John Yoo lies, some more...

Writing in the Wall Street Murdoch, Yoo keeps on digging a deeper hole for himself. Just a few snips to get you started:

"It was instantly clear after Sept. 11, 2001, that our security agencies knew little about al Qaeda's inner workings, could not detect its operatives' entry into the country, nor predict where it might strike next."

Okay. Now the evidence that contradicts this propaganda that our intel agencies knew little, did little, simply had no idea about anything - which is why the Bush administration needed to spy, spy, spy on Americans:

1. August 6 PDB
2. Al Qaeda and OBL
3. DCI warned Rice

 Yoo is full of it. Onwards to the next snip from the Yoo-lie-a-thon:

"Suppose an al Qaeda cell in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles was planning a second attack using small arms, conventional explosives or even biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies faced a near impossible task locating them. Now suppose the National Security Agency (NSA), which collects signals intelligence, threw up a virtual net to intercept all electronic communications leaving and entering Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan headquarters. What better way of detecting follow-up attacks? And what president -- of either political party -- wouldn't immediately order the NSA to start, so as to find and stop the attackers?"

Does Yoo mean the 2 al Qaeda terrorists - later to be involved in the attacks on 9/11 - that our own FBI was tracking? Apparently the "near impossible task" was entirely possible.

Read Jawbreaker by former spook Gary Bernsten and see just close we were to getting OBL and how we also let him go at Tora Bora.

Of course the NSA failing to translate something as important as "Tomorrow is zero hour," said during a conversation by two Arab speakers on September 10, 2001, required more domestic spying on Americans, right? Here you go:

"Conversations intercepted the day before Sept. 11 caught al-Qaeda operatives boasting in Arabic, "The match begins tomorrow" and "Tomorrow is Zero Hour." But U.S. intelligence didn't translate them until Sept. 12, congressional and administration sources disclosed Wednesday."

Here is what I wrote in 2006 regarding the above revelations:

"Was any employee of the NSA, up the chain of command and including Hayden, in any way reprimanded for failing to do their job? How was this massive failure - HUMAN FAILURE - addressed by this administration?

Hayden and the NSA were given more power, more technology, and more access to more private information to fix in a post-911 world the very things that worked correctly in the pre-911 world. The people failing to do their jobs, however - that is, the things that did not work correctly - were allowed to operate outside of the law and with almost no oversight.

This one HUMAN failure is but a single example of a collective incompetence so negligent that 19 men with box-cutters managed to bypass the most advanced technology and surveillance, the strongest military, and the most superior intelligence capabilities of the most powerful country in the world. Yet not one of these failures, not one of these people was in any way held accountable. Instead, we the citizens were punished with less freedom."

And what I wrote still applies.

It would take me hours to compile the extensive amount of evidence - available in the public sphere -  that directly contradicts everything John Yoo asserts in his op-ed. I suggest you do your own research.

On a side note, Yoo is clearly insane to think that he can write such blatant misrepresentations without anyone noticing. I noticed. I guarantee others will notice too.