Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

And if John Yoo had his way that would be absolutely and completely true.

Suppose al Qaeda branched out from crashing airliners into American cities. Using small arms, explosives, or biological, chemical or nuclear weapons they could seize control of apartment buildings, stadiums, ships, trains or buses. As in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, texting and mobile email would make it easy to coordinate simultaneous assaults in a single city.

And if you read no more of the drivel produced by this fear-mongering freak, it wouldn't change a thing. The rest of it is an attempt to take a situation which did not occur and use it to justify actions which defended against things that did not happen.

John Yoo just proved what it was he wanted: a dictatorship designed to protect the Fatherland. No one was exempt from the intercept of communications; no one was not suspect; no one was not a terrorist until they had been through his para-legal meat-grinder.

And if they got through it all, it simply started all over again. A groundhog day of no-fly lists, endless surveillance and a population which spied on their neighbours.

All in the name of... freedom. A word which literally lost its meaning under the Bush administration.

There are so many lessons we could learn from this 21st Century Hitlerite. But the most important one is how little he actually valued freedom compared to the comfort he had come to know as his way of life. Insulated from real life in his country, he actually probably believed he was defending something. But the one thing he was willing to surrender to get it was individual freedom.

He, and every individual in the United States who accepted his recommendations, had little belief in the freedoms enshrined in an a two centuries old constitution. In fact, to them it was quaint.

I believe in justice. But in this case, John Yoo has just admited to a willingness to reject the very foundation of what constitutes the purpose of the US constitution - a document and a doctrine which, no matter how much one may object to the other aspects of that country, has always been a source of inspiration to those who believe in just societies - to protect an accumulated wealth and the means to continue conspicuous consumption by an elite.

Given his own admission John Yoo should be arrested, frog-marched into a courtroom, arraigned and held in remand until a government has a complete enough case to prosecute him fully for failing to observe the oath he swore. And then, in true conservative fashion, jail him for the rest of his natural life. He didn't defend the US Constitution; he tried to have it suspended.

And given what he wrote, he could not object. Everyone is suspect.

Freedom is not free. It comes at a cost. John Yoo, typical of his ilk, tried to take the easy way out to defend his way of life. The cost of that was everyone else's freedom.

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