Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
14, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
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
Click
Here for More Stories.
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May
14, 2004
The Anti-Empire
Report
God, Country
and Torture
By WILLIAM BLUM
On October 21, 1994, the United States
became a State Party to the "Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment".
Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: "No exceptional
circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat
of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency,
may be invoked as a justification for torture."
"If you open the window
[of torture], even just a crack, the cold air of the middle ages
will fill the whole room."{1} "The thing with the soldiers
there, they think because we're Americans, you can do whatever
you want," said Spc. Ramon Leal, an MP who served at Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"You get a burning in
your stomach, a rush, a feeling of hot lead running through your
veins, and you get a sense of power," said another soldier.
"Imagine wearing point-blank body armor, an M-16 and all
the power in the world, and the authority of God. That power
is very addictive."{2} America and God ... Bush, Cheney,
and other eminences of the imperial mafia know well how to invoke
these feelings; with the help of the rest of flag-wavin' and
bible-wavin' America the proper emotions can be easily imparted
down to the ranks. The American part -- the mystique of "America"
-- can also be exported, and has been for decades. Here's Chief
Inspector Basil Lambrou, one of Athens' well-known torturers
under the infamous Greek junta of 1967-74. Hundreds of prisoners
listened to this little speech given by the Inspector, who sat
behind his desk which displayed the red, white, and blue clasped-hand
symbol of American aid. He tried to show the prisoner the absolute
futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by
thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There
are the communists on that side and on this side the free world.
The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans.
Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO,
behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans."{3}
And here's Colin Powell at
the 1996 Republican Convention: America is "a country where
the best is always yet to come, a country that exists by divine
providence." He then punched his fist into the air and shouted
out, "America!"{4}
Defenders of the American soldiers
accused of abusing the prisoners in Iraq have been insisting
that the soldiers were only following orders. At the end of the
Second World War, however, we read moral lectures to the German
people on the inadmissibility of pleading that their participation
in the holocaust was in obedience to their legitimate government.
To prove that we were serious, we hanged the leading examples
of such patriotic loyalty and imprisoned many of the rest.
Cold War
Redux
On May 11, the Senate Armed
Services Committee held a hearing on Iraqi prisoner abuse, during
which Senator James Inhofe (R.-OK) stated the following: "I
have to say when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners
that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning
thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these
prisons.
When he was in charge, they
would take electric drills and drill holes through hands, they
would cut their tongues out, they would cut their ears off. We've
seen accounts of lowering their bodies into vats of acid. ...
and lining up 312 little kids under 12 years old and executing
them."
What does that remind you of?
Right, the October 1990 testimony before a congressional committee
by a young Kuwaiti woman who claimed she had witnessed Iraqi
soldiers taking babies from incubators in Kuwait after Iraq had
invaded and "leaving them on the floor to die". The
story was quickly used by the Bush I administration in its push
for war. The president frequently cited the infants' deaths as
an example of what he said was Iraq's brutal treatment of innocent
Kuwaitis. It turned out to be a hoax, unmitigated war propaganda,
and the young woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti
ambassador to the United States. And the number of babies supposedly
left to die? 312.{5}
The same day as the hearing
a letter was printed in The Washington Post which spoke of "applying
electric shocks, pulling out fingernails, crushing feet, or raping
a loved one's wife, daughter or mother while forcing him to watch
-- all of which were practices employed by Saddam Hussein's henchmen."
And a while ago I received
an email from one of my non-admirers who added to the list with
"Children's eyes gouged out to elicit confessions from a
parent; people having their tongues cut out and then left to
bleed to death on streets; live bodies thrown into large mince
machines." What do we have here? Apparently a campaign highly
reminiscent of the many anti-communist horror stories -- torture
and otherwise -- that during the Cold War were passed around
the anti-communist circuit, each person quoting from the same
initial source, sometimes adding or subtracting a bit. At some
point a member of congress would read the horror story on the
floor of congress and his remarks would thus appear in the Congressional
Record; thereafter, those passing the story around could then
quote the Congressional Record as the source, as Senator Inhofe's
statement can now be quoted citing a Senate hearing.{6}
I wrote to the non-admirer
asking her what evidence she could offer to substantiate her
claims. We then exchanged a few more emails but she had nothing
at all to offer, quoting at one point something from a report
of Amnesty International which made no mention of the subject
at hand.
I've also written to the Senator
and the author of the letter in The Washington Post asking them
for any proof of their claims, but it's too soon to expect any
reply. At the hearing, Sen. Inhofe added that if we're going
to show pictures of American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu
Ghraib, we should also show pictures of the brutalities of Saddam
Hussein, including those of "children being executed".
It will be interesting to see if the good senator can produce
such photos, perhaps of all 312.
