The talk of prosecuting Bush after his boasts of committing atrocities needs to stop. Not because that opinion is wrong, but because it will NEVER HAPPEN.
It will not happen because Obama is a weak leader. It will never happen because Obama intends to commit the same atrocities as we speak. Jailing Bush for the same crimes he is committing now will be the end of his presidency, and it sets the stage for his own inevitable prosecution when Emperor DeMint steals the 2012 election, and decides not to "turn the page," or "look forward, not backward."
If history is any guide, it's not the crime that gets you in trouble: it's the cover up. So Obama's solution is simple: create a situation where a cover up is not necessary. If the byproduct of this approach is that Bush gets off scot free, that is a small price to pay to ensure he will never miss any of little Sasha's soccer games while sitting in jail.
It's so simple, it's brilliant, really. I don't know why I haven't thought of it before.
How else to explain this gem from Rahmbo:
Stephanopoulos: The president has ruled out prosecution for CIA officials who believed they were following the law. Does he believe that the officials who devised the policies should be immune from prosecution?
Emanuel: He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided... those who devised the policy...should not be prosecuted either."
Later on "This Week," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he agrees with the president's decision not to prosecute Bush administration officials who devised the torture policy. [lulz]
So apparently, it's ok to break the law, torture & kill people, as long as you mean well. And we all know Barry means well, don't we? And also, was Rahm talking about the Bush administration, or his own?
Pre-emptive unilateral war is ok, as long as you mean well. Right?
Rendition (a euphemism for kidnapping and torture) is still practiced today:
The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.
The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States."
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
Even blatant assassination of American citizens without due process is on the table; Bush didn't even go this far. Who needs Sarah Palin's "Death Panels" when Obama has his own?
Wiretapping? He's got Bush beat there too.
AMY GOODMAN: Your co-counsel, Jon Eisenberg, said the Obama administration is as bad or worse than the Bush administration when it comes to these issues of invoking state secrets or justifying this wiretapping. What are your thoughts on this, Steven Goldberg?
STEVEN GOLDBERG: When the Obama administration came into being, we assumed that there was—and hoped that there would be a change in the government’s policy in terms of fighting or contesting this litigation, particularly on the secrecy grounds. Yet we found there was no change in the Obama administration’s position. They were fighting as vigorously as the Bush administration
And to top it off, to ensure he never gets prosecuted, he places one of the biggest legal proponents of the continuation of Bush's policies on the Supreme Court of the land, ever ready and prepared to pardon the Audacious One at a moment's notice.
It's almost the perfect crime; do you really think he will risk throwing this all away to put some old, dumb, washed up has been in jail? What will he get out of it? What do you think Issa's response will be in retaliation?
And for all this, and more, he was bestowed the Nobel Peace Prize:
NAOMI KLEIN: ...my raw reaction is really that this represents—it’s very significant and disappointing, cheapening of the Nobel Prize. And, you know, it’s been cheapened before, and it will...be cheapened again, but I think there’s something really striking here.
...the Nobel Prize Committee awards their top honors to Obama. And I think it’s quite insulting. I don’t know what kind of political game they’re playing, but I don’t think that the committee has ever been as political as this or as delusional as this, frankly.
It's enough to make former Nobel winners depressed.
Obama simply cannot prosecute Bush or Cheney. To do so would implicate himself, and it would be the ultimate damning admission of his own war crimes, and hence the end of his presidency.