Hello, kiddies. I’ve finally recovered from a New Year’s Eve which involved several thousand happy Portuguese dancing in the streets of Porto, a visit to a gay bar where I was plied with champagne while watching buxom naked ladies swinging on swings to the music of Boney M., and the inhalation of veritable drifts of good cocaine. I hope yours was of a similar nature.
My head is still a little sore and any movement makes me a little dizzy. As a result, I have not been able to incline my head downwards to read the last few pages of posts on this blog, but I’m sure I haven’t missed anything.
I have, however, been reading the National Review. After a big weekend, one sometimes needs a little purge, and there’s no finer emetic than spending fifteen minutes reading anything by that vile Goldberg putz. After I had wiped my face clean and tottered back from the bathroom, I found myself reading an article by John Yoo.
Now, I admit that much of the last decade is a blur, but I was quite sure that Mr Yoo had been tried for war crimes years ago and locked up in a prison near the Hague somewhere, where he was denied access to writing implements and where two stern Dutch women waterboarded him and beat his testicles with golf clubs every morning.
No such luck, apparently. Instead he is free to tout that the Republican presidential candidates should all be preparing for military action against Iran:
President Obama has done more than merely delay the inevitable day of reckoning with Iran. He has left the public uninformed about the nature and possible consequences of military action, which must be serious and sustained enough to destroy complex, protected, and dispersed facilities — pinpoint bombing of a single facility will not end Iran’s nuclear program. Iran might respond by attacking Israel, Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, and oil shipments in the Persian Gulf. President Obama has also failed to explain the heavy costs of containment, which would involve a constant, significant conventional and nuclear military presence on Iran’s perimeter. …
Military action need not go so far as an invasion or even a no-fly zone. Our forces would have to destroy Iranian air-defense sites, but otherwise, thanks to precision-guided missiles and drones, they could concentrate on a few links in the Iranian nuclear chain: the centrifuge facilities where uranium is enriched, the assembly points for weapons, and perhaps missile and air-delivery systems.
The surgical nature of such strikes would make them proportional to the military objective, which would be not the overthrow of the Iranian regime but the destruction of its nuclear capability. Nuclear-weapons infrastructure is a legitimate military target, even if some strikes may kill civilians. If casualties result because facilities are located beneath cities, the fault rests with the Iranians for deliberately using civilians to shield its military — a move long forbidden by the laws of war. Unlike Iranian-supported terrorist groups, the United States will assuredly do everything possible to keep civilian loss of life to a minimum.
The United States has assumed the role, once held by Great Britain, of guaranteeing free trade and economic development, spreading liberal values, and maintaining international security. An attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, though it would impose costs in human lives and political turmoil, would serve these interests and forestall the spread of conflict and terror. The Republican presidential candidates should begin preparing the case now for this difficult but unavoidable challenge.
John Yoo and psychopaths like him will not be satisfied until the world is a smoking ruin.
I, for one, will not be happy, not least because those chain mail dresses that Tina Turner wore chafe like a bitch.
Chris
The fact that this guy is suggesting the U.S. follow in Great Britain’s footsteps when it comes to Iran’s policy should be indication enough of what a fucking loon he is. If memory serves, following the lead of the British back in 1953 is what landed us in this fucking mess in the first place.
Schlemizel
Come on everyone – SING ALONG!
BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN
BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN
Its fun, its easy and with any luck I can parley it into a paying gig at CNN
Emma
Not to mention the hairdos…. ugh. And the lack of hot water and indoor plumbing.
Calouste
Fixed That For Yoo.
ShadeTail
When fellow lefties start shrieking that Obama is saber-rattling at Iran, I always stop to wonder if they’re reading the dreck from *real* war-mongers like Yoo here. Ironically, Yoo actually points out *correctly* that Obama hasn’t been pushing that envelope. Yoo frames it as something bad, but take away the framing and you’re left with an undeniable (to people who pay attention to reality) fact: Obama hasn’t been mongering for another war.
JPL
I’m disappointed..you didn’t sleep with GG, ABL and JC. What’s the word for foursome?
SpawnofKain
Doubtless his spirit is soothed by the sight of BJ comment threads.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@JPL:
I suspect, in the scenario you mentioned, the relevant term would be “quadruple murder/suicide”.
Veritas
CAUCUS NIGHT! It’s Miller (and Romney) time.
Villago Delenda Est
John Yoo should march his fucking ass down to the local Armed Forces Recruitment Center and enlist, right this second, and demand, yea with screaming determination, to be an 11 bang bang type, none of this JAG REMF shit, to take his place at the tip of the spearhead that will plunge into Iran and get the snot kicked out of it.
If he’s too old, he needs to send his kids. Demonstrate his unswerving resolve.
If he doesn’t do either of these things, he should shut the fuck up.
Forever.
