What’s most striking about the newly declassified Yoo memo is how naked it is in its aims.

The administration wanted to give itself the permission to commit felonies and war crimes. And it listed them.

Wrote Yoo: “We do not believe that the Congress enacted general criminal provisions such as the prohibitions against assault, maiming, interstate stalking, and torture pursuant to any express authority that would allow it to infringe on the President’s constitutional control over the operation of the Armed Forces in wartime.” (pg. 13)

In other words: “the sovereign retains the discretion to treat unlawful combatants as it sees fit.” (pg. 16)

And yes, that discretion includes the executive privilege to commit war crimes: “We conclude the War Crimes Act does not apply to the interrogation of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, because as illegal belligerents they do not qualify for the legal protetions under the Geneva or Hague Conventions that [the War Crimes Act] enforces.” (pg. 32)

This is premeditation of high crimes … forget misdemeanors.

—
(thanks, BD, for the much improved headline)

I’m still trudging through John Yoo’s newly declassified memo that gave the greenlight to torture as a natural extension of Executive Privilege in 2003.

But the logic is laid out in all its evil circularity early on.

It goes like this:

The Fifth Amendment’s due process protections and Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions against cruelty do not apply a) to aliens abroad and b) are rendered meaningless by the president’s totalitarian powers during time of war.

And if the president is above the constitution, he’s certainly above the law. Among the federal criminal statues that Yoo says “would conflict with… Commander in Chief power”: “assault… maiming… interstate stalking… war crimes… and torture.”

If foreign detainees held on foreign soil have no protection from U.S. law, what about international law? Well, says Yoo, the Geneva Conventions do not require anything more of the United States than what is provided for in the Fifth and Eighth Amendments, which as we just learned do not apply to foreign detainees. Furthermore: “international law is not federal law and the President is free to override it at his discretion.” (!)

To recap: The president is unbound by international law — ever — and not constrained by either federal law or the Constitution in his role as commander in chief, which gives him carte blanche authority to have illegal enemy combatants who are detained on foreign soil assaulted, maimed, tortured, and otherwise subjected to war crimes, so long as the president deems it necessary or in “self-defense” of the nation.

I’m literally sick.

I guess she did go to Bosnia. But, listening to this detailed account from the pilot, I’d say, that’s about it.

No sniper fire. No evasive maneuvers. No sitting on flak jackets. No. No. No…

Listen, credibility matters. And the fact that an aspirant to the highest office in the land is so comfortable lying, repeatedly and unabashedly to the public is truly disturbing.

The Hillary camp is now saying that the candidate simply mispoke in concocting an elaborately detailed Bosnian war story of sniper fire and corkscrew maneuvers and running, heads down to armored vehicles.

Balderdash.

Hillary is a habitual teller of tall tales. She’s far worse than Al Gore ever was.

Let us not forget that she long claimed to be named after Sir Edmund Hillary, long after it was pointed out that Edmund was an anonymous beekeeper in New Zealand at the time of her birth, when, she long claimed, her mother read a news clipping of Eddie’s exploits and gave his name to a daughter who was also destined for great heights. (Shortly before she jumped into presidential politics, Hillary kinda sorta fessed up that this just wasn’t true.)

And then there’s this idea that Clinton, in 1975, attempted to become one of the Few. The Proud. The Marines. Right after moving to Arkansas and marrying Bill. Really, I’m not making this up.

But she may well have been.

Hillary claims she was turned away for being a bespectacled woman. Not entirely improbable. But fishy, because it’s almost identical to another mythical tale from her childhood, in which Clinton says she wrote away to NASA, asking what it would take for her to become an astronaut, only to have her childhood hopes dashed by the sexist culture of the space program.

I for one am less troubled by the fact that the senator is a teller of parables and tall tales, than by the fact that she cannot, for the life of her, admit fault.

She didn’t misspeak.

She was caught in a whopper. Perhaps several.

Don’t compound the error with double talk.

It’s time to fess up.

The best YouTube mashup yet.

Or maybe not:

Hillary, not dodging bullets, in Bosnia:

We’ve been played.

Staffers still getting paid, after all.

A New Hampshire paper is plenty hot about Hillary Clinton’s Florida gambit:

Union Leader - Hillary’s word: It’s worth nothing

COURTING VOTERS in Iowa and New Hampshire, last August Sen. Hillary Clinton signed a pledge not to “campaign or participate” in the Michigan or Florida Democratic primaries. She participated in both primaries and is campaigning in Florida. Which proves, again, that Hillary Clinton is a liar….

“I will try to persuade my delegates to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida,” Clinton said last week, after the New Hampshire primaries and Iowa caucuses were safely over.

Clinton coldly and knowingly lied to New Hampshire and Iowa. Her promise was not a vague statement. It was a signed pledge with a clear and unequivocal meaning.

She signed it thinking that keeping the other candidates out of Michigan and Florida was to her advantage, but knowing she would break it if that proved beneficial later on. It did, and she did.

New Hampshire voters, you were played for suckers.