President Obama, the Constitution Mandates Terrorist Investigation

On numerous instances, including the issue of investigating Dick Cheney and George W. Bush for numerous abuses, highlighted by taking America to war based on false evidence, Obama has made the point that he prefers looking ahead and not to the past.

As a lawyer and former teacher of constitutional law, Obama should realize that an imperative exists in that vital area. As president of the United States he is compelled to move in areas where the constitution mandates him to take care that laws be faithfully executed.

Two of the most precious areas of the Constitution that mandate vigilant action are conducting wars and civil liberty violations. Instances of such violations abounded during the past administration of Cheney and Bush.

On the subject of taking America to war, the claim by Bush that an honest mistake was made on evaluating Iraqi intelligence has a hollow ring unsupported by factual evidence.

Observe how quickly the Bush-Cheney team launched an assault on Baghdad as the United Nations inspection team headed by Hans Blix of Sweden sought additional time to investigate claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed sufficient nuclear capacity to pose a clear and present danger to the existence of the United States.

Also observe what happened after former ambassador Joseph Wilson refuted a false claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellow cake from Niger to enrich his Uranium capacity to make nuclear weapons. The harsh retaliation was to reveal the identity of his wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame, a weapons expert. This disclosure risked her life and destroyed her CIA career.

Dick Cheney as a vigilant neoconservative vigorously lobbied along with future Bush administration operatives Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, as part of the Project for the New American Century, for the U.S. to launch a preventive war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq while Bill Clinton occupied the White House.

The effort gained fruition with Cheney's elevation to the vice-presidency. According to Richard Clarke and other Bush White House insiders a full court press was launched for invading Iraq from that administration's inception.

Not only was there efforts directed toward preventive war, specifically outlawed by the Nuremberg Codes and the UN Charter, under which the U.S. as signatory possesses a constitutional obligation to enforce; the Bill of Rights was viciously assaulted.

Dick Cheney's claim that post-9/11 necessity warrants taking any steps deemed appropriate to combat terrorism is specious. The U.S. is obligated to follow the Constitution, which was never altered by the amendment process to circumvent the Bill of Rights or obligations under the Geneva Codes and the UN Charter.

Despite Cheney's repeatedly stated claim, the constitution remains the governing authority under such circumstances. His claim that by investigating such egregious conduct that the nation is rendering itself vulnerable to terrorist attack is the type of tactic engaged in by dictators, as exemplified by Adolf Hitler's burning of the Reichstag and blaming the action on the Communists.

Obama needs to keep the foregoing in mind on the subject of enforcing the Constitution. To move on in the correct context is to investigate pernicious violations of U.S. and international law.