Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald on Thursday blasted President Barack Obama’s mantra that the nation should “look forward, not backward” regarding alleged crimes committed by the Bush administration.

“Imagine if, for example, we decided to announce tomorrow that we were no longer going to prosecute murder or rape or child abductions because we didn’t want to ‘keep looking backwards,'” he said on MSNBC’s The Last Word. “What do you think would happen? Obviously there would be a lot more people engaging in murder, rape, and child abduction.”

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Greenwald added that American political culture had “decided our highest political officials are free to break the law without consequences” and Obama had continued the “evisceration of the rule of law for political elites.”

“So political elites like Dick Cheney know that they can commit crimes with total impunity, and that is why he goes around proudly boasting about the crimes he has committed.”

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