Cassidy
@JPL: Fun
Tom Levenson
And, of course, Yoo is not just a warmonger — he is yet another strategic genius from the 101rst chairborne. He’s a lawyer, for crying-out-loud. A “constitutional” expert, I believe. He has no more capacity to plan an air assault than a plough horse has to attempt calculus, or a GOP presidential candidate articulate an actual jobs plan. Something emerges from some orifice, but it ain’t pretty and it ain’t on point.
PeakVT
and where two stern Dutch women waterboarded him and beat his testicles with golf clubs every morning.
That kind of thing just might appeal to the likes of Yoo.
David Richey
Predictions, just cuz they’s fun:
Disportin’-in-the-Hayrick Santorum: 24
Ron “not-a-racist-just-using-them-like-tools!” Paul: 19
The Newt Who Stole Gingrich: 18
Not Not Romney: 17
Perry, Dumb Indeed: 8
uncommitted to the sanitorium: 5
Michelle “Why-Hast-Thou-Forsaken-Me?” Bachmann: 4
St. Ronnie: 5
Raven
GO HOKIES!!!
gocart mozart
It was only a dream fair Sarah, a glorious and wondrous dream.
Veritas
@David Richey:
Wow, you’re deluded. 95% chance Romney gets first, 5% chance he’ll get second, 0% any lower than that. And even with a second place finish, especially Paul, Romney still wins in the end.
Villago Delenda Est
Winston Churchill is sort of the hero of the neocons, those guys screaming war with Iraq, then war with Iran, right?
So I ask myself, why didn’t any of these vile insects follow Churchill’s example, and actually PARTICIPATE IN THEIR GENERATION’S WAR ON THE FRONT LINES?
Then I answer myself, because they are all cowardly sacks of shit.
KG
I had the chance to meet Yoo a couple years back, he was debating Bob Barr about torture at a Federalist Society event. He was a creep. Barr, on the other hand, seemed like a nice fellow.
KG
@David Richey: Is that Reagan the Myth or Reagan the Real Person? Because neither Governor Reagan (he of the liberal abortion laws, tax raising, and no outright hostility to the gays) nor President Reagan (again with the tax raising, appeaser by meeting with the Soviets, liberal judge appointments)could win the GOP nomination today.
Raven
@KG: Barr’s sons used to live around the corner. Bucha loud mouth frat boys assholes.
JPL
@KG: When Barr seems like a nice fellow, you know Yoo has been living among the bats to long.
David Richey
@Veritas:
0% chance Willard is gonna get lower’n second? Really? 0%?
Veritas, you is either Nostrodamus or on the payroll of Willard’s Super-Pac.
Happy to be wrong. Don’t much care in any event, apart from it’d be particular delicious if Willard spent thru the nose and still went to seed.
Personally, I’s a-hopin’ for a Willard v. Newt mud-wrasslin’ donnybrook.
Get inna fight w/a skunk …
MikeJ
@Raven: Virginia Tech has Michigan in their sights.
Roger Moore
I think the key phrase here is:
See, it’s not that Yoo and his ilk want a war with Iran, it’s just that they’re foresighted enough to see that it’s coming no matter what we do. So we must strike first and crush them before they actually develop the ability to do any of the terrible things we accuse them of wanting to do. Once you give up any hope of peace, you’ll see that a massive war of prevention is really the best alternative.
jrg
Shorter Yoo: fap fap Fap Fap FAP FAP FAP.
I wonder if it ever occurred to this legal genius that maybe, just maybe, if his former boss had not lied about WMDs to get us into a trillion dollar war, people would be more willing to bomb Iran. No argument, no matter how compelling, will convince people to get into another war, because we listened to lying assholes like Yoo back in ’03.
What a dumb, soulless, shitbag hack. This bit is quite nice, too: “a move long forbidden by the laws of war”. That’s pretty rich coming from someone who wrote memos that justify the crushing of a child’s testicles.
KG
@Veritas: anything can happen. I wouldn’t be surprised unless Romney finishes lower than third. But with a close as things have been, and with undecideds still around 5%, anything is possible.
Raven
@MikeJ: I hated Michigan long before I married into my Hokie family. That sewer rat Bo was an asshole supremo! Fuck big blue then, now and forever.
KG
@JPL: this was after his libertarian conversion, and we were in a room full of Federalist Society lawyers, so maybe my memory is a bit skewed. But I did have a chance to chat with him and he didn’t seem nearly as dickish as he had on tv in the 90s.
JPL
@Raven: If the hokies win then GA will be the only team to lose to the big 10…how would that make you feel. hmmm
Rafer Janders
@KG:
I had the chance to meet Yoo a couple years back, he was debating Bob Barr about torture at a Federalist Society event.
“Debating” about torture is rather like debating about rape, genocide or child abuse.
scav
chex_mix starts breaking out the bold, the bemittened willard is in real trouble if I remember correctly.
taylormattd
Will everyone quit responding to fucking Veritas? He’s either a paid Romney operative or just a typical, stupid-as-fuck wingnut.
More importantly, my governor, Christine Gregoire, will be announcing her support for marriage equality tomorrow. Woo hoo!
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Frankly, I’m more worried about the inevitable day of reckoning with Grand Fenwick.
