The blog The Anonymous Liberal does a fantastic job picking apart John Yoo’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal defending himself against the findings of the recently released Inspector General’s report.
In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, John Yoo has an op-ed defending himself from the malpractice charges set forth in the recent Inspecter General’s report. As with the opinions themselves, the op-ed is deeply disingenuous and misstates the law repeatedly.
Not surprisingly, Yoo begins the op-ed with a collosal straw man. He points out how important it is to intercept al Qaeda communications and writes: "Evidently, none of the inspectors general of the five leading national security agencies would approve." Of course, the issue is not whether intercepting communications is a good idea, but whether the program violated the law. Yoo was not a policy maker. He was a lawyer. His job was to state what the law was, not what it should be.
Yoo eventually gets around to addressing FISA, but quickly dismisses any notion that FISA might constrain the president…