Kara Hopkins
The American Conservative
June 29, 2008

Things we learned from John Yoo and David Addington’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday:

1. The president can probably bury someone alive—though it’s doubtful he would. (He would probably crush his child’s testicles first.)
2. Yoo—who wrote the memo arguing that pain not equivalent to organ failure of death doesn’t qualify as torture—isn’t sure “what you mean by waterboarding” since “it seems like when people say waterboarding that they mean all sorts of different things.” It could well be a synonym for surfing or refer to a charming children’s game…played in a secret Romanian prison.
3. You can be a law professor at University of California Berkeley and not know what “implement” means.
4. “Yes” is not the answer to “Are there things the president could not order?”
5. Addington can’t tell the truth in a Congressional hearing because “al-Qaeda may be watching C-SPAN.”
6. “Smoke was still rising” from the wreckage of the World Trade Center two years later—and smoke gets in your eyes.
7. The vice president is still not part of the executive branch. Neither is he a barnacle. Other light-averse creatures have not been eliminated.
8. It’s possible to go to Gitmo “probably five times” and remember nothing.
9. Addington “didn’t have nothing to do with it.” Read that twice.
10. “Enhanced interrogation techniques” may be required to get straight answers from these two.

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