Tag: John Yoo

The CIA’s Unpunished Torturers

John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the C.I.A.’s global torture program, reflects on the impunity surrounding the U.S. leaders who authorized crimes against humanity and left Sept. 11 defendants’ trials in limbo.

A Baseless Justification for War in Syria

For almost 16 years, the U.S. government has stretched the military force authorization against Al Qaeda to justify a wide-ranging “war on terror” but now has gone further, attacking the Syrian military inside Syria, notes Dennis J Bernstein.

Hiding Facts to Thwart Democracy

Over-classification of U.S. government information is a grave threat to the Republic, giving politicians and bureaucrats the power to hide facts that aren’t really sensitive but are vital to a meaningful public debate, such as the IG report on President Bush’s surveillance program, says ex-NSA…

Bush’s Enduring Theories of Martial Law

The failure to hold anyone accountable for torture derives from extraordinary post-9/11 legal theories that made the President all-powerful during “wartime” and established what amounted to martial law in the United States, a condition that continues to this day, writes…

How Torture Puts Americans at Risk

Exclusive: Polls show that most Americans and an overwhelming majority of “conservatives” view post-9/11 torture as justified, presumably because it made them feel safer. But torture may actually have made them less safe, as retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce…

Stifling Dissent on the Upper East Side

Exclusive: Modern U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine doesn’t just target people in faraway lands where the U.S. military is battling some uprising. It also takes aim at Americans whose dissent might undermine those wars, possibly explaining the strange arrest of Ray McGovern, writes…

Misguided Honor for Condi Rice

U.S. officials lecture others about respecting international law and punishing human rights crimes, but those principles are ignored when the violators are U.S. officials. Offenders like ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice even get honors, as Coleen Rowley and Todd E. Pierce…