Sorry to be the broken record in this disco, but first you might have to convince Mr. Obama that the Bush-Cheney administration are guilty of "grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president's authority,"

"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president's authority," he said.

"I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction," he added. "We would once again, rather than attending to the people's business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, nonstop circus." -Dear Leader-elect

Related: Earlier this month, Mr. Obama "saluted" President Bush as he was awarded the "International Medal of PEACE" by the Rev. Rick Warren, who will be offering the inaugural invocation for Mr. Obama.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bush_awarded_International_Medal_of_PEACE_1202.html

See the second video on the Raw Story page for Obama's remarks.

why does the DOJ have to decide to prosecute? Can't any US citizen bring charges against elected officials?

...for this new found mainstreaming of war crimes prosecutions. The M$M has all but torpedoed the idea before now.

It might not be on the same scale, but we do have the same culpability as the citizens of WWII Germany in that we allowed our leaders to do these things in our name and in some cases even cheered them along. We choose shame or redemption.

Then, we should deport the lot of them, Yoo, Addington, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush, and let them face the trials they richly deserve. I only regret that their imprisonment will be more humane than what they inflicted on others.

Cheney (and others) couldn't be so open about culpability because he sees a pardon coming down the pike, could it?

"The weapons used to prevent such accountability are quite familiar and will still be potent. Those who demand accountability will be derided as past-obsessed partisans who want to impede all the Glorious, Transcendent Gifts about to be bestowed on us by our new leaders. The manipulative claim will be endlessly advanced that our problems are too grand and pressing to permit the luxury of living under the rule of law. When all else fails in the stonewalling arsenal, impotent "fact-finding" commissions will be proposed to placate the demand for accountability but which will, in fact, be designed and empowered to achieve only one goal: to render actual prosecutions impossible."

And if investigations are ever held, only low level stooges and foot soldiers will be held accountable.

suggests that an important dimension will be the discussion about whether or not the 'exaggerations' in the Bush administration were justified by the level of danger from terrorist attacks. This always happens in this kind of discussion: not only are those guilty of 'exaggerations' (war crimes?) interested in not being persecuted and in letting go of the past (see the Russians when confronted with old Soviet war crimes, for instance in the Baltic States or in the case of the Kaczyn massacre)--they want it to become a 'we were justified by circumstances' debate that disguises the fact that the participants are being implicitly asked to agree there are circumstances under which their behavior was OK. I.e. the very idea that these acts are always crimes is subrepticiously undermined by the way the discussion is set. I am worried that this will be the case here--everybody will end up discussing if 'it was OK in that case', thereby opening the door for further uses of the same procedures (as Hutchins was already afraid of).

Now that the conversation has moved mainstream, I think it's very important to keep the pressure on the concept of appointing a prosecutor instead of a commission.

Note how the NYTimes opinion first calls for a prosecutor, then bemoans that "we do not hold out real hope that Barack Obama, as president, will take such a politically fraught step" because of "how far he has moved from the powerful stands he took on these issues early in the campaign". They then move the closing discussion to a commission.

Maddow did a great favor by prodding Levin into this admission. Now is the time to remind Obama of his earlier "powerful stands" and to point out that by moving the investigation into the hands of a competent, independent prosecutor, it is his best option for freeing himself up to address the other huge issues facing our nation.

After appointing the prosecutor, Obama and his DOJ have no other responsibilities besides perhaps providing prosecutorial backup for those who refuse to testify. He will then be free to concentrate entirely on the economy if that is what he chooses while the investigation and the prosecutions go on independently.

Living in San Diego, which is half an inch away from being a military base in its entirety, I wonder how much of what is praised as "heroism" or "protecting our freedom" are actually war crimes. Fallujah? A victory for freedom? Including the white phosphorous used on civilian populations?

We're STILL the Jesus-kissed favorite/only nation in God's eyes, right? Torture, murder, secret prisons notwithstanding. Read our press packet. We're the greatest.

Bush43 presided over the evisceration of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and our spineless, worthless Congress and alleged mainstream media went along for the ride with big shit-eating smiles on their faces.

The false-flag operations on 9/11/01 provided the hinge for all the Bush43 misdeeds. Anyone keeping track of whether or not Judge Hellerstein has set a trial date for the few (incredibly heroic) 9/11 families lawsuit? Word on the lunatic fringe has it that [unnamed group] is frantic to prevent any discovery phase of a trial from taking place.

I wish I could believe that prosecutions were possible or even likely. Over the last decade or so I have so utterly lost faith in the people of this nation to do the right thing that I have not even the slightest hint of a thought of a possibility that it is even remotely plausible.

Twirl a shiny thing in front of us and we'll forget what we were doing. Scare us with a big bad boogey man and we'll bury our heads and decide we'll get back to this later, maybe.

I never used to consider myself cynical.The election was a nice change from the usual dissapointments but it was not the alpha and omega of the solutions to our problems. Not by a long shot.