Romney=Yoo

 Yoo's view of presidential power played an important role in developing a legal justification for the Bush administration's policy in the war on terrorism.  He insisted that enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, and held in Guantanamo, were not “prisoners of war” as described by the Geneva Conventions.   

Yoo developed the concept that the president of the United States had the authority to use “waterboarding” and other procedures which he called “enhanced” interrogation techniques, and that they were not legally torture, even though they were so regarded by other developed nations and the Geneva Conventions.   also He insisted that the president was immune from being considered a war criminal and was not bound by the War Crimes Act.  He also claimed legal authority for the president to conduct  wire taps without needing a warrant to do so.

Yoo claimed that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be destroyed even though that country was not at war with the United States.  

Yoo has argued that the original understanding of the Constitution gives the President the authority to use armed force abroad without congressional authorization, subject to Congress's power of the purse; that treaties do not generally have domestic legal force without implementing legislation; and that courts cannot intervene in foreign policy disputes between the President and Congress. 

Yoo has argued that the separation of powers provides each branch of government with the authority to interpret the Constitution for itself. In international law, Yoo has written that the rules governing the use of force must be understood to allow nations to engage in armed intervention to end humanitarian disasters, rebuild failed states, and stop terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

John Yoo is an attorney, a professor of law (Berkeley) and author (5 books).   Yoo is also a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

He has not been a player in Washington in recent years but his shadow has proven to have a long reach through the Republican  Party.  He has impressive credentials and if Romney becomes president, Yoo may well have an important role to play again in American actions.  He fit in very well with Dick Chenney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, John Bolton and a number of other behind-the-scene Puppeteers of the George Bush Presidency.  He “needs” for Romney to become president.