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Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories May 10, 2004 Diane Christian Images & Abstractions & Genitals 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     April 28, 2004 Christopher Brauchli Meet Congressman Know-Nothing: Tom Tancredo Wendy Brinker The Politics of the Numb Faisal Kutty The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence John Chuckman Seeking the Evil One Mike Whitney Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times Tom Mountain Rwanda and the F***** Word Graeme Greenback The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production Tracy McLellan The War Comes Home M. Junaid Alam We are the Barbarians William Loren Katz Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson   April 27, 2004 James Davis The Colombia 3 Acquitted Dave Lindorff Chalabi as Prosecutor Bruce Schneier Terrorist Threats and Political Gain Cockburn / Sengupta British Generals Resist Calls for More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq Walt Brasch Presidential Letters: The Day I Was Asked to Feed an Elephant Saul Landau The Empire in Denial and the Denial of Empire April 26, 2004 Patrick Cockburn Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops Prepare to Enter Najaf Wayne Madsen Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR? Grover Furr Protest, Rebellion, Commitment Elaine Cassel Lies About the Patriot Act Mickey Z. Inspired by Pat Tillman? Greg Moses Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit Gila Svirsky Anarchy in Our Souls Uri Avnery Vanunu and the Terrible Secret April 24 / 25, 2004 William A. Cook Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry and Bush Melt into One Jeffrey St. Clair Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank Brandy Baker A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So Robert Fisk A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free Speech Ben Tripp October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios Nelson Valdés "Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg Lucson Pierre-Charles Haiti's Return to the Future Kurt Nimmo The CIA Killed Pat Tillman Mark Scaramella Does Anybody Know Anything? Patrick Cockburn The Return of Saddam's Generals Gary Engler Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas Col. Dan Smith Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush Greg Weiher Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam... Elaine Cassel Life on the Outside: a Review Vanessa Jones Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney Jim French Agriculture's Bullied Market Hammond Guthrie Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles Poets' Basement Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella April 23, 2004 Ron Jacobs The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal Dave Lindorff Imagination Deficit Disorder Mokhiber / Weissman Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster Norman Solomon Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?" Cynthia McKinney All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization CounterPunch Wire A Bitch Called Wanda Karyn Strickler Sierra Club, Inc. Hammond Guthrie Yellow Caked in the Face Paul de Rooij Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary of the Iraqi Occupation   April 22, 2004 Patrick Cockburn When Terror Came to Basra: "I Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire" Tanya Reinhart The Wall Behind Disengagement Lance Selfa Why is Kucinich Still in the Race? Josh Frank Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches Sen. Robert Byrd Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq William S. Lind Why We Get It Wrong Mickey Z. Undoing the Latches Robert Jensen Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank John L. Hess The New York Times from 30,000 Feet   April 21, 2004 Gary Leupp Yeats on Iraq Alfredo Castro Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners Dr. Susan Block Bush's Taliban Drug Deal William A. Cook George 1 to George 2 Jack Random Iraq and Vietnam Jean-Guy Allard Alarcon Meets the Editors Mike Whitney Charade in the Desert Bill Christison Only Major Policies Changes Can Help Washington Now     April 20, 2004 Dave Lindorff Bush and Kerry Share a Problem Stan Cox Wal-Mart's Magic Numbers Bruce Anderson On Listening to Air America Joseph Kalvoda Czech Mate for Condi Greg Moses Yesterday's Intelligence Stan Goff The Democrats and Iraq Website of the Day Santorum Happens     April 19, 2004 Kurt Nimmo The "Central Hand" of the Resistance Mike Whitney Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles Douglas Valentine 52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1 Rule John Chuckman The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often Triumph Doug Giebel Welcome to the Club Rahul Mahajan Hospital Closings and War Crimes     April 16 / 18, 2004 Robert Fisk Bush Legitimizes Terror Saul Landau Subverting Brazil and Cuba Dave Lindorff Paying for War: $2,150 per Family and Counting Brandy Baker Fallujah's Collateral Damage Mickey Z. The Left Attacks from the Right Bruce Jackson The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit Uns Norman Solomon How the "NewsHour" Changed History Alexander Cockburn Bush, Kerry and Empire   April 15, 2004 Greg Moses Follow the Families, Not the Script Virginia Tilley The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt: Just Change the Channel Ron Jacobs They Coulda Been Champions of the World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic Michael Neumann A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail   April 14, 2004 Tom Reeves Return to Haiti: an American Learning Zone Reza Fiyouzat Japan and Iraq Ron Jacobs What Bush Really Said Diane Christian The Real Passion   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.     Subscribe Online

