...starting with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course, and many of their subordinates, and, as to the criminal operations they colluded in and encouraged in Colombia...

Alvaro Uribe himself, president and crime boss of Colombia during the Bush Junta, whose spy agency, DAS (now disbanded) was spying on judges and prosecutors as well as on political opponents and trade unionists (and was reportedly drawing up "hit lists" on trade unionists for assassination by the rightwing death squads); who has been associated with rightwing death squads throughout his career; some 70 of whose closest political cronies are under investigation or already in jail for ties to the death squads, drug trafficking and corruption; and under whose mafia-like reign 5 MILLION peasants were brutally displaced from their lands (likely to make way for the big, favored drug lords and for transglobal corporations) and thousands of trade unionists, teachers, community activists, journalists, peasants and others were targeted and murdered, including youths lured by the military with promises of jobs, murdered and dressed up like FARC guerillas to boost 'body count' numbers.

Uribe now teaches our young people about the law at Georgetown and Harvard, sits on a prestigious international legal commission and is running around free planning his return to power in Colombia when Diebold/ES&S returns the Bushes or their agents to power in the White House. He is clearly under the protection of Bush Sr.'s close associate Leon Panetta (CIA Director cum Secretary of Defense) as well as that of the U.S. State Department (Clinton), which sent a letter to the judge in the Drummond Coal death squad case here, successfully pressuring the judge to exempt Uribe from giving a deposition.

Maria Hurtado, head of Uribe's spy agency, DAS, who fled Colombia because prosecutors wanted to question her about Uribe and who was deeply involved in the illegal spying herself.

Hurtado received instant asylum in the U.S. client state of Panama, and Interpol has refused to issue a warrant for her--both things improbable without U.S. pressure or direct involvement.

And now Luis Carlos Restrepo, Uribe's "high commissioner for peace" (LOL!)--another high Uribe official wanted for questioning by Colombian prosecutors.

On the lam in the United States--surprise, surprise!

William Brownfield, U.S./Bush Junta ambassador to Colombia who, according to recent testimony and inferences from Wikileaks documents, was colluding with DAS (illegal spying); who colluded with Uribe on the midnight extradition of death squad witnesses to the U.S. to put them out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors; who colluded with Uribe on the secretly negotiated and secretly signed U.S./Colombia military agreement (which was subsequently declared unconstitutional by the Colombia supreme court) which, along with greatly expanding the Pentagon's footprint in Colombia, provided "total diplomatic immunity" for all U.S. personnel in Colombia including private military 'contractors.' He was also likely running a "war room" right in the U.S. embassy with direct video feeds to U.S./Colombia military operations including the wanton slaughter of 25 sleeping people at a FARC guerrilla hostage negotiation camp on Ecuador's border, using U.S. "smart bombs" (and very likely U.S. spying technology).

Brownfield got kicked upstairs (by Obama, probably on orders of the Bush Cartel) and is now running the entire corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America.

Blackwater executives and death squad members. Last year, the U.S. State Department (Clinton) "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." ("Unauthorized," my ass.) Blackwater has since changed its name to Xe and moved in with the sheiks of Araby in the U.A.E. This smells to high heaven of a coverup and raises questions about all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia and about the U.S. military itself and their possible involvement in these Colombian military/rightwing death squad "turkey shoots" of the peasants and others.

The "fine" was a token, and I suspect that it provided Blackwater with U.S. protection for whatever it was that they really did.

The group of death squad members who were extradited to the U.S., by Uribe and Brownfield, on mere drug charges, over the vociferous objections of Colombian prosecutors who were questioning them as death squad witnesses.

These death squad witnesses were "buried" in the U.S. federal prison system by complete sealing of their cases (an unusual procedure) out of the reach the Colombian prosecutors. This was not exactly "protection" by the U.S.--more likely, suborning of testimony (cleansing their minds of any U.S./Bush Junta/Uribe connections to their crimes).

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Justice Department and other "war on drugs" personnel, the federal judge in Washington DC who did it, and others who colluded on this caper are all probably indictable (along with Brownfield and Uribe) for malfeasance, if not for violations of Colombian and U.S. laws and contempt for the law.

And they, of course, have the full freight of U.S. power protecting their asses.

Where does the list end? At what point are we talking about legitimate protection of legitimate U.S. interests--as, I guess, we have to accept or have come to tolerate--as part of Imperial policy (a sort of bleeding of legit national security matters into national arrogance) and must start talking about utter contempt for and massive violation of national and international laws, by U.S. leaders and personnel? How legitimate is it for the Obama administration to cover up what appears to have been a massive Bush Junta and proxy crime wave in Colombia? Virtually all of the above coverup actions occurred under Obama. An even more difficult question is: How much power does Obama have to do anything about any of this? (Is Leon Panetta our real president as to world affairs?)