Very Smart Bad Guys

The reason I hate David Addington and John Yoo is that I feel like I know them, that we all knew the very book smart, wargame playing armchair chickenhawks with a libertarian bent, but these are two particular ones who got law degrees and put them to work for Dick Cheney, their Grand Vizier writing memos declaring torture legal as long as it's under the President and only the President's authority, as long as he says he thinks he's protecting the country.

Today they squirmed in front of Congress, particularly Yoo. He knows he's in trouble underneath his own smugness, but Addington takes the cake it that department. The smugness of the geek, only that he's smug about Abu Ghraib.

Take a look, even if you have to skip through the clip a bit, but I found it f-a-s-c-i-n-a-t-i-n-g. The first moment of accountability since Scooter Libby got convicted (and we all know how that ended) and these guys won't answer anything they think might box them into being revealed:



Here's more of Addington, this time defining the Vice President as "attached" to the legislative branch, lots of quoting of opinions, smug ammo:



Last clip I'll link to is Addington refusing to discuss the torture policy he and Yoo designed, the shame of the U.S.A. in the eyes of the world, in our owns eyes, how far fallen from "The Greatest Generation" that actually fought a World War for which all citizens mobilized and sacrificed. He won't talk about it, because the terrorists are watching.

Makes one kinda nostalgic for Nuremberg.