Venezuelan Vice President accuses the Bush family of ties with terrorists...

Prensa Latina reports that Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has accused the Bush family of ties with terrorists, especially criminal Luis Posada Carriles.

As CIA chief, George Bush, Sr. sponsored terrorism and later, as President, he pardoned some terrorists including Orlando Bosh, Rangel pointed out during a launching of the fourth edition of "Pusimos la Bomba...y qué? (We Planted the Bomb... So What?).

The book, by journalist Alicia Herrera, confirms Bush and Posada Carriles" involvement in the 1976 blowing up of a Cuban civil plane that killed all 73 people onboard.

Current US president George W. Bush ... who is trying to protect Posada Carriles ... continues pursuing his father's policy, the Venezuelan top official denounced.

According to Rangel, the White House makes a distinction in terrorism based on circumstances, interests and players, establishing differences between Osama bin Laden (past as opposed to present) and Posada.

This explains the Republican administration's silence and evasive replies about the CIA explosives expert, he added. "Bush has said nothing at all about the presence of a terrorist in his country," although he is quite loquacious in other cases."

Rangel also denounced that after Posada's arrest, the case was confined to US immigration authorities, but it really concerns a federal crime.


Bush, who proclaimed himself a champion of the fight against terrorism, is allowing the Posada Carriles issue to follow administrative channels, he emphasized.

The Vice President described Judge William Abbot's decision to reject the criminal's extradition to Venezuela, as cynical, considering he declared Posada might be tortured in the South American country. This is "a political stratagem," said Rangel as he categorically denied these practices were applied in Venezuela.

This argument is particularly cynical for the US to use, as US soldiers are the ones who abuse prisoners in Guantanamo Naval Base and in Iraq, he indicated.

The Venezuelan Vice President further recalled that Washington trained more than 35,000 soldiers of the continent in the School of the Americas, where they were taught torture practices, many of them applied in Venezuela some years ago.