Just caught this, courtesy of truthout.org, and it made my jaw drop. When asked "whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place in the White House" Obama responded as follows:
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 between 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.
A few observations here. One, Obama's playing it safe, and smart. Obviously, no president wants something like this to consume their first term and keep them from advancing their agenda, so that's understandible. But I think this shows that this guy is on the right side of things. At the very least, it's a promise of a chance that the Bush Administration won't get off so easily.
Here's the whole article.