Tuesday, January 20, 2009 1:53 PM

No Breaks For Bush On His Last Day

By MARY GILBERT

George W. Bush is officially in retirement, but for many Americans, seeing the end of the 43rd president's tenure is not enough. Even as a sense of jubilation grips Washington, D.C., some in the streets aren't ready to let go of their acrimony for the outgoing president, demanding legal action against Bush and his administration for their handling of the war on terror.

"Arrest Bush," read signs lining 7th Street, where throngs of visitors and D.C. residents flooded towards the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue, route of this afternoon's inaugural parade. Several protesters stood atop vans decrying Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's "war crimes" and called for their immediate prosecution. Hours later, boos could be heard from some of the millions gathered in front of the Capitol as Cheney was introduced to the crowd.

The question of whether President Obama and congressional Democrats should pursue investigations of the Bush administration's war policy is generating great debate in Washington and, perhaps, threatens to divide the new president's electoral coalition.

"My instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing," Obama said Jan. 11 on ABC's "This Week," moderated by George Stephanopoulos. "That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law," he added, "but my orientation's going to be to move forward."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a different message on "Fox News Sunday" this week, signaling that she and others on Capitol Hill are more eager to go after Bush administration officials. "I think that we have to learn from the past, and we cannot let the politicizing of the -- for example, the Justice Department, to go unreviewed," she said, adding: "Past is prologue. We learn from it."

One thing is for sure: Bush exits office with a tarnished image in the American public's eyes. Just 34 percent of those surveyed by Gallup this month said they approve of the job he has done as president, and 59 percent said that he will go down in history as a below-average or poor president.