The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

If it wasn’t clear before it should be now: the Bush Administration can’t afford to attack Iran. With gas already at $4 a gallon and rising almost every day, Iran figuratively and literally has the United States over a barrel. As much as the Administration is tempted, it is not about to test Iran’s promise to “explode” the Middle East if it is attacked.

The Iranians haven’t been shy about making clear what’s at stake. If the U.S. or Israel so much as drops a bomb on one of its reactors or its military training camps, Iran will shut down Gulf oil exports by launching a barrage of Chinese Silkworm missiles on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and Arab oil facilities. In the worst case scenario, seventeen million barrels of oil would come off world markets.

A New York Times article detailed the connection between numerous media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries, reporting that “the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform” media military analysts “into a kind of media Trojan horse – an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.”

A Media Matters review found that since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in the Times article – many identified as having ties to the defense industry – collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR.

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans’ Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed outrage at the new revelations, based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters, or NSLs, investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge’s order or grand jury subpoena.

Venezuelan and Ecuadorean troops deployed on Colombia’s frontier last night as South America’s military and diplomatic crisis escalated into a dangerous showdown between President Hugo Chávez and Colombia’s US-backed government.

Venezuela started shutting crossing points on the 1,400-mile border to try to isolate its neighbour after Bogotá made a series of extraordinary allegations about the Venezuelan leader funding Marxist guerrillas intent on building a uranium-enriched “dirty” bomb.

“Colombia proposes to denounce Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, in the international criminal court for sponsoring and financing genocide,” said President Alvaro Uribe.