The Bush administration has been wretchedly mistaken in its conception of executive power, deceitful in its push for war with Iraq and appalling in its scheming to make torture an instrument of state power. But a healthy democracy punishes policy mistakes, however egregious, and seeks redress for its societal wounds, however deep, at the ballot box and not in the prisoner's dock.
(source : http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1543/135/
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I think this attitude is widespread in the political class today, maybe even shared by Obama. Bush's breaking of the laws is a "policy error". That is why everything from impeachment to enforcement of subpoenas and holding even minor officials guilty of contempt of Congress is off the table.
We ordinary Americans are guilty of thinking that our government officials could have committed crimes; quite out of sync with our Democratic Party elders.
The Democrats are not caving in, compromising, capitulating to the Republicans, they are simply following the premise that all the last seven years are simply policy errors.
All Obama is going to do, if he is successful in his bid for the Presidency, is redistribute the bread-and-circuses. He is not going to (and never was going to, we bad, our mistake for thinking otherwise) change the notion that government officials only commit policy errors, and not criminal actions.
The idea that the United States Government can possibly be complicit in criminal acts is an idea Obama explicitly discarded along with his one-time pastor Rev. Wright.
If you understand this then there is nothing to be disappointed in about Obama. There are only a handful of politicians, Kucinich among them, who know that the government can be criminal, and then it needs to be held to account by impeachment or by trials.
What you will get with Obama is a change in policy. What you will never get with Obama is any accountability for the Bush Administration's crimes.
i.e., this will go unattended
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba – forced out of the service in 2006 for trying to honestly investigate the atrocities at Abu Ghraib – was unequivocal in his statement in a new report by Physicians for Human Rights:
"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account...The commander-in-chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture."
