JOHN BOLTON FEARS SPANISH JUDGE WILL INDICT CHENEY, RUMSFELD, RICE

John Bolton is aghast at the prospect of a Spanish judge prosecuting higher-ups such as Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld and Rice. In an op-ed today in The Washington Post, Bolton warns Obama not to let the Bush crowd be indicted by Judge Garzon. Perhaps Bolton is afraid for himself - that he might also be included and put on the list of suspected torturers and war criminals.

Perhaps Bolton forgets we live in a world where no nation, such as the U.S. under Bush, the torturer-in-chief, can get away with war crimes without being held accountable in world courts. So much for Bolton's American exceptionalism.

The sooner these Bush war criminals are brought into the dock, the better. Otherwise we will have this same sorry policy of "harsh interrogation methods" being resurrected the next time some Republican comes into office.

TORTURE MEMOS - AUTHORS SHOULD BE PUT ON TRIAL FOR CRIMES VIOLATING GENEVA CONVENTIONS

The Bush torture memos just released yesterday make for depressing reading. How is it possible that Steven Bradbury, deputy assistant attorney general, could write that protections of the Geneva Conventions against torture did not apply to prisoners held outside of the United States? Or that the seriousness of the threat by Al Qaeda justified the use of waterboarding, dousing with cold water, slamming heads against walls, confinement in small boxes, and other procedures just as reprehensible?

We need to hold to account these people who wrote legal memos justifying these horrendous practices. When Barack Obama says the government will not prosecute those who carried out these methods of torture, this is surely a miscarriage of justice. Everyone who violates the law, especially laws designed to protect the dignity and human rights of prisoners, should be brought before the bar of justice. This includes Steven Bradbury, John Yoo, Douglas Feith, David Addington, John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and George Bush.

OBAMA SENDS IRANIAN PEOPLE, LEADERS MESSAGE OF HAPPY NEW YEAR

Hurray for Barack Obama and his overture to Iranian leaders and people by videotape on the occasion of the Iranian New Year that began today.

Obama was respectful of the great and long traditions of the Iranian people and wished all a Happy New Year.

Debbi Wilgoren and Thomas Erdbrink write in today's The Washington Post web site:

"The message, issued at midnight in Washington,, coincides with the ancient festival of Nowruz, which marks the start of spring and the Persian New Year. It follows promises by Obama on the campaign trail and in his initial months in office to engage Iran more directly, as a way to end decades of confrontation and address Iran's links to terror groups and its nuclear program.

"In the holiday message, Obama showed respect for Iran by referring to the country twice by its full official name, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In contrast, President George W. Bush routinely called Iran's government a "regime" that can't be trusted by its people and referred to the country as part of the "axis of evil.""

Gone was the Bush/Cheney rhetoric that threatened Iran at every phrase with nuclear destruction and catastrophe for daring to want nuclear power and proceeding with nuclear development.

I have long insisted that the United States should not consider Iran as a threat or enemy. After all, how many countries have the Iranian people invaded in the last 50 years? The answer is none. Compare that with the sorry example of the U.S. - militaristic campaigns and occupations of Vietnam, Iraq, Panama, and many more. An impartial observer would say that between Iran and the U.S., the real threat to world peace comes from the U.S. when led by those war mongers - Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Addington, et al.

ANTI-WAR DEMOCRATS WANT NEW DEFENSE SECRETARY

Jen Dimascio has an article on Politico today about anti-war Democrats urging Obama to dump Robert Gates as Defense Secretary. I agree.

Gates has been too gung-ho over beefing up the size of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. This is a dead-end position for the United States. The U.S. will never win in Afghanistan on the basis of military force. It might prevail in helping that poor country build up its infrastructure, build sewer lines, string electric power lines, but it will never defeat Afghani insurgents and the Taliban militarily. Consider that the Afghanis have defeated every foreign invading force going back to Alexander the Great.

I admit Gates is a DefSec far superior to Donald Rumsfeld and the other neo-con hawks in the Bush/Cheney administration. For example, Gates reputedly has been one of the officials who have argued against striking Iran.

