If Bush officials are found to have violated American laws, they should be prosecuted, no exceptions. What would happen if the Obama administration set a precedent that the crimes of an administration will go unpunished so long as you can commit them without detection until you've left office? Future administrations would feel less pressure to obey the law and will be more likely to violate the law. Without the fear of accountability, administrations will give in to temptations to abandon values and morals in furthering their interests. The last thing we need in Washington is a government that believes it has not done anything wrong until it gets caught – an issue both sides of the aisle should agree on.
Because torture is illegal, the Bush administration avoided calling water boarding or other harsh interrogation tactics torture, much in the way the United States government has not called the conflict in Darfur genocide, so that it is not obligated to intervene. This legalese way of bending the law is a common practice in Washington. However, with the recent release of memos form the Bush era Department of Justice and Obama's classification of water boarding as torture, we need change. The Obama must, if not spear-head, advocate an investigation into what interrogation tactics the Bush administration may have illegally ordered or endorsed. When have you heard of a police officer saying "Oh yeah, that was police brutality, but it did not happen on my watch. He's free to go." In America, you obey the law, not a self-righteous, Machiavellian mandate.
On top of the illegality of torture, the CIA and Bush administration officials may have also broken the law in their briefing of the House Committee on Intelligence on said tactics. By not keeping intelligence committees "fully and currently informed ... [on] significant anticipated intelligence activity" the CIA and Bush administration violated a law intended to provide some sort of oversight, albeit powerless. House Speaker Pelosi admits she was eventually briefed on the tactics but it was far after the fact and she was powerless to change them due to their classification. While the intended strength of the executive branch is left to political science, the exercise of executive power adheres to the law, not tyrannical political theory.
As it becomes increasingly more likely that Bush administration officials broke both US and international law, Obama needs to make it clear that he is not just open to prosecution of suspected criminals from the previous administration, but committed to it. He also refused to prosecute CIA officials that actually instigated the torture, a more understandable position considering the avoidance of the word "torture" and the ambiguous legal implications of water-boarding and other controversial tactics. This is not a "I was just following orders" defense that Obama is giving CIA agents. The implications of their actions are in a more ambiguous area than the atrocities committed by those on trial at Nuremberg, not to compare the Bush administration to those on trial.
President Obama needs to live up his campaign rhetoric of ending the cynicism with which many citizens view government. If he does not continue to promote transparency and accountability, Americans will be just as disillusioned as they were after the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals that were discovered while the administrations were in office. Yes, President Nixon was pardoned by President Ford but that is a constitutionally defined power of the President. Impunity from high crimes and misdemeanors is not a constitutionally defined power of the executive branch, or any member of government for that matter. Obeying the law while in office is not a political ideology or partisan value. Punishment is not retribution for unpopular policies. Obama took an oath to defend the constitution, and now is the time for him to defend it in the future by punishing those that failed to do so in recent years.