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Today's Stories November 3 / 4, 2007 David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition November 3 / 4, 2007 The Anfal and Shabaniyya Massacres Revisited Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals By RANNIE AMIRI "A man of honor and dignity." -- General David Petraeus' characterization of former Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashem al-Tai, convicted of crimes against humanity for his participation in the genocide of Iraq's Kurds, resulting in 180,000 deaths. It comes as no surprise that to this day, the war criminals "Chemical" Ali Hassan al-Majid, Sultan Hashem al-Tai and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti remain in the safekeeping of the United States. In June, all three were sentenced to death for their role in Saddam Hussein's notorious 1988 extermination campaign against the Kurds, dubbed the Anfal or "Spoils of War" Operation. Their final appeals were rejected by the Iraqi courts and the deadline requiring them to be executed no more than 30 days afterward has long since passed. But the United States refuses to hand them over. Meanwhile the three, along with 12 other co-conspirators, are currently on trial for their involvement in the wholesale slaughter of Iraq's Shia population during the 1991 Uprising or Intifada. Whether it was images of women and children frozen in time by Saddam's use of chemical weapons in Halabja during Anfal or the silent testimony of dozens of unearthed mass graves in southern Iraq, even the war's most ardent critics never denied the brutality of the Ba'ath regime. Yet, it was the United States who betrayed the Kurds in 1988 when billows of gases from chemical weapons flooded their streets, and it was the United States who betrayed the Shia in 1991 when civilians were butchered en masse, and it is the United States who continues to betray Iraq today by sheltering the perpetrators of these very same war crimes, carried out under their watch. It was President Reagan after all who happily provided Saddam with the chemical weapons he used against Iranian soldiers during the bloody Iran-Iraq war and turned a blind-eye when he used them against the Kurds. The Anfal campaign ultimately led to the razing of 4,000 villages in northern Iraq and an estimated 180,000 deaths. This genocidal undertaking is well-known to most Western audiences. Less appreciated however, were the crimes committed in southern Iraq during the 1991 Uprising and the United States complicity in them. A popular revolt was launched there after the defeat and expulsion of the Iraqi Army from Kuwait. Occurring during the Islamic lunar month of Shaban, it is also known as al-Shabaniyya Intifada and was called for by President George Bush Sr. himself on February 15, 1991: "There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside" From March 1 to April 5, 1991, the Iraqi people heeded the call, mistakenly thinking the United States was genuinely interested in removing Saddam from power. The March 3, 1991 ceasefire signed by one General Sultan Hashem al-Tai at the end of the Gulf War prohibited the use of fixed-wing aircraft but did not explicitly bar the use of helicopter gunships. And it was these gunships which were instrumental in allowing Saddam to decisively put down the rebellion. Prior to this, 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces had already fallen and were outside his control. The Republican Guard used these helicopters along with tanks and other heavy artillery in the indiscriminate killing and massacre of anywhere between 60,000 ­ 180,000 Iraqis, rebel and civilian alike, primarily in the Shia-majority south. Men were rounded up and summarily executed, Shia religious sites were desecrated and napalm and white phosphorus bombs rained over cities and villages. The result was the forced displacement of 2 million people, many of whom were gunned down as they fled into the southern marches or neighboring countries. All this while the United States stood by and watched. According to US Army Officer Thomas Isom: "We were watching them shell the train station and other small houses. This was simply designed to kill civilians or terrorize them, which it did. It did not have a military purpose, just artillery impacts on large concentrations of civilians." (Human Rights Watch Report, Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq and Its Aftermath, 1992). As much as the United States claimed to loathe Saddam, their real fear was actually Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran and the perceived threat his Iranian Revolution posed to neighboring Gulf Arab countries, whose oil and subservient leaders were treasured assets. This is why both the Arabs and the United States backed Saddam in his war, and Iraq's Kurds and Shia (the latter erroneously regarded as a fifth column loyal to Iran) paid the price. Nearly two decades later, those who masterminded the brutal crackdowns and subsequently convicted of crimes against humanity for them, remain safe in the protective custody of the Americans. Although the infamous Chemical Ali is unlikely to escape the hangman's noose, the United States and many Sunni Arab Iraqis are objecting to the execution of General Sultan al-Tai, who proclaimed his innocence by stating he was only "following orders." Some allege that in his capacity as defense minister during the March 2003 invasion he ordered the Iraqi Army to lay low, paving the way for a quick victory. In addition, it is feared his execution might alienate Iraq's Sunni Arab community where he is still held in high regard. Indeed it is this very community that is now being armed in inverse proportion to the strength of al-Qaeda in Iraq. As the war drums beat louder against Iran, does the United States also want to spare someone of al-Tai's stature so that he might reprise his military role, possibly leading the Sunnis in a future fight against Iraq's Shia-dominated--and Iran-friendly--government? Many regard the trials of Ba'ath party officials illegitimate for being held under an imposed occupation. This perception is misplaced. The real illegitimacy of these trials is how war criminals can be so easily protected from punishment by the same people who armed and watched them carry out their abhorrent acts, not even flinching while they did so. Yet one more betrayal of the Iraqi people to pile atop the bodies of so many others. Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at: rbamiri@yahoo.com.   The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! Israel's Very Dangerous Gamble STEPHEN GREEN reports on the real motivations behind Israel's MISSILE STRIKE on SYRIA. PETER MONTAGUE on the NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE or How the Nuke Industry is using Gore's Prize and Global Warming to Plot Its Big Comeback. WILLIAM BLUM on the DEVALUING of "ANTI-SEMITE" or How to Make a Term Meaningless. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. 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Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! New From CounterPunch Books The Secret Language of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD! Click Here to Buy! Cassidy on Tour Click Here for Dates & Venues "The Case Against Israel" Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Click Here to Buy! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal Click Here to Order!   Grand Theft Pentagon How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism         The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Humanitarian Imperialism By Jean Bricmont   CITY BEAUTIFUL By Tennessee Reed     Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh   The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"