But Gates is still a believer in military might and the War in Iraq. Writes Dimascio:

"Arms control advocates and anti-war activists are ratcheting up pressure on President-elect Barack Obama to dump Defense Secretary Robert Gates and replace him with a more strident anti-war voice. . . ."

"Gates exacerbated the opposition to his retention with a recent speech at the Carnegie Foundation in which he staked out a position that made it hard for arms control advocates to back the notion of keeping him around.

"Congress last year pulled funding from studies to create a Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which would reduce and replace aging nuclear warheads in the nation’s arsenal. During the speech, Gates said the cut was misguided."

THOSE WHO ORDERED TORTURE MUST BE HELD TO ACCOUNT

How did it come about with over 10,000 lawyers in the Department of Defense that the DOD authorized "harsh" interrogation techniques (read "torture") of those captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere?

The only explanation is that the decision to use waterboarding, sexual humiliation and stress positions came from the top - from Bush himself and from Cheney and from Rice and from Rumsfeld.

The argument that they did these things because they wanted to protect the nation will not stand up. To engage in techniques used in the Inquisition to root out heretics is to group oneself with all those vile and mean people throughout history who think that torture produces the "truth." Just like the churchmen in Spain who thought they were doing God's work by condemning suspects to the rack or inflicting the "water test."

Furthermore, most of the inmates at Guantanamo turn out to be sheepherders or subsistence farmers, yet these were subject to the cruelest of interrogations.

The people who did this must be held to legal account. The smell of torture will not pass quickly. The United States must not allow the malefactors to leave office unscathed and uncharged.

GREAT DAY FOR CIVIL RIGHTS - INMATES AT GUANTANAMO CAN SEEK HABEAS CORPUS FROM FEDERAL COURTS

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that inmates held at Guantanamo have constitutional rights to seek redress from federal courts. So much for the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld machiavellian scheme to hold such prisoners outside the confines of the 50 states and thus keep them from bringing their cases and grievances into federal court. But the Court ruled that Guantanamo is subject to full sovereignty of the U.S. government, and therefore prisoners held there are not deprived of the protections of the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus.

WHO IS TRUE DEFENDER OF DEMOCRACY/ BUSH OR CHAVEZ?

So here we are, the day after the referendum in Venezuela. The NO votes won. I applaud the citizens of the great nation of Venezuela for refusing to go along and allow Hugo Chavez to be president for life. However, I admire President Chavez for accepting the vote of the people. In Venezuela, we a true democracy where the people decide.

Looking back at all the criticism from the Bush and Cheney gang, they all look foolish. Just yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld implied Chavez was a "tyrant," aiming to undermine democracy in Venezuela.

As I blogged on this Rumsfeld piece yesterday, the true tyrant is Bush. Consider that it was not Chavez who tried to aid a coup against American democracy, but it was Bush who tried to overthrow Chavez in 2002, notwithstanding that Chavez was democratically elected by the Venezuelan people. It was not Chavez who opened Guantanamo, it was Bush. It is not Chavez who refuses to say if waterboarding is torture, it is Bush.

The lesson of yesterday in Venezuela is that Hugo Chavez, for all his blustering and name-calling, is the true proponent of democracy. And Bush is democracy's nemesis.

RUMSFELD IMPLIES U.S. SHOULD TAKE ACTION AGAINST HUGO CHAVEZ

And I thought we heard the last from Donald Rumsfeld. But here he is, opining in The Washington Post today on Hugo Chavez. The headline of Rumsfeld's op-ed refers to Chavez as a tyrant. And Rumsfeld writes how sorry he is to see America stand by and do nothing as Venezuelan democracy is sliced and diced by Chavez.

How about Donald Rumsfeld minding his own business as to Hugo Chavez and Venezuela? If the Venezuelan people want Chavez to be able to be president an unlimited number of terms, why should Rumsfeld and the other anti-Chavez gringo neo-cons object?

I personally hope the No vote wins. Chavez has done a lot of good for the poor and disfranchised in Venezuela, but I do not support amending the constitution to allow him to run for president more than what the present constitution allows. However, I am not a citizen of Venezula, so I am not entitled to vote. Let the people of Venezuela decide.