Those guys are tough!
Raven
@JPL: FUCK MICHIGAN. That conference shit don’t mean nuthin to me.
David Richey
@KG:
Myth, definitely.
The “wouldn’t-it-be-purty-to-think-so!” faction of the modern-day pixie-dust conservative moo-vement wouldn’t allow for the reality of St. Ronnie (who would be, ironically, unelectable — in spite of being purty far right; all hail the Overton Window!).
Work them refs, baby!
KG
@Rafer Janders: oh, believe me, it was surreal. Though I think a good deal of it had to do with the Patriot Act. The amazing thing is that Yoo garnered quite a bit of support from the room. That was the last Fed Soc event I went to.
phantomist
@JPL:
Western Mich lost to Purdue
and
UCLA lost to Illinois
JPL
@KG: His district was purged and he lost his seat but he was pretty dickish in the 90’s for sure. He introduced DOMA and was instrumental in the Clinton impeachment. He became a libertarian after he lost his seat but before that he was extremely conservative.
JPL
@phantomist: Wow..forgot those important bowl games..especially the Purdue game. thanks..
Raven
@phantomist: She meant SEC.
Amir Khalid
My own prediction about the Iowa caucus is this: No one will able to tell who came out on top, and hairsplitting arguments among the pundits shall rage until the week before the next primary/caucus.
Raven
@Raven: or not.
Raven
@JPL: Um, you can make the case that Fla-OSU Gator Bowl with both teams 6-6 wasn’t exactly compelling. Did I mention FUCK MICHIGAN?
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
Fixed.
Benjamin Franklin
The usual suspects are banging the war drums.
Have we learned anything from the fraudulent transaction called Iraq?
Meh…
stickler
@Villago Delenda Est:
More than one of them, in fact. He fought the Pathan tribes in the Northwest Frontier Province as a Lancer (don’t get depressed by realizing where that actually was, and what implications it has for us today), he participated in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, and was actually captured by Boers in South Africa (from whom he escaped). Also, after the little Gallipoli debacle, he spent some time in the trenches in 1916. Oh, and as Prime Minister in 1940-41 he was in London as bombs dropped on his head. (The War Room bunker is preserved just as it was when he was using it; it didn’t have a bathroom, so you can see Winston Churchill’s actual War Room Chamberpot. Visualizing him actually using it is optional.)
To be fair, he was also PM when Britain convinced the USA to overthrow Mossadegh in ’53, thus providing a nice closing circle to our current tale of bombthrowing nuttery.
phantomist
The SEC has been avoiding Western for years.
Go Blue
Raven
@phantomist: What the fuck are you talking about?
phantomist
I was joking about JPL’s belittling Purdue’s win over Western Mich.
As a lurker I should have included the winking punctuation mark.
r€nato
we just pulled out of Iraq, we gotta make work for those troops!
DanielX
@Villago Delenda Est: Because they were serving in the front lines of the morale war, kind of like how Hugh Hewitt is a veteran combat soldier in the war on terra because he was in NY on 9/11. Veterans of Operation Yellow Elephant, of course.
It does make one wonder – after eight years of one massive foreign policy fuckup after another – if John Yoo has any idea of how sociopathic he sounds. Get Your War On, third verse same as the first, except this time with nukes.
r€nato
the neocons were wrong about the USSR… wrong about Iraq… but this time, they’ll get it right for sure!
chrome agnomen
they’ll greet us as liberators, with flowers even.
englishmajor
SPT. I love you.
brantl
@Calouste:
You win the internets today.
Tone in DC
Sarah, thank you. I needed a good laugh this morning.
Xanthippas
If the world were to be turned into a smoking ruin, you can be assured that John Yoo will be the first person to write a column asserting the legal basis by which we are permitted to assert our control over it.
g
though it would impose costs in human lives and political turmoil, would serve these interests and forestall the spread of conflict and terror.
So causing death and political turmoil would prevent confflict and terror? How’s that again?
g
kind of like how Hugh Hewitt is a veteran combat soldier in the war on terra because he was in NY on 9/11.
My recollection of Hewitt’s assertion is that during the months following 9/11, he happened to work in an office in the Empire State Building, which, according to him, was an act of unflinching bravery.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@g:
though it would impose costs in human lives and political turmoil, would serve these interests and forestall the spread of conflict and terror.
There was a threat assessment from the Pentagon a while back on the actual threat of an Iranian nuke. As is bloody obvious, their assessment was Iran wasn’t going to give it away to Hamas, or use it to strike at Israel or the USA. The threat of an Iranian nuke was that it would “constrain US freedom of action” in the area.
Let’s think about that for a moment – the US has invaded and occupied their neighbour to the east and to the west, has been attempting an economic stranglehold, and has been threatening them for decades – but the Iranians shouldn’t have a nuke because it might interfere in the US ability to do whatever they want?
I’m pro-Iranian nuke, precisely for that reason. I don’t like Iran much, but if ever a country had a case for needing the bomb for deterrance, it’s them.