank of assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office. But his bold assertion of executive power and rejection of international law helped shaped some of the administration's most controversial policies, and are likely to have an impact in debates over crucial Constitutional questions for years to come.
When the Justice Department offices were being evacuated Mr. Yoo, then a 34-year-old former law professor whose academic work had focused on foreign affairs and war-powers issues, was asked to stay behind, and he quickly found himself in the department's command center, on the phone to lawyers at the White House.
Within weeks, Mr. Yoo had begun to establish himself as a critical player in the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, and an influential advocate for the expansive claims of presidential authority that have been a hallmark of that response.
Read More...
Mr. Yoo was a primary author of a series of legal opinions on the fight against terrorism, including one that said the Geneva Conventions did not apply and at least two others that countenanced the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects. He also wrote a still-secret 2002 memorandum that gave legal backing to the administration's secret program to eavesdrop on the international communications of Americans and others inside the United States without federal warrants.
After Mr. Yoo left government in 2003 to return to teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, an opinion he wrote on interrogations with the head of the legal counsel office, Jay S. Bybee, was publicly disavowed by the White House, a highly unusual step.
While his successors in the Justice Department may have had second thoughts, Mr. Yoo has not backed down. In a combative book, “War by Other Means,” Mr. Yoo was more candid than many of his colleagues about his fervent belief in unfettered executive power.
In the book, Mr. Yoo argued that the Constitution grants the president “the leading role in foreign affairs,” and that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress a week after 9/11, gives the president broad powers to wage the war on terror the way he wants to. Indeed, Mr. Yoo says, “We wrote the law as broadly as we did” to “make sure there could be no claim in the future that the President was acting in the war on terrorism without congressional support.”
Hide
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1GT-BZvhrw
March 3, 2009
In Legal Memos, Clearer View of Power Bush Sought
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON — The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.
That opinion was among nine that were disclosed publicly for the first time Monday by the Justice Department, in what the Obama administration portrayed as a step toward greater transparency.
The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.
Some of the positions had previously become known from statements of Bush administration officials in response to court challenges and Congressional inquiries. But taken together, the opinions disclosed Monday were the clearest illustration to date of the broad definition of presidential power approved by government lawyers in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In a memorandum dated this Jan. 15, five days before President George W. Bush left office, a top Justice Department official wrote that those opinions had not been relied on since 2003. But the official, Steven G. Bradbury, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel, said it was important to acknowledge in writing “the doubtful nature of these propositions,” and he used the memo to repudiate them formally.
Mr. Bradbury said in his memo that the earlier ones had been a product of lawyers’ confronting “novel and complex questions in a time of great danger and under extraordinary time pressure.”
The opinion authorizing the military to operate domestically was dated Oct. 23, 2001, and written by John C. Yoo, at the time a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, and Robert J. Delahunty, a special counsel in the office. It was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked whether Mr. Bush could use the military to combat terrorist activities inside the United States.
The use of the military envisioned in the Yoo-Delahunty reply appears to transcend by far the stationing of troops to keep watch at streets and airports, a familiar sight in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The memorandum discussed the use of military forces to carry out “raids on terrorist cells” and even seize property.
“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force.
The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”
Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty said that in addition, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars the military from domestic law enforcement operations, would pose no obstacle to the use of troops in a domestic fight against terrorism suspects. They reasoned that the troops would be acting in a national security function, not as law enforcers.
In another of the opinions, Mr. Yoo argued in a memorandum dated Sept. 25, 2001, that judicial precedents approving deadly force in self-defense could be extended to allow for eavesdropping without warrants.
Still another memo, issued in March 2002, suggested that Congress lacked any power to limit a president’s authority to transfer detainees to other countries, a practice known as rendition that was widely used by Mr. Bush.
Other memorandums said Congress had no right to intervene in the president’s determination of the treatment of detainees, a proposition that has since been invalidated by the Supreme Court.
The Jan. 15 memo by Mr. Bradbury repudiating these views said that it was “not sustainable” to argue that the president’s power as commander in chief “precludes Congress from enacting any legislation concerning the detention, interrogation, prosecution and transfer of enemy combatants.”
Mr. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is widely known as the principal author of a 2002 memorandum, separate from those made public Monday, that critics have characterized as authorizing torture. That memorandum, signed by Jay S. Bybee, a predecessor of Mr. Bradbury as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, was repudiated in 2004.
The memorandum issued by Mr. Bradbury this January appears to have been the Bush lawyers’ last effort to reconcile their views with the wide rejection by legal scholars and some Supreme Court opinions of the sweeping assertions of presidential authority made earlier by the Justice Department.
Walter Dellinger, who led the Office of Legal Counsel during the Clinton administration and is now a law professor at Duke University, said in an interview that Mr. Bradbury’s memo “disclaiming the opinions of earlier Bush lawyers sets out in blunt detail how irresponsible those earlier opinions were.”
Mr. Dellinger said it was important that it was now widely recognized that the earlier assertions “that Congress had absolutely no role in these national security issues was contrary to constitutional text, historical practice and judicial precedent.”
In a speech a few hours before the documents were disclosed Monday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said: “Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only is that thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good.”
Mr. Holder said that the memorandums were being released in light of a substantial public interest in the issue.
_______________________________________________________________________________
John C. Yoo served for only two years in the Bush administration Justice Department and never rose higher than the rank of assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office. But his bold assertion of executive power and rejection of international law helped shaped some of the administration's most controversial policies, and are likely to have an impact in debates over crucial Constitutional questions for years to come.
When the Justice Department offices were being evacuated Mr. Yoo, then a 34-year-old former law professor whose academic work had focused on foreign affairs and war-powers issues, was asked to stay behind, and he quickly found himself in the department's command center, on the phone to lawyers at the White House.
Within weeks, Mr. Yoo had begun to establish himself as a critical player in the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, and an influential advocate for the expansive claims of presidential authority that have been a hallmark of that response.
Read More...
Mr. Yoo was a primary author of a series of legal opinions on the fight against terrorism, including one that said the Geneva Conventions did not apply and at least two others that countenanced the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects. He also wrote a still-secret 2002 memorandum that gave legal backing to the administration's secret program to eavesdrop on the international communications of Americans and others inside the United States without federal warrants.
After Mr. Yoo left government in 2003 to return to teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, an opinion he wrote on interrogations with the head of the legal counsel office, Jay S. Bybee, was publicly disavowed by the White House, a highly unusual step.
While his successors in the Justice Department may have had second thoughts, Mr. Yoo has not backed down. In a combative book, “War by Other Means,” Mr. Yoo was more candid than many of his colleagues about his fervent belief in unfettered executive power.
In the book, Mr. Yoo argued that the Constitution grants the president “the leading role in foreign affairs,” and that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress a week after 9/11, gives the president broad powers to wage the war on terror the way he wants to. Indeed, Mr. Yoo says, “We wrote the law as broadly as we did” to “make sure there could be no claim in the future that the President was acting in the war on terrorism without congressional support.”
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