Rumsfeld's op-ed seems to imply that the United States should be doing something to prevent the people from giving Chavez this power. What should the U.S. be doing, Mr. Rumsfeld? Bomb and attack and occupy Venezuela? Treat Venezuelans as the "enemy" because Hugo Chavez said that Bush was Satan incarnate?

Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush and Bolton et al. think the only way to solve international questions and/or disputes is through the use of American guns and war planes. This is why the U.S. invaded Iraq, why some Republicans and neo-cons are currently threatening Syria, North Korea and, above all, Iran. It would be one easy baby step to include Venezuela. Rumsfeld will show those brown-skinned non-English speaking foreigners that it is a fatal mistake to say that Bush is the devil.

DON RUMSFELD SAYS HUGO CHAVEZ IS TYRANT - ET TU BRUTE?

Will wonders never cease? Donald Rumsfeld, the ex-Secretary of Defense, writes an op-ed in The Washington Post about the "dangers" of Hugo Chavez and the Chavez campaign to alter the Venezuela Constitution.

Rumsfeld writes that President Hugo Chavez has repeatedly threatened Venezuela's neighbors. He writes:

"He has repeatedly threatened its neighbors. In late November, Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, declared that Chávez's efforts to mediate hostage talks with Marxist terrorists from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, were not welcome. Chávez responded by freezing trade with Colombia."

This is a load of unsubstantiated bull. Mr. Rumsfeld is making wild and irresponsible charges about Hugo Chavez. Where has Mr. Chavez made any threats? He has indeed said that he does not want anything more to do with Colombia as long as Mr. Uribe is in charge, after Uribe said he did not want any more of Chavez' mediation with the FARC. But threats? Please Mr. Rumsfeld, quote chapter and verse or else withdraw this baseless accusation.

We all know that Hugo Chavez talks a lot, maybe too much. I personally hope Venezuelans vote "No" in Sunday's referendum on revising the Venezuelan Constitution. Nevertheless, Chavez is no "threat" to any of Venezuela's neighbors.

And to call him a "tyrant" is out of bounds. Rumsfeld should recognize the mote in his own eye. After all, Rumsfeld is the oen who pushed with Bush for the establishment of Guantanamo and the use of torture as in waterboarding. The tyrant is not Chavez but Rumsfeld himself, and above all Bush.

U.S. BOMBING KILLS 30 IN SADR CITY, REPORTS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG DEAD

Once again, we see the U.S. military claiming to kill so many "militants" in Iraq, only to learn afterwards that many of the killed were women and children.

The BBC describes the results of a U.S. air raid on Sadr City yesterday :

"US-led forces have killed 30 militants in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, the US military has said. They said most had died in an air strike following a raid in the Shia district of Sadr City. Twelve people were also detained in the operation.

"The US military said the dead were part of a network that was smuggling weapons from Iran, but witnesses said women and children were among those killed."

First, why is the U.S. command and David Petraeus ordering air strikes of residential areas such as crowded Sadr City? As I have opined here before, air strikes are notoriously imprecise and can be expected to kill many innocent bystanders, residents and civilians. Air planes are instruments of war atrocities, right from the beginning of the use of the air plane in war fare.

Furthermore, killing women and children will never gain "hearts and minds." Imagine if your wife or husband, your child or your mother was the victim of a U.S. bombing raid. How would you feel towards the U.S.? How would you treat the U.S. soldier on the ground patrolling your neighborhood?

Those of us who protested going to war against Iraq could foresee all of these atrocities. This is why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell and all the rest who supported or enabled the war are all implicated in war crimes and should be held to account.

A CADET WILL NOT LIE OR CHEAT, BUT HOW ABOUT SENIOR MILITARY OFFICERS?

"A Cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.” This is the oath taken by all cadets at West Point and other military academies. Anyone who is caught cheating on exams, for example, is booted out of the academy. Any cadet caught lying also suffers the same fate.

Why then do senior officers of the Army and Marines think that they themselves are exempt from the principles and restrictions of the oath they took when they were young cadets? Seymour Hersh writes on his interview with retired General Taguba about Taguba's report on the the problems in Abu Ghraib.

