Turley: Most people abroad will view Bush as a war criminal

"I think that the new Barack Obama, the President Obama, is going to find it very hard to go round the world and to say that we're now again the nation of rules of law," Turley suggested, "if the first act he commits as president is to walk away from a confirmed war crime."

"Are we literally looking at a possibility," Maddow asked, "where administration officials from this [previous] administration cannot travel abroad to the other 145 countries that have signed the torture treaty because they might get arrested?"

"Most certainly," Turley replied. "The status of George Bush is not that different from Augusto Pinochet. They've both been accused of running a torture program. And outside this country, there's not this ambiguity about what to do with a war crime. ... Most people abroad are going to view you not as former President George Bush, they're going to view you as a current war criminal."

"And they're going to view us as an outlaw regime for not arresting him on our own soil," Maddow remarked.