German war criminals were executed for exactly the same kind of acts using exactly the same kind of logic. Yoo would have been a wonderful counsel for Hitler.

Our founding fathers and their
allies fought a revolution so men like this could not be in positions of
power.  Yoo is a standing disgrace
to the United States and to Boalt Law School at Berkeley, where he teaches his
depravity to others.  Too many
lawyers are simply hired guns, intellectual mercenaries whose souls and brains
are at auction for the highest bidder. 
John Yoo seems a perfect role model for them.

I imagine the same
‘conservatives’ and ‘conservative Christians’ who defend torture will defend
mass murder: the logic is the same and so is the moral depravity. I
increasingly see no significant difference between them and the Nazis beyond
the latter’s greater opportunity to demonstrates their real character.

In the readers’ comments on Isikoff’s
article some people brought up Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Good and uncomfortable point.  There are lots and lots of moral issues
regarding those events, and I personally think they were unjustified.  But I want to focus on only one dimension of these counter examples because it is important
enough to stand alone on its own merits, and disturbing in its implications.

Japan had declared war on the US,
along with a simultaneous military attack.  Iraq
was 100% innocent of doing anything to the US.  No 9/11 involvement, no weapons of mass destruction, no
military even capable by then of doing much to anybody other than Iraqis who
did not like Saddam Hussein.  So in
one case the devastation was brought on people whose government started a
bloody war.  In the other we are
discussing a war of choice waged upon an innocent country (no matter how nasty
its government) where a village of civilians who resisted our efforts could be
massacred: every man, woman, and child.

Anyone who cannot see the
difference is probably a re-incarnation of one of Genghis Khan’s advisers.

Glenn Greenwald has provided two good discussions of recent developments over Yoo’s criminality and the cover up regarding it.  The first discusses outright lies told by ‘conservatives’ concerning the Dept. of Justice report – but conservative leaders have generally long taken leave of concern for truth as Greenwald proves.  His second report gives additional background data on the cover-up perpetrated by the DOJ and Obama administration.  Too many Democrats love power as much as Republicans, and only disagree as to who will abuse it.