re: #500 Dark_Falcon

The cardinal reason Bush will never be charged as a ‘war criminal’: Barack Obama did not want to set a precedent that would risk the critical tradition of a peaceful transfer of power in the US. That’s also why, should a Republican win in 2016, I predict the wingnuts will end up finding their guy has no willingness to go after Obama once he leaves office. Neither party’s leadership wants to create a situation where the president might be tempted to overthrow the Constitutional order because he was afraid of a politically minded prosecution by his successor.

Yeah, well said. Furthermore, no president wants to open himself up to prosecution later by prosecuting his predecessor right after taking office. Particularly given the fact that the incoming president knows he’ll have to make tough and nasty decisions once in office.

You can make a case—and a few on the far left do—that virtually every modern president was guilty of some war crime, or at least violation of federal law and/or international treaties or conventions. I don’t agree with that position, but here’s a partial list of how that argument would go:

FDR - Internment camps
Truman - atomic weapons
Eisenhower - overthrowing Mossadegh (elected leader of Iran)
JFK - Bay of Pigs
LBJ - Vietnam
Nixon - Vietnam, Cambodia, assassination of Salvador Allende, etc., etc.
Ford - I can’t think of anything off top of my head; not in office long enough
Carter - See Ford
Reagan - Iran Contra
Bush Sr. - Iraq
Clinton - bombing in the Balkans
Bush Jr. - Iraq, torture, Gitmo
Obama - drones