Panel Voices Views on Security

Controversial UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo said in a panel discussion yesterday that there was little difference between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry's campaigns on national security, a key theme in this season's election.

Nearly 50 people attended the panel in Moses Hall, which featured two experts and was organized by the Institute for Governmental Studies.

The discussion centered on the upcoming presidential elections and Kerry and Bush's policies on foreign affairs, civil liberties, the war on terrorism and the Israel-Palestine conflict..

The well-known conservative professor, who wrote a memo that may have influenced U.S. treatment of prisoners of war, was one of the panelists to analyze each camps position on the war on terrorism after Sept. 11 The other was Michael Nacht, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy.

"This is the first presidential election since 1980, with Carter and Governor Reagan, where foreign policy and national security are key issues," said Nacht.

Despite the strategic role foreign policy will play in November's election, Nacht said neither candidate had distinguished his policy differences enough.

Yoo pointed to the war on terror, which he said would have happened regardless of who sat in the Oval Office.

"Unless Kerry makes a case of his difference from Bush at the September 30 debate, he will have a hard road to go down," Nacht said.

Bush, meanwhile, has remained successful in skirting divisive issues including the Israel-Palestine conflict, Nacht said.

Yoo also defended several of Bush's policies, most notably the USA PATRIOT Act, which Yoo helped draft. The bill has since come under fire from opponents who say it infringes on civil liberties.

"The PATRIOT Act is a fairly modest bill with a terrible name," Yoo said. "It just builds on law enforcement structures that were already here, and there is no empirical proof of civil liberty violations."

Both panelists concluded that the election may boil down to events outside the campaign, when Bush could more concretely define his stances and accomplishments.

Yoo has published works on international law and constitutional law in a number of prominent law journals.

In January 2002, Yoo wrote a memo arguing that the Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were "enemy combatants" and were therefore not protected by the Geneva Conventions or other international laws for prisoners of war.

In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Yoo's memo stirred controversy from human-rights groups who believed that his work was directly related to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and at the prison in Guantanamo Bay.

Student demonstrators demanded Yoo's resignation and more than a quarter of Boalt Hall School of Law's graduating class this spring wore red armbands at their ceremony to protest his work.

Yoo joined UC Berkeley's faculty in 1993 and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice for the Bush administration from 2001 to 2003.

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