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Today's
Stories
June
5, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited
June
4, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's
Animal House
Cornwell
/ Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy
Wayne
Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink
Greg
Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq
Yitzak
Laor
Before Rafah
Ghali
Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?
Jane
Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey
CounterPunch
Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?
John
Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush
Mike
Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW
Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?
Website
of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire
June
3, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma
Dr.
Susan Block
America in tha Hood
Michael
Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin
John
Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number
One in the Deranged
Christopher
Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome
on $12,000 a Month
Samia
Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq
Mike
Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case
Diane
Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead
Scott
Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Weekend
Edition
June 5 / 6, 2004
I
Have Been in Torture Photos, Too
Abu
Ghraib is No Surprise to Irish Republicans
By
GERRY ADAMS
News of the ill-treatment of prisoners
in Iraq created no great surprise in republican Ireland. We have
seen and heard it all before. Some of us have even survived that
type of treatment. Suggestions that the brutality in Iraq was
meted out by a few miscreants aren't even seriously entertained
here. We have seen and heard all that before as well. But our
experience is that, while individuals may bring a particular
impact to their work, they do so within interrogative practices
authorised by their superiors.
For example, the interrogation
techniques which were used following the internment swoops in
the north of Ireland in 1971 were taught to the RUC by British
military officers. Someone authorised this. The first internment
swoops, "Operation Demetrius", saw hundreds of people
systematically beaten and forced to run the gauntlet of war dogs,
batons and boots.
Some were stripped naked and
had black hessian bags placed over their heads. These bags kept
out all light and extended down over the head to the shoulders.
As the men stood spread-eagled against the wall, their legs were
kicked out from under them. They were beaten with batons and
fists on the testicles and kidneys and kicked between the legs.
Radiators and electric fires were placed under them as they were
stretched over benches. Arms were twisted, fingers were twisted,
ribs were pummelled, objects were shoved up the anus, they were
burned with matches and treated to games of Russian roulette.
Some of them were taken up in helicopters and flung out, thinking
that they were high in the sky when they were only five or six
feet off the ground. All the time they were hooded, handcuffed
and subjected to a high-pitched unrelenting noise.
This was later described as
extra-sensory deprivation. It went on for days. During this process
some of them were photographed in the nude.
And although these cases ended
up in Europe, and the British government paid thousands in compensation,
it didn't stop the torture and ill-treatment of detainees. It
just made the British government and its military and intelligence
agencies more careful about how they carried it out and ensured
that they changed the laws to protect the torturers and make
it very difficult to expose the guilty.
I have been arrested a few
times and interrogated on each occasion by a mixture of RUC or
British army personnel. The first time was in Palace Barracks
in 1972. I was placed in a cubicle in a barracks-style wooden
hut and made to face a wall of boards with holes in it, which
had the effect of inducing images, shapes and shadows. There
were other detainees in the rest of the cubicles. Though I didn't
see them I could hear the screaming and shouting. I presumed
they got the same treatment as me, punches to the back of the
head, ears, small of the back, between the legs. From this room,
over a period of days, I was taken back and forth to interrogation
rooms.
On these journeys my captors
went to very elaborate lengths to make sure that I saw nobody
and that no one saw me. I was literally bounced off walls and
into doorways. Once I was told I had to be fingerprinted, and
when my hands were forcibly outstretched over a table, a screaming,
shouting and apparently deranged man in a blood-stained apron
came at me armed with a hatchet.
Another time my captors tried
to administer what they called a truth drug.
Once a berserk man came into
the room yelling and shouting. He pulled a gun and made as if
he was trying to shoot at me while others restrained him.
In between these episodes I
was put up against a wall, spread-eagled and beaten soundly around
the kidneys and up between the legs, on my back and on the backs
of my legs. The beating was systematic and quite clinical. There
was no anger in it.
During my days in Palace Barracks
I tried to make a formal complaint about my ill-treatment. My
interrogators ignored this and the uniformed RUC officers also
ignored my demand when I was handed over to them. Eventually,
however, I was permitted to make a formal complaint before leaving.
But when I was taken to fill out a form I was confronted by a
number of large baton-wielding redcaps who sought to dissuade
me from complaining. I knew I was leaving so I ignored them and
filled in the form.
Some years later I was arrested
again, this time with some friends. We were taken to a local
RUC barracks on the Springfield Road. There I was taken into
a cell and beaten for what seemed to be an endless time. All
the people who beat me were in plain clothes. They had English
accents.
After the first initial flurry,
which I resisted briefly, the beating became a dogged punching
and kicking match with me as the punch bag. I was forced into
the search position, palms against the walls, body at an acute
angle, legs well spread. They beat me systematically. I fell
to the ground. Buckets of water were flung over me. I was stripped
naked. Once I was aroused from unconsciousness by a British army
doctor. He seemed concerned about damage to my kidneys. After
he examined me he left and the beatings began again. At one point
a plastic bucket was placed over my head. I was left in the company
of two uniformed British soldiers. I could see their camouflage
trousers and heavy boots from beneath the rim of the bucket.
One of them stubbed his cigarette out on my wrist. His mate rebuked
him.
When the interrogators returned
they were in a totally different mood and very friendly. I was
given my clothes back, parts of them still damp. One of them
even combed my hair. I could barely walk upright and I was very
badly marked. In the barrack yard I was reunited with my friends
and photographs were taken of us with our arresting party. For
a short time other British soldiers, individually and in groups,
posed beside us. Someone even videoed the proceedings.
We were to learn from all the
banter that there was a bounty for the soldiers who captured
us. According to them we were on an "A" list, that
is to be shot on sight. The various regiments kept a book which
had accumulated considerable booty for whoever succeeded in apprehending
us, dead or alive. From the craic in the barracks yard it was
obvious that the lucky ones had won a considerable prize.
So for some time we were photographed
in the company of young, noisy, exuberant squaddies. I'm sure
we were not a pretty sight. I'm also sure that they were grinning
as much as the soldiers in the photographs we have all seen recently.
Our photos were never published, but somewhere, in some regimental
museum or in the top of somebody's wardrobe or in the bottom
of a drawer, there are photographs of me and my friends and our
captors. To the victor, the spoils.
Gerry Adams is president of Sinn Fein and MP
for Belfast West.
This column originally appeared
in the Guardian.
Weekend
Edition Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
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