An Anti-Torture Defense of Yoo

My position against torture is a little more nuanced than what you’d see over at the Daily Dish. I agree with Sullivan that the war on terror isn’t so fundamentally different that we have to break with the tradition of respecting human rights while fighting that crushed the Nazis in the Second World War. I think it’s immoral and abhorrent in all it’s forms – from the stress positions, waterboarding, to sleep and sensory deprivation. I think the Geneva Conventions should and does apply to this war like every other

Even with that, I offer a limited support to John Yoo and Bush’s Office of Legal Council’s (OLC) infamous “torture memos.” This is because almost every rule has to be broken or stretched at some point or another. I think this is the heart of what I hoe those memos are is that there might be a time when the Geneva Conventions would cause more harm than good.