This one is rich.
Today's NY Times reports that in 2004, Bush appointed former OLC lawyer John Yoo to a government board charged with releasing historical Nazi and Japanese war crimes records.
His appointment was rescinded when others appointed to the panel suggested that his experience as a War Criminal (Yoo authored the memos that gave the green light for Torture, Warrantless Wiretapping, and the suspension of the 1st and 4th amendments), might ultimately prove embarrassing to the administration....
From the article:
The Abu Ghraib torture scandal was exploding, and fellow panelists learned that Mr. Yoo had written secret legal opinions saying presidents have sweeping wartime power to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. They protested that it was absurd to name Mr. Yoo, who they believed might have sanctioned war crimes, to a war crimes commission.
White House officials canceled the appointment, though it had already been announced in a news release, and kept the episode quiet. "We saved them from incredible embarrassment," said Thomas H. Baer, one of the dissenting panelists.
In the Bush Administration, writing the permission slip that usurped the Constitution and led to torture is relevant experience to get you appointed to a war crimes commission.
What would happen in an Obama Administration?
The calls to begin a criminal investigation of Bush legal team members have so far been ignored by the new attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr.
Well, at least we can count on the private sector to give Yoo the accountability he desrves.....
Jay S. Bybee, Mr. Yoo’s former boss at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had been confirmed to a life-tenured appeals court seat in 2003. That same year, Mr. Yoo had returned to his tenured professorship at Berkeley, and Timothy E. Flanigan, the former deputy White House counsel, took a private-sector legal job.
It's time for real Accountability
Please sign Patrick Leahy's online petition urging Congress to consider establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's abuses.