STEPHANOPOULOS: The Senate Armed Services Committee last week had a unanimous report that said that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo, at prisons around the world is a direct and indirect result of decisions made by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high officials. Should they be prosecuted for that?
BIDEN: First of all, that's a judgment, remember, four years ago on your program I made, so I haven't changed my mind. And this confirms.

But the questions of whether or not a criminal act has been committed or a very, very, very bad judgment has been engaged in is -- is something the Justice Department decides.

Barack Obama and I are -- President-elect Obama and I are not sitting thinking about the past. We're focusing on the future. Obviously, that if the Justice...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But should the cases be reviewed?

BIDEN: Well, that's a decision I'd look to the Justice Department to make.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you're not ruling it out at this point?

BIDEN: I'm not ruling it in and not ruling it out. I just think we should look forward. I think we should be looking forward, not backwards.

Wait a minute.  With so many lawsuits ongoing pertaining to our detention policies - Maher Arar's (blocked) civil suit - and our rendition policies - 26 CIA officials are on trial for the rendition of Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr to Egypt - it is obvious that this isn't simply about bad judgments.  This is about legal wrongdoing.

So why is Biden hedging?  And why does he say that it's up to the Justice Department to decide whether they will even review the case against BushCo?  Isn't up to Obama/Biden to ensure that they do review the information out there?  The Justice Department doesn't get to decide whether the cases are reviewed.  Obama tells them to do it.

Maybe this is just a Bidenism of the sort we will have to get used to.  But John Dean (via Crooks and Liars) during his Countdown appearance last week reminds us that this was a campaign promise.

Remember what Obama said on April 14 2008 [from attytood's blog, sorry the background is magenta for some reason]:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

I find it odd that Biden makes it sound like Obama/Biden will have no involvement, whatsoever, in what the Justice Department chooses to do.  After all, it is Obama who will (if he chooses to do so at all) "instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration officials who gave the green light to torture" (Michael Ratner's recommendation in The Nation).

Perhaps we should give Obama the benefit of the doubt.  But perhaps we should also ask, Biden, what are you talking about?