Hersch writes that Taguba believes that high ranking generals, including those on the Joint Chiefs, enabled by silence the lies of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld when Bush and Rumsfeld claimed that they were unaware of the problems found in the military's prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan until they saw the photos of prisoners being tortured and mistreated.

According to Taguba, Bush and Rumsfeld knew long before they saw the photos that there were serious problems including those of torture, inhumane treatment and degrading acts. Yet Bush and Rumsfeld did nothing to solve the problem or to order investigations on who ordered the abuse. Probably because these two "leaders" were themselves responsible for initiating the policies.

Writes Sy Hersh in The New Yorker:

"Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.” ♦"

CHENEY'S TRIP TO MIDDLE EAST MAKES NO SENSE

So VP Dick Cheney is leaving today for a trip to the Middle East. Tom Raum of the Associated Press (published today in the Washington Post) reports the countries Cheney plans to visit:

"Cheney's first stop will be Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Other announced stops include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Cheney also will visit the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf."

Tom Raum explains the purpose of Cheney's visit:

"Vice President Dick Cheney is reaching out to moderate Arab leaders for help in bringing stability to Iraq, a mission that will include pleas for postwar support for minority party Sunnis."

Consider this: Cheney plans to visit Arab countries with a population made up of Sunnis. There are no countries on Cheney's itinerary that have a majority of Shia. The resulting question must be how can Cheney effect any change in the catastrophic situation and civil war in Iraq if the only governments he will be visiting are Sunni regimes? Iraq is predominantly Shia. The minority Sunnis and the majority Shia in Iraq are in the throes of a fierce civil war. What does Cheney think he can accomplish? Get the Arab Sunni governments to tell their Sunni counterparts in Iraq to cool it, and thus expose themselves to the guns and bombs of their Shia enemies?

This Cheney trip exposes the desperation of Bush & Co. over the looming American defeat in Iraq. A stinging defeat self-caused by Bush and Cheney and Rice and Rumsfeld and Tenet and all those other neo-cons like Wolfowitz and Perle and Feith.

FREE SUDANESE JOURNALIST IN GUANTANAMO

I received a mailing from Amnesty International a few days ago, and inside was an information sheet on Sami al-Haii, a Sudanese cameraman for Al-Jazeera. While on assignment in 2001 for Al-Jazeera, Al-Haii was arrested by the Pakistani police in December 2001 and turned over to the U.S. at Bagram air base.

"Sami al-Haii has described the 16 days . . . in Bagram . . . as 'the worst in my life.' He states that he was severely physically tortured and had dogs set upon him, that he was held in a cage inside a freezing aircraft hangar and was given insufficient, often frozen, food. He was then transferred to Kandahar, where his abuse continued. Sami al-Haii alleges that while there he was beaten regularly, as well as subjected to sexual abuse by U.S. soldiers, and forced into stress position.

"Sami al-Haii was transferred to Guantanamo Bay on June 13, 2002, where he remains. He has been constantly interrogated about any possible links between his employers and Islamist extremists."

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld call the prisoners at Guantanamo the "worst of the worst." Do they mean Sami-al-Haii? His case shows why Guantanamo must be closed and why each internee there must be given a hearing on the merits in Federal court according to the rule of law.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ MUST RESIGN AS PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD BANK

Paul Wolfowitz must resign as president of the World Bank. According to Knissah Williams and Sabrina Valle in the Washington Post today, Wolfowitz played a role in obtaining a large raise for a World Bank employee, Ms. Shaha Riza, with whom he had a romantic relationship. His involvement in securing monetary benefits for a girl friend shows that Wolfowitz lacks common good business sense.

Wolfowitz was former Deputy Secretary of Defense and assistant to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Wolfowitz was one of the main architects and engines for Bush's invasion and bombing of Iraq.

Wolfowitz exhibited poor judgment in causing the United States to go to war on the basis of false assertions about Iraq's possession of WMD. He shows the same poor judgment in his handling of personnel matters for the World Bank.