Although John Yoo certainly deserves all of the criticism he's getting today and far more, it's also important to remember that his analysis only meant something because he was telling the President and his subordinates what they wanted to hear. Consider this, for example, from GOP Moral Sage James Dobson explaining why he's not wild about John McCain:
Mr. Dobson took issue with a litany of Sen. McCain's positions, including support for embryonic-stem-cell research and opposition to a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Those stances, plus Sen. McCain's discussion of global warming and his push to outlaw torture and shut down the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have "frustrated" conservatives "whom McCain seems to have written off," Mr. Dobson said.
What's more, as far as I can tell Dobson is hardly an outlier. The mean and median GOP voter and public official seems to believe at least tacitly accept the ideas that the president should be able to torture people at his whim irrespective of any statutes or treaties, and that morality requires that the United States Constitution explicitly make gays and lesbians second-class citizens. The fact that so many people share these views is the real problem here.
And, as Glenn Greenwald points out, Democrats in Congress haven't covered themselves in glory here either. It's outrageous that it required an ACLU lawsuit, rather than strong Congressional action, to get these documents (which had no business being classified in the first place) declassified.
--Scott Lemieux
