Obama has gone on record saying that as President he would ask his Attorney General to “immediately review the information that’s already there” and decide whether officials in the Bush administration should be prosecuted for crimes they committed in office.

Obama’s statement came in a reply to Philly Daily News reporter Will Bunch, who posted it on his blog.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Barack_on_torture.html

Obama’s statement, which I have pasted in below, is typically cautious, but at least one of the candidates is now committed to at least a preliminary investigation of the rampant criminality of the Bush regime.

I remain frustrated by Obama’s obtuseness at refusing to simply tell us the truth, that there are already several clear-cut examples on the record of criminal actions by Bush and his staff, such as illegal wiretapping and the ordering and supervision of torture. So when Obama says that he’s not interested in impeaching Bush because:

“I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances,”

he makes me want to pull my hair out and scream at him: What the fuck do you think “exceptional circumstances” are? I don’t know about you, but almost every morning when I pick up the paper, I discover what I consider to be some “exceptional circumstances” staring me right in the face.

David Swanson at After Downing Street (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org)has been keeping impeachment heat on the weak-kneed members of Congress, starting with House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, who has betrayed his up-until-now noble legacy by refusing to even hold preliminary hearings about the possibility of impeachment. Check out ADS for the latest on the big I.

Obama says he’s been getting questions about impeachment on the stump. He needs to go beyond his promise of an investigation after he wins. U.S. soliders and Iraqis are dying unnecessarily every day. We need to confront him every where he goes and tell him to stop being such a wuss and tell the American people the truth. I bet his numbers would bounce ten points if he’d just say that any one of Bush’s crimes was worthy of an impeachment inquiry.

Here’s what Obama said:

“What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.

“So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment — I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General — having pursued, having looked at what’s out there right now — are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important– one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.”