Torture memo author John Yoo compared waterboarding to speeding

Former Justice Department lawyer and 'torture memo' author John Yoo compared George W. Bush's decision to waterboard suspected terrorists to a driver's decision to go the full speed limit.

Yoo used a speeding metaphor to explain that just because he gave George W. Bush the legal justification for the decision to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Muhammed didn't mean Bush had to go through with it.

"Just because a law says you can drive 65 miles per hour doesn't mean you have to drive 65 miles per hour," Yoo said. "There's still a lot of discretion and choice that the leaders of our government had to make."

"I know part of the job from being the lawyer is defending sometimes unpopular decisions that your clients make. I'm willing to do that part of the job. But I also think that there's no escaping responsibility if people who make the policy decision," Yoo said during an interview on CNN on Friday evening.

"And I'm prepared and confident in saying that I think my legal judgment then was right under the circumstances. But that doesn't mean that you had to...that President Bush had to choose the policy that they did either," Yoo said.

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