What Spain is Doing for the United States

Since President Obama doesn't seem to quite have the stomach yet, a Spanish Court last week began a criminal investigation into charging six former Bush administration officials with war crimes. The six under the prosecutorial microscope are: Douglas Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer, infamous for the torture memos that tortured legal analysis, precedent, and international law; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Why Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and President Bush aren't on the list bewilders me.

According to Jane Meyer, the National Book Award author of "The Dark Side," the basis for the investigation is the work of Philippe Sands, the British professor whose book "The Torture Team" blazed the way through the lame excuse that those pictures we saw from Abu Ghraib were the result of a "few bad apples." According to Sands' research, what horrified us in those photographs of degradation was the result of high level authorizations from either the White House or very close by. There is an incredible interview conducted by Bill Moyers of Sands that shouldn't be missed.

Read Jane Mayer's short piece in the April 13, 2009 The New Yorker.

Here is why, no matter what, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush should be investigated. At least Cheney and Rumsfeld made money while in office. Cheney held onto his Halliburton stock and influence, and guess what: Halliburton got a helluva lot of no-bid contracts in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion. Rumsfeld made himself richer, too, because he held onto his Gilead stock, which just so happened to own the patent for Tamiflu, the alleged antidote to Avian Flu. Remember that?

As I am finishing Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, the crimes of the Bush administration become more heinous and urgent. It's one thing to be incompetent. It's another thing to make mistakes. But it is indefensible to run government for private enrichment, and that's what Cheney and Rumsfeld did. There is no evidence in Klein's book that Bush did directly benefit, but the doors he opened to privitizing everything will welcome him in his post-White House days.

For Profit Prisons Suck

In yet another fraud, this time involving at least two judges in Pennsylvania, we are learning more about how corrupting the transformation of essential government functions into private businesses for profit can be. This seems to have been one of the chief objectives of ideological Republican law making.

This time, however, the corruption becomes sickening, because it involves our children.

Operating under the rather benign name "Western PA Child Care" and "PA Child Care," these companies operate juvenile facilities for wayward teens. But the companies were wayward, kicking back $2.6 million to two judges to reward the jurists for sentencing kids to time rather than compel participation in programs that would keep families intact. The real pity is that the children sentenced to time in Child Care come from some of the most economically devoured communities in Western Pennsylvania.

As if Halliburton in Iraq and Blackwater, aka Xe, anywhere it operated, didn't provide enough evidence to warn us about the dangers of removing essential functions out of government into profit companies, especially companies whose stock might not be publicly traded and therefore shrouded in secrecy. Accountability, remember? Xe will now be shifting its work from providing security to training governments in security. And we know how much Blackwater aka Xe, appreciates those rules contained in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Remember New Orleans post Katrina? Remember Baghdad?