May 10, 2004 Rationalizing the Rape of a People Mishandled Invasions By REZA FIYOUZAT In view of the fact that a social endeavor as enormous as invading another nation involves an inordinate amount of co-ordination and organizational capability and foresight, it is only natural that surprising turns of events would come up as a matter of fact, and not due to lack of effort. The basic fact is that invaded people do not like being invaded, and they resist. With resistance come friction, difficulty, and surprises. So when, as expected, events do not follow the desired course, what do the organic intellectuals of the invading company do? With persistence and consistency, they focus on the details at the cost of the larger context. Technicalities are brought to the fore and the big picture of shame is thus pushed out of sight. Commentators of the mainstream press as well as some on the left are becoming particularly adept at analyzing those aspects of the invasion of Iraq characterized as having been mishandled by the Bush administration. First the museums' security was mishandled, something about which cultural and humanitarian organizations had warned the administration, months in advance of the invasion (as in, "Go ahead, invade all you need, but please keep the statues intact!"). Then the electricity and other utilities were mishandled. Then the mother of all mishandlings, the disbanding of the army, with its consequent tectonic unemployment fiasco. And now the grandmother of all such, in the form of pictures that refuse to lie. While it is clear what the 'mishandlings' refer to, we see that it has nevertheless become shorthand, and the bigger picture often then takes on an added ambiguous twist, and emerges as a 'mishandled invasion'. On and on, and it gradually may even become a story of missed opportunities and wasted chances. What does this mean? That it is OK to invade as long as you organize it a bit better? That invasions are all right if sponsored by more nations, and in the company of a bigger group of internal and external allies? That the legitimacy of barbarity increases in direct proportion to the number of people exercising it? Is this lack of clear vision something unique to the current round of colonial pursuits? I am afraid that something deeper may be at work. In the history of mankind's evolution and progress to better organized barbarity, one fundamental contribution of both natural and social sciences has been to insert cool, clinical and analytical tools between us and our down-right evil deeds. Thus alienated from them, we are freed to pursue them more vigorously. Shorthand phrases can mask just as much as euphemisms can conceal. But this realization may lead us to other places. After a while deeper discursive displacements may become visible, too. For example, in the literature on the invasion of Vietnam by the US armed forces, an overwhelming amount of the available commentary (during and after the war), by both the mainstream as well as some on the left, has been heavily preoccupied with things like, 'mistakes' made by American lawmakers, policy writers and the armed forces; 'mistakes' made by 'our allies' in the South Vietnam government; or else 'mistakes' made by the media (by covering things the way they did _ either too well or too poorly, given your perspective). And the discourse gets even more fascinating when we read accounts of what the Vietnam War did to 'our soul', 'our vision of ourselves' and 'our self-worth', or how it 'divided us'. Why not just as volubly wonder how it came to be that, while 'we' were indulging in self-pity and self-absorption, 'our leaders' were busy incinerating, raping and pillaging civilizations, families and communities? And why not wonder how to institute practical social conditions such that the same would never happen again? It has also struck me as odd, in almost twenty years of living in the US in four different States north, south, east and west, how forgetful most of Americans are, and how little overt sense of shame or guilt is exhibited by any public official or among most of the ordinary citizens (of any age) for having murdered five million Vietnamese alone. Or the millions killed in Laos and Cambodia, both by American bombs and the genocidal consequences they brought on. No compensation, nor any accounting for all the millions of acres of farm land in Southeast Asia that the US deliberately laid waste to by mines or through burning-and-salinization 'techniques', just to make sure future generations too would continue to perish in some form. Not counting all the other countries the US has invaded, or 'intervened in', at times on behalf of a singular fruit company. Nor counting all the strategic occupations in the Western Hemisphere starting from the occupation of Cuba, run by the aptly named General Shafter, nor the colonization of the Philippines. After all that, do we notice a hint of shame? How about a faint shadow of guilt regarding the near-genocide of the Indian Nations on the American continent? So, it is disconcerting that in the invasion of Iraq (a totally disarmed and starved nation) by the sole superpower on earth, almost from day one of the 'victory' phase, the discussion regarding the 'mishandlings' has dominated a great volume of the commentary; even on the left. All the literature, all the exposes, all the evidence is right there in front of us. With all their technology, all their snoops, all their resources, and with the final clean-bill of health that was issued by Dr. Blix, whose thorough reports indeed reassured the villainous Bush and Blair that Saddam could not defend the Iraqis, and not losing a second too many, their armies invaded. They knew full well that in the barbaric chaos they were about to unleash, they would militarily remain be the biggest, best-provided-for monster with the biggest stick. Nothing was 'mishandled' in that regard. They wanted to create a jungle, and a jungle they created: so as to ensure that their excuses for remaining in the region will stay valid for a long time to come. So, why do we still insist on finding out how they 'mishandled' the invasion, instead of putting our heads together to come up with better forms of spreading real resistance to this war where it is most desperately needed, i.e. in the US? In whose interest do we write, talk and agitate? Are we to advise these ruling elites who have legions and legions of sycophantic functionaries willingly dedicating their expertise in hundred-hour-weeks in thousands? Are we to go along with their recitations of the 'mishandlings' that could have been avoided? Where is the big picture disappearing to? A band of outlaws, who stole the US Presidential Office, deliberately used the resources of the wealthiest nation on earth to put themselves in the midst of a huge amount of others' wealth and resources. From their point of view, sure, they may have 'mishandled' a few 'incidents' here and there. But, such is their language and thus highly indicative of their interests and their designs. For them, it would of course have been better if no looting had happened, if no rapes or 'abuses' were caught on film, if the population just rolled over like a dog, wagging its tail in ecstatic happiness to see daddy come home. Sure they would have liked that. And, sure they 'mishandled' things in a way that such did not happen. But, no matter what they do, no matter how much they organize, something will always 'go wrong' in any invasion. How can it not? Do we think that clean invasions can happen? Just like we think, maybe, that clean revolutions can happen? Do we believe in magic? Has the New Age cosmology been that successful? Historically as well as now, among the left and the center (except for a number of churches), the outrage has been exclusive to, what in the US political spectrum may be called, the far left. Very precious few 'respectable' journalists, academics, media figures, or political functