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Today's
Stories
May
9, 2005
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Straight to Bechtel
May
7 / 8, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Who Beat Hitler?
Gary
Leupp
Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism
Saul
Landau
Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups
Joe
DeRaymond
Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega
Daniela
Ponce
Seeing Chile in Nepal
Heather
Williams
Hollywood Does Enron
Gregory
Elich
Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice
Anis
Memon
To Cuba and Back
John
Chuckman
The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism"
Mike
Whitney
Hard Right Rage Against the Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq
War Grinds On
Colin
Kalmbacher
Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont.
Lance
Selfa
Uprising in Mexico City
Fred
Gardner
"Getting High is a Little Like Cuba"
Ben
Tripp
Letters on Wittgenstein
Mickey
Z.
The Mother of All Days
Richard
Joseph
Those Patriotic Magnets
Dr.
Susan Block
Come As You Are: Masturbation 101
Poets'
Basement
Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert
May
6, 2005
Patrick
Cockburn
Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and
Blood
Erin
Yoshioka
Another "3 Strikes" Travesty:
Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison?
Sam
Husseini
Talking with Syrians
Dave
Lindorff
Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters
Kevin
Zeese
Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead
Guilty
Joshua
Frank
An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War
Dan
Bacher
Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water
Raid
P.
Sainath
India's Bloody Water Wars
May
5, 2005
Carles
Mutaner
Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist"
or "Populist?"
Carl
G. Estabrook
Is There Any Hope for the Pope?
Farrah
Hassen
The US's Syrian Obsession
Kevin
Zeese
"Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview
with Patrick Resta
Michael
Leonardi
May Day with an American Soldier in Rome
Bennett
Ramberg
The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You
Ray
McGovern
The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit
Norman
Solomon
Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran
Nicole
Colson
The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights
Brian
Concannon, Jr.
Clearing the Fences in Haiti
May
4, 2005
Colin
Kalmbacher
Ann Coulter and the Police State:
Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested
John
Walsh
Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying
on Air America to Support the War
Greg
Moses
Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises
"Birth of a Nation"
Ali
Khan
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart
Chris
Floyd
Ring Them Bells
Linda
S. Heard
D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics
Dave
Zirin
The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle
William
S. Lind
Fool's Paradise
Gary
Leupp
Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking
the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution
Website
of the Day
Kent State, May 4, 1970
May
3, 2005
Dave
Lindorff
Bush has Grasped the Third Rail,
Now Turn on the Juice
Brian
Cloughley
Halliburton's War Loot
Ira
Kurzban
Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers
Seth
Sandronsky
Towards Debtors' Prisons?
Gilad
Atzmon
The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More
Michael
Donnelly
Branding Eco Collapse
Alex
Sanchez
Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush?
Peter
Linebaugh
Magna Carta and May Day
May
2, 2005
Ron
Jacobs
Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement
Stan
Goff
The Case of Hasan Akbar
Karyn
Strickler
Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics
Joshua
Frank
Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly
Kevin
Zeese
Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam
Vicente
Navarro
Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician
April
30 / May 1, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and
"Credibility"
Gabriel
Kolko
Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End
of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later
Jennifer
Loewenstein
The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood
Lee
Sustar
City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago
Saul
Landau
The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power
T.W.
Croft
The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy
Nikolas
Kozloff
Fox News v. Hugo Chavez
William
Blum
Never-Ending Double Standards
Dave
Lindorff
Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly
Joshua
Frank
The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls
Doug
Giebel
Saving Jane Fonda
Steven
Erlanger
A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau
Chief
Fred
Gardner
Washington State Doctor Harassed
Mike
Whitney
Another Mad Bush Press Conference
Kurt
Nimmo
Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine
Joe
DeRaymond
A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania
Michael
Dickinson
Flags
Mickey
Z.
May Day at Yankee Stadium
Justin
Taylor
The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
Save Barbados's Cowpastor
April
29, 2005
W.
John Green
Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death
Squads?
Luke
Brothers
Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas
Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT
Norman
Solomon
War, Aid and Public Relations
M.
Junaid Alam
The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption
Jackie
Corr
The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens
Hunter
Greer
Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally,
a Use for Standardized Testing!
Sharon
Smith
The New Assault on Women's Rights:
Why are the Democrats Silent?
Website
of the Day
Tony Blair's Election Rap
April
28, 2005
Omar
Waraich
Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview
Kevin
Zeese
Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off?
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torture Tort Reform
Greg
Moses
Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes
Toni
Solo
Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever?
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums
Werther
George Will Revises the Vietnam War
April
27, 2005
John
Ross
Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death
Joshua
Frank
DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias
Ray
McGovern
The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets
the Eye
Mark
Donham
Government Pettiness and Wetland
Destruction
Dan
Smith
Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?
April
26, 2005
Dave
Lindorff
Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder
Alevtina
Rea
Magic of the Yellow Emperor
Greg
Moses
The Senator and the Narc Pirates of
Highway 281
Joshua
Frank
Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards
on Ruzicka
Diana
Johnstone
The French are At It Again
April
25, 2005
Uri
Avnery
The Persecution of Vanunu
Alison
Weir
The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT
Minimizes Palestinian Deaths
Lee
Sustar
Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life
of Dave Yettaw
Leonardo
Boff
A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger:
a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power?
Gary
Leupp
Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton
April
23 / 24, 2005
Alexander
Cockburn
Time's Buried Hitler Cover
Gary
Leupp
The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations
in China
James
Petras
Elections for Democracy or Empire?
Harry
Browne
Springsteen's "Devils and
Dust"
Fred
Gardner
The Custody Threat
Ron
Jacobs
The Desterrados of Colombia: They
are not Collateral Damage
Elizabeth
Schulte
Why Backing Democrats is Pulling
the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right
Chris
Floyd
Oil, Guns and Banks
April
22, 2005
Saul
Landau
The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries
Forever
Kevin
Zeese
Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation
Joshua
Frank
Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature
Mike
Whitney
God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's
Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses
Michael
Flynn
Wolfowitz on Top of the World
Lee
Sustar
The One-Sided Class War
Website
of the Day
Bitter Greens
April
21, 2005
Bill
Quigley
The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for
Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's X-Files
Jason
Leopold
Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse
Than the Exxon Valdez?
Kathleen
Christison
Sharon's 92 Percent Solution:
How the Misperceptions Roll On
April 20, 2005
April 20, 2005
John Ross
Lopez
Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two)
Kevin Zeese
Halliburton:
Poster Child of the War Profiteers
Uri Avnery
The
100 Days of Abu Mazen
Website of the Day
The House that Jack Built
April 19, 2005
Jean-Guy Allard
An
Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's
Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for
the White House?"
Dave Lindorff
What's
Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight
Neve Gordon
Before
the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories
Brian Concannon, Jr
Immaculate Evasions in Haiti
Murray Hudson
Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides
Frank B. Ford
Poem for Marla Ruzicka
Monty Python
Memo to Pope Rat
Michael Dickinson
Cardinal Sins
Paul Craig
Roberts
Outsourcing
the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism
Website of the Day
Strindberg and Helium
April 18, 2005
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese
The
Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest
John Ross
Mexico's
Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness
Brian McKenna
Dow
Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan
Mike Whitney
The NYT in Fallujah
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Peace in Tatters
Dave Zirin
Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop
Eli Stephens
The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson
Harry Browne
War
and Elections in Britain and Ireland
Website of
the Day
A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest
April 16 /
17, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Message
in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada
Mark Dow
The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag
Omar Waraich
Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain
Robert Buzzanco
How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq
Sherry Wolf
Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's
Liberation?
Fred Gardner
The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana
Ron Jacobs
Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities
Mark Weisbrot
CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages
John Pardon
The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen
Yoshie Furuhashi
Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit
Industry
Mike Roselle
Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism?
Ralph Nader
Scientists or Celebrities?
