John Yoo Quotes

• Without territory, it does not even have the resources to provide detention facilities for prisoners, even if it were interested in holding captured POWs.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Captured, Pow

• While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Uniforms, Obeying, Command

• We can guess that the unacceptable conduct of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib resulted in part from the dangerous state of affairs on the ground in a theater of war.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Unacceptable, Ghraib

• Under the Geneva Convention, for example, a POW is required only to provide name, rank, and serial number and cannot receive any benefits for cooperating.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Cooperating, Geneva, Convention, Required, Receive

• This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

  John Yoo

• The Justices are currently considering a case, argued last month, which seeks to extend the writ of habeas corpus to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Papists, Guantanamo

• The effort to blur the lines between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib reflects a deep misunderstanding about the different legal regimes that apply to Iraq and the war against al Qaeda.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Misunderstanding

• That is because the conflict with al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them.

  John Yoo

• Punishing abuse in Iraq should not return the U.S. to Sept. 10, 2001, in the way it fights al Qaeda, while Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants remain at large and continue to plan attacks.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Punishing, Fights, Osama, Qaeda

• President Bush and his commanders announced early in the conflict that the Conventions applied.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Conflict, Conventions, Bush

• Once the attacks occur, as we learned on Sept. 11, it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important, and legal, means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Terrorist, Deprive

• Nonetheless, Article 5 makes clear that if an Iraqi civilian who is not a member of the armed forces, has engaged in attacks on Coalition forces, the Geneva Convention permits the use of more coercive interrogation approaches to prevent future attacks.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Armed, Interrogation, Nonetheless

• It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Disarming, Urges, Weapon

• It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Geneva

• It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make sense in a war against terrorists.

  John Yoo

  Tags in Limitations, Terrorists, Geneva

• It has never demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans. If anything, the murders of Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl declare al Qaeda’s intentions to kill even innocent civilian prisoners.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Humane, Nicholas, Berg, Prisoners

• In light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, critics are arguing that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Prisoners

• If the Court were to extend its reach to the base, judges could begin managing conditions of confinement, interrogation methods, and the use of information.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Confinement, Interrogations, Judges

• Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush’s 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in President, Example

• Congress’s definition of torture in those laws – the infliction of severe mental or physical pain – leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation.

  John Yoo

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Conversation

John Yoo (24)

Birth:	1967
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Lawyer, Politician, Professor

About

John Choon Yoo was born in Seoul, South Korea. He is a Korean-born American lawyer, politician and author. He is currently the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned a BA degree summa cum laude in American history from Harvard University in 1989. He earned a JD degree from Yale Law School in 1992. From 2001-2003, he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, during the George W. Bush administration. He served as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento, Italy. He has written several books include: The powers of war and peace, War by Other Means, Confronting Terror (with Dean Reuter), Taming Globalization (with Julian Ku), Point of Attack, and Striking Power (with Jeremy A. Rabkin).

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Deaths

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• 2000 - Sir Cyril Astley Clarke
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