The Miller Center invited infamous torture memo author John Yoo to speak. I documented the atrocities (no pun intended).

The crowd was mixed. If I had to guess, I’d suggest that 15-20% of the audience was there to protest his presence. About 50-60% seemed to be “big fans”. The rest seemed ambivalent or just plain curious.

My impression of Yoo was that he is probably quite brilliant, he harbors a deep contempt for the drecks of society (many of which adore him) that is matched only by his loathing of those that take issue with his “work,” and he is triumphant that his pedigree and station in life have earned him legal immunity (at least here in the US) for his war crimes. Moreover, he really doesn’t care about strange people in far-away places.

His was there to talk about his book. The problem was, a lot of people were there to talk about morality vs. his justification for torture. His fan-boys didn’t care what he came to talk about; they just wanted his critics to shut the hell up.

Yoo promised to spend a significant amount of time answering questions. Well, he did that, but ultimately, he ended up answering very few. Instead, he filibustered and evaded the tough questions he was asked and seemed to enjoy doing it. For those of us waiting for something of substance, it was pretty tiresome, then frustrating and ultimately, infuriating.

I left the conference feeling like I had just spent hours with a rich-kid rapist who knows he’s going to get away with it. “Smarmy” doesn’t seem to be a sufficient descriptor of Yoo’s demeanor when you realize that his torture victims provided much of the false intelligence that Cheney and crew used to push the country into the war in Iraq. If you’ve seen Inglorious Basterds, call to mind the German Jew-Hunter’s disposition. That’s John Yoo. No shame, no regrets, and a sick way of reveling in his immunity from judgment. It’s cliche, but after sitting across from him and watching him answer questions, the thought that kept repeating in my head was, “the banality of evil”.

Here are the videos I recorded from the event. For the most part, I’ve skipped over his whimsical speech about strong Presidents and their seizing of executive power; the argument falls apart when you realize that that kind of power in the hands of an incompetent President like George Bush is the greatest existential threat to the well-being of the Republic. The founders provided a strong system of checks and balances for some pretty damned good reasons.

One thing that isn’t found in the videos below is Yoo’s treatment of Jon Stewart. He ridiculed Stewart’s (young) audience for getting their news from a comedy show and, with a wink and a nod to the elders in the crowd, all-but suggested that the liberal streak running through today’s foolish youth (that voted for Obama) can be attributed to their less than serious approach to informing themselves. Of course, he doesn’t mention that Stewart’s viewers are better informed than Fox News viewers (that filled his audience) or most other news consumers.

Anyway, here are the videos: