George W. Pinochet?

from Raw Story

Turley: Most people abroad will view Bush as a war criminal

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday January 20, 2009

Barack Obama has now been inaugurated as president, and the fear expressed by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday night that George Bush might issue last-minute pardons of administration officials involved in torture, possibly including himself, has not come to pass.

However, the torture issue itself is not going to go away so easily. As Maddow also noted, "The calls for a reckoning are growing by the day -- and not just from progressives outside the government."

"Do you think that Obama and his team realized how hot an issue this would become and would stay?" Maddow asked Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley.

"I don't think so," Turley replied. "I don't think the people in that building thought it," he added, pointing to the Capitol. "I mean, that building is where principles go to die. And they haven't, because there's been this groundswell of people saying, 'Look, you might be able to get away with an electronic surveillance program and say that's just a crime we're not going to allow to be prosecuted, but these are war crimes., these are a special category.'"

(More here.)