What Torture Is and Isn’t: A Hard-Liner’s Argument

Review of John Yoo's War by other means

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Published: October 31, 2006

In the tumultuous days and weeks after 9/11, a young lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel named John Yoo became a key architect of the Bush administration’s legal response to the terrorist threat and a strong advocate of its expansive view of presidential power. The controversial opinions he worked on would elicit charges that the administration was subverting the Constitution, tipping the balance of power among the three branches of government, trampling the civil rights of detainees and authorizing coercive interrogation.