Dear Mr. Smith --

if anyone has come close to genocide-type misconduct, it's Yoo, not the author of the plea for his firing.

if you want to see details of "enhanced interrogation" in action -- and details of its total, operational ineffectiveness of, by the way -- then check out the piece in this week's New Yorker regarding enemy combatant al-Marri. five years & running w/o a trial or access to defense attorneys, nor even any prima facie evidence of wrongdoing, other than a single sworn affidavit by federal agent w/ threadbare conclusory language regarding his dangerousness.

and who on Earth cares whether you "hope Mr. Delong never gets elected to office?" that would be up to the voters in the district, wouldn't it?

anyway, Delong is merely trying to make a dent in the total lack of official u.s. accountability, thus far, for torture, enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and indefinite incarceration w/o charges, let alone trials. He ought to be applauded for that.

All these things have been done in the name of the U.S. It is our right as citizens to ask about them, write about them, speak about them, and seek remedies for them. Maybe fully 100 percent of these people at Guantanamo and in military brigs and in the so-called 'black sites' abroad are indeed guilty and dangerous. But, a) we'll never know, because their cases have not seen the light of day; and b) if there are any who are innocent, we have some very very serious explaining to do. I guarantee you would want answers if a foreign government came and took a member of your family and locked them up for 5+ years on foreign soil w/o explaining what the charges were. In that scenario, you might have a little more sympathy for the points which Delong is making, and you would be less glib about signs 'pointing the way to Genocide.'

Best wishes,
Kit Troyer

Unfortunately, as every legal commentator to my knowledge (of whatever political persuasion) has agreed, they failed to meet the minimum standards of accuracy. They are simply incompetent - inaccurate, in fact, in a way that can only be explained by either gross misconduct as a lawyer (either by gross negligence or outright lying). They omit consideration of all of the key sources of law that would help formulate an answer to the questions asked. That, again, is not a matter of ideology - whether one is liberal, conservative or otherwise the law is the law.