MSNBC: Cheney war crimes probe would be “shortest in history”

If Obama would step out of the way and allow prosecutors to look at evidence of alleged Bush administration war crimes, “it would be the shortest investigation in history,” Turley said on a Monday episode of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.

President Obama, appearing Sunday on the CBS news program, said the former vice president’s policies on the treatment of prisoners captured in President Bush’s terror war are “unsustainable” and had caused “incredible damage to our image and position in the world.”

“The reason Obama seems very irritated by it is that he is responsible for the conversation,” said Turley, a constitutional scholar and George Washington University professor. “Because he’s the one that is blocking a criminal investigation of Vice President Cheney and President Bush and other Bush officials. It is like a bank robber calling up and asking him to debate bank robbery.”