Brainwashed
commies
George W. Bush, speaking in
October 2003 after many resistance attacks in Iraq: "The
more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers
will react."{7} Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, speaking in April 2004, depicted the insurrection
and fighting that had risen over nearly a two-week period as
a sign of progress. "I would characterize what we're seeing
right now as a -- as more a symptom of the success that we're
having here in Iraq," he said, explaining that the violence
indicated there was something to fight against -- American progress
in building up Iraq.{8}
Imagine that in the 1980s Russian
leaders had used identical logic and language about how their
war against Afghanistan insurgents was going for them. The American
media would have a field day of snide remarks about those poor
brainwashed, Orwellian commies.
Ungrateful
Iraqis, befuddled Americans
"Another Marine, his face
flushed with anger, approached an interpreter on the base and
said: "I just want to know why my friends are being hurt.
Don't the Iraqis know we are here to help them build something
new and better now that Saddam is gone?"{9}
Yes, they
know that. They just don't believe it.
Apropos of this, Hans Blix,
the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, recently claimed that
Iraq was now worse off than under Saddam Hussein. "Saddam
and his bloody regime has gone, but when figuring out the score
the negatives weigh more," he said.{10}
Noted without
comment
On February 17, 2003, a month
before the US bombing began, I posted to the Internet an essay
entitled "What Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?",
concerning the expected war against Iraq. Included in this were
the words of Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, then at
the American Enterprise Institute (one of the leading drum-beaters
for attacking Iraq): "If we just let our own vision of the
world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try
to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to
this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants,
I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great
songs about us years from now."
More feet
of clay
Former counter-terrorism official
Richard Clarke was the fair-haired boy in March and April as
a result of his testimony before the independent September 11
committee. To a multitude of Americans starved for inspirational
and credible leadership he appeared to be the only official in
the foreign policy establishment who took the pre-September 11
warnings seriously, who was open and honest, and who had the
decency to say he was "sorry" to the families of the
victims.
But in this sad day and age
can such an image hold up once we look over a person's record?
In 1999 the Washington Post
reported that "Current and former administration foreign
policy officials have identified Richard A. Clarke, the National
Security Council's counter-terrorism coordinator, as the leading
proponent for striking el Shifa."{11} This was a reference
to the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that the Clinton administration
had deliberately destroyed the previous year in the stated belief
that it was a plant for making chemical weapons for terrorists.
In actuality, the plant in
Khartoum produced a full range of antibiotics and medicines for
malaria, rheumatism, tuberculosis, diabetes, and other ailments,
in sum total about 90 percent of the drugs used to treat the
most deadly illnesses in that desperately poor country; it was
reportedly one of the biggest and best of its kind in Africa.
In his new book, Against All
Enemies, Clarke discusses the Sudan bombing in several places,
but in none does he give any indication of his role in the matter,
nor does he make any mention at all that the plant was actually
producing medicine. Instead he repeats many of the same fallacious
arguments about how the plant was really producing chemical weapons,
as if these arguments had not been totally discredited since
1998, so much so that when the plant's owner sued the US government,
the United States did not even contest the suit, instead returning
to him his bank account money that had been frozen.
The Dems
pull off another principled coup
On May 8, on his regular weekly
radio broadcast, George W., as expected, commented about the
Iraqi prisoner photos dominating the media at the time. Expecting
this, the Democrats planned a counter commentary for that same
day on their own radio broadcast. And who did the Democrats choose
to discuss this issue of possible violations of the Geneva Conventions?
Gen. Wesley Clark, a genuine war criminal, who led the 1999 bombing
of Yugoslavia which seriously violated those conventions amongst
other international accords.
Decadence
and cruelty
At the peak of the international
scandal about American abuse of Iraqi prisoners came the sale
in New York of a painting by Picasso for a record $104.2 million.
How, I wonder, will the proverbial history books deal with the
level of cruelty and decadence of 21st century America?
William
Blum
is the author of Killing
Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,
Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
NOTES
1. Hans Christian Stroebele,
Green Party member of the German parliament.
2. Knight Ridder newspapers,
May 10, 2004
3. James Becket, Barbarism
in Greece (New York, 1970), p.16. Becket was sent to Greece in
December 1967 by Amnesty International.
4. The Economist (London),
August 17, 1996, U.S. Edition
5. Los Angeles Times March
16, 1991, p.8
6. For a detailed history of
these propaganda campaigns, see: Morris Kominsky, The Hoaxers:
Plain Liars, Fancy Liars, and Damned Liars (Branden Press, Boston,
1970)
7. Washington Post, October
28, 2003, p.1
8. New York Times, April 16,
2004
9. Washington Post, April 14,
2004
10. The Times (London), April
7, 2004
11. Washington Post, October
21, 1999, "Back Channels" column by Vernon Loeb
William Blum <bblum6@aol.com>
is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir <www.killinghope.org>
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To
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in the subject line.
Weekend
Edition Features for May 8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
|