Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon in September 1974 -- less than a month after Nixon resigned. And Clinton opted not to prosecute Reagan for the Iran-Contra affair -- among other crimes.
And now 40 years after Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, the precedent has been set that the standing president simply ignores the crimes of his predecessor.
Or as Barack Obama put it in 2009 before he even officially took office: "We need to look forward, as opposed to looking backwards."
In other words, the Obama administration is simply looking the other way on Bush's war crimes.
It's absurd to say that holding criminals accountable for murder is "looking backwards"; by that logic, no criminals should ever be tried for crimes they've committed.
And even though ISIS and the current bloodshed in the Middle East are a direct result of Bush's failed attempt at nation building, the fact that Obama has encouraged Americans to look the other way means that the architects of the war can rewrite their own roles in the disaster.
Like Donald Rumsfeld saying that he never supported the idea of building a democracy in Iraq.
Rumsfeld may be distancing himself, but Bush and Cheney are still remorseless and still guilty.
Which is why Vincent Bugliosi was right -- we need "some courageous prosecutor" to demand justice and to charge George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for their lies and the murders of 4,500 American soldiers and over half a million Iraqis.
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