John Yoo: Obama Administration 'Hypocrites' Over Military Operation

The Obama administration is hypocritical in denying it is operating under authorization put in place under George W. Bush to conduct military strikes in Iraq and Syria, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo says.

"The administration are total hypocrites, but I'm glad they're being hypocrites because they're doing the right thing — they just can't stand to admit it," Yoo said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

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"To do that would admit that they were wrong in the 2008 and 2012 elections and that the Bush administration was right all along."

Yoo — who now teaches at Berkeley Law, and is author of "Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare," published by Oxford University Press — said the U.S. is protecting the Iraqi government as well as its own interests.

"In Iraq … we are protecting our own national security against the terrorist group the one that has said openly that wants to take actions against us and launch attacks on our homeland," he said.

"If this terrorist group is in Syria too, the U.S. has the right to pursue them. This was the thing that the Bush administration's critics like President Obama were jumping up and down screaming about after the Iraq invasion.

"You have people like President Obama arguing that the president couldn't use force in this situation and that Congress had to give its approval too, none of which they have done here so far."

Yoo said the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder was overdue.

"Eric Holder, I'm afraid is like the house guest who stayed too long, but he was just such a bad house guest, he almost burnt the whole house down while he was here," he said.

"He was destroying our constitutional principles everyday he was in office so he couldn't have left too soon.

"He's an attorney general who presided for the first time over the claim that the president didn't have to enforce the laws passed by Congress because he didn't like them. He couldn't have left too soon and his resignation is of great benefit to the American people."