Ramzy Baroud
Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair
Jackson Thoreau
Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter
Michael Dickinson
"Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul
Richard Neville
Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld™
Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney
Website of the Weekend
Rebel Angel
April 15, 2005
Brian Cloughley
Diplomacy,
Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice
Bill Glahn
No
Child Left a Dime
Mickey Z.
One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich
Stephanie McMillan
Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit
Josh Mahan
Victoria's Dirty Secret
David Russitano
Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up?
Jorge Mariscal
Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend
Rodolfo "Corky"
Gonzales
"I am Joaquin"
Tom Reeves
Students
Rise Again in Québec
April 14, 2005
Karyn Strickler
Red
States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act
Pat Williams
The
Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West
Jessica Pupovac
What
You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy
Joshua Frank
Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt.
Jerzy Mankowski
Jeffrey
Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland
Talli Naumann
Right-to-Know in Mexico
Antony Loewenstein
The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch
Virginia Rodino
Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
Bush's
Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports
Website of the Day
The 13th
Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland
April 13, 2005
Maria Carrión
Bolton
in the Western Sahara
Mike Whitney
Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando
Botero
Terry Jones
Let Them Eat Bombs
Dave Lindorff
A Sickening Error
Nathaniel Livingston, Jr.
Ethnic Cleansing at Air America
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran
Don Fitz
Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative
to Pesticides
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences
JG
The
Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34
Jack McCarthy
Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee
Kevin Zeese
Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou
Jeffrey St.
Clair
How
Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's
Environmental Champions
April 12, 2005
John Wheat
Gibson
The
Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot
Act
Kevin Zeese
The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now
Alan Farago
The
Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida
Dave Lindorff
Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to
White Alabamans
Ron Jacobs
Bob
Dylan at the Crossroads
Nelson P. Valdes
Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie
Dave Zirin
War
Games and War Names
Website of the Day
Parents Against the Draft
April 11, 2005
Tom Barry
Negroponte
and the Eclipse of the CIA
Saul Landau
Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead:
Contempt for the Rest Us
Monique Dols
Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad
Phil Gasper
Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt
Mike Whitney
See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media
Edwin Krales
The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry
Paul de Rooij
Undermining
Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects
Website of the Day
Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition
April 9 / 10,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Torture
Air, Incorporated
William A. Cook
Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights
Abuses
Gary Leupp
My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru
Alan Maass
Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary
Laura Carlsen
Democracy Sinking in Mexico
Joe DeRaymond
Death and Displacement in Colombia
Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again)
Dave Lindorff
The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar
Greg Moses
Growling at Hallliburton
Fred Gardner
Southern Station Session
Justin Smith
The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as
Bad Old Days
Ron Jacobs
George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones
M. Junaid Alam
No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US
Ira Kay
West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the
World
Elizabeth Schulte
From McCarthyism to COINTELPRO: the Ongoing War on the Left
Jackie Corr
Stranger in a Strange Land: What Bush Didn't See in Montana
Christopher
Brauchli
From Darfur to Iraq: Crime Without Punishment
Leslie A. Fiedler
On Saul Bellow: "The Age of the Jewish-American Novel is
Over"
Ben Tripp
Pocket Furniture
Poets Basement
Lamantia, Engel, Louise, Albert and Curtis
Website of
the Weekend
Military Free Zones
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
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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
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CounterPunch
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Impeach
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Click
Here for More Stories.
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May 9, 2005
The Occupation, Year Two
"Mission
Accomplished"
By
ROBERT FISK
The
Independent
Two years after "Mission Accomplished",
whatever moral stature the United States could claim at the end
of its invasion of Iraq has long ago been squandered in the torture
and abuse and deaths at Abu Ghraib. That the symbol of Saddam
Hussein's brutality should have been turned by his own enemies
into the symbol of their own brutality is a singularly ironic
epitaph for the whole Iraq adventure. We have all been contaminated
by the cruelty of the interrogators and the guards and prison
commanders.
But this is not only about
Abu Ghraib. There are clear and proven connections now between
the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the cruelty at the Americans' Bagram
prison in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Curiously, General
Janis Karpinski, the only senior US officer facing charges over
Abu Ghraib, admitted to me a year earlier when I visited the
prison that she had been at Guantanamo Bay, but that at Abu Ghraib
she was not permitted to attend interrogations - which seems
very odd.
A vast quantity of evidence
has now been built up on the system which the Americans have
created for mistreating and torturing prisoners. I have interviewed
a Palestinian who gave me compelling evidence of anal rape with
wooden poles at Bagram - by Americans, not by Afghans.
Many of the stories now coming
out of Guantanamo - the sexual humiliation of Muslim prisoners,
their shackling to seats in which they defecate and urinate,
the use of pornography to make Muslim prisoners feel impure,
the female interrogators who wear little clothing (or, in one
case, pretended to smear menstrual blood on a prisoner's face)
- are increasingly proved true. Iraqis whom I have questioned
at great length over many hours, speak with candour of terrifying
beatings from military and civilian interrogators, not just in
Abu Ghraib but in US bases elsewhere in Iraq.
At the American camp outside
Fallujah, prisoners are beaten with full plastic water bottles
which break, cutting the skin. At Abu Ghraib, prison dogs have
been used to frighten and to bite prisoners.
How did this culture of filth
start in America's "war on terror"? The institutionalised
injustice which we have witnessed across the world, the vile
American "renditions" in which prisoners are freighted
to countries where they can be roasted, electrified or, in Uzbekistan,
cooked alive in fat? As Bob Herbert wrote in The New York Times,
what seemed mind-boggling when the first pictures emerged from
Abu Ghraib is now routine, typical of the abuse that has "permeated
the Bush administration's operations".
Amnesty, in a chilling 200-page
document in October, traced the permeation of Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld's memos into the prisoner interrogation system
and the weasel-worded authorisation of torture. In August 2002,
for example, only a few months after Bush spoke under the "Mission
Accomplished" banner, a Pentagon report stated that "in
order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority
to manage a military campaign, [the US law prohibiting torture]
must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken
pursuant to his Commander- in-Chief authority." What does
that mean other than permission from Bush to torture?
A 2004 Pentagon report uses
words designed to allow interrogators to use cruelty without
fear of court actions: "Even if the defendant knows that
severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm
is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent
[to be guilty of torture] even though the defendant did not act
in good faith."
The man who directly institutionalised
cruel sessions of interrogation in Abu Ghraib was Major-General
Geoffrey Miller, the Guantanamo commander who flew to Abu Ghraib
to "Gitmo-ize the confinement operation" there. There
followed the increased use of painful shackling and the frequent
forcible stripping of prisoners. Maj-Gen Miller's report following
his visit in 2003 spoke of the need for a detention guard force
at Abu Ghraib that "sets the conditions for the successful
interrogation and exploitation of the internees/detainees".
According to Gen Karpinski, Maj-Gen Miller said the prisoners
"are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe they're
more than a dog, then you've lost control of them".
The trail of prisons that now
lies across Iraq is a shameful symbol not only of our cruelty
but of our failure to create the circumstances in which a new
Iraq might take shape. You may hold elections and create a government,
but when this military sickness is allowed to spread, the whole
purpose of democracy is overturned. The "new" Iraq
will learn from these interrogation centres how they should treat
prisoners and, inevitably, the "new" Iraqis will take
over Abu Ghraib and return it to the status it had under Saddam
and the whole purpose of the invasion (or at least the official
version) will be lost.
With an insurgency growing
ever more vicious and uncontrollable, the emptiness of Mr Bush's
silly boast is plain. The real mission, it seems, was to institutionalise
the cruelty of Western armies, staining us forever with the depravity
of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Bagram - not to mention the secret
prisons which even the Red Cross cannot visit and wherein who
knows what vileness is conducted. What, I wonder, is our next
"mission"?
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and
author of Pity
the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's
collection, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book, The
Conquest of the Middle East, will be released this fall.
|
