John Yoo Quotes

It is important to recognize the differences between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. The treatment of those detained at Abu Ghraib is governed by the Geneva Conventions, which have been signed by both the U.S. and Iraq.

Unfortunately, the United States and a few other governments have used the war on terrorism as a way of violating human rights. I am referring to the case of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners. This violation of the rights of prisoners has been so unbelievable that the United Nations has reminded the United States repeatedly that the treatment of prisoners should take place according to the preestablished conventions of the United Nations.

We have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror.

Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.

I think they clearly do not fit within the prescriptions of the Geneva Convention. It's hard for me to see how members of al Qaeda could be considered prisoners of war.

Genocide is not war! It is more dangerous than war!

State terrorism - and yet the Israeli invasion Goldstone investigated is still commonly referred to as the Gaza War.

I believe the United States should make the protection of Syrian civilians from war crimes and crimes against humanity a higher priority.

If something is right (or wrong) for us, it’s right (or wrong) for others. It follows that if it’s wrong for Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and a long list of others to bomb Washington and New York, then it’s wrong for Rumsfeld to bomb Afghanistan (on much flimsier pretexts), and he should be brought before war crimes trials.

The abuse of prisoners hurts America's cause in the war on terror, endangers US service members who might be captured by the enemy, and is anathema to the values Americans have held dear for generations.

I have never witnessed on any previous occasion such entire disregard of the usage of civilized warfare and the dictates of humanity.

We declared war on terror-it's not even a noun, so, good luck.

Terrorists and their allies believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights and every charter of liberty ever written are lies to be burned and destroyed and forgotten.

If we are perceived by the rest of the world as employing a double standard in the way that we pursue the war on terror, if we are seen as imposing on other countries' nationals, burdens that we wouldn't be able to tolerate ourselves, then we sacrifice the legitimacy of the enterprise. And I don't think the world considers it illegitimate for the United States to seek to protect itself from another attack like the one we suffered on 9/11, but I think the world does think it is illegitimate to do so by sacrificing their citizens' rights and not our citizens' rights.

Likewise to Saudi Arabia, where we just were selling another billion dollars worth of weapons, and we're not only selling the weapons but we are complicit in the war effort in Yemen where there are also incredible atrocities and war crimes being committed.

I know what the counterterrorism feels like because I was there. But I also operated within limits. And within the United States government, we've decided long ago that there are limits on what we're going to do in the war against terrorism.

The escalation to attack undefended civilian targets is just a classic illustration of terrorism.

Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us, in the administration, that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to.

The Palestinians are a despotic, undemocratic grouping which promotes a religious war against Israel, a democracy, through terror.

Day by day, it's worse for my people, especially for the women. And that's why, because of all of these main reasons, we say this is the mockery of democracy and mockery of War on Terror.

Some of the guys in the Northern Alliance are war criminals. One of the Northern Alliance commanders ran a slave girl network in Kabul in 1994. Remember that there was a period when every woman on the streets was at risk of being raped. This was the Northern Alliance period of glory.

Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.

We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom- war on terror and so on-falsifies freedom.

When you look around now we have the war on terror. Yes, okay, the World Trade Center was sort of like a single act of war, but nothing else has been. We've turned it into war. We're talking about a bunch of semi-lunatic, fanatic criminals. That's the way they should be treated.

You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.