2.21.2010

ah, I see: it was just "poor judgment"

The Justice Department has concluded that the Jay S. Bybee and John C. Yoo, the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration's brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects, used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct: Report Faults 2 Authors of Bush Terror Memos.

The final report, released last week, was authorized and reviewed by long-time Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, who found that the who found that that Bybee and Yoo had not committed professional misconduct but instead "exercised poor judgment in connection with the drafting of the pertinent memoranda."

Wait, what? These are the architects of the so-called "torture memos," which authorized waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques. An internal Justice Department investigation found that indeed, Yoo committed "intentional professional misconduct" when he advised the president that such techniques were legal.

But this new memo apparently dismisses these findings. Nope, not professional misconduct -- just "poor judgment." And that means no official censure or punishment for John Yoo. Guess who's breathing one massive war-on-terror-sized sigh of relief? More here: Justice: No misconduct in Bush interrogation memos. And here: Justice Department decision on terror memos sparks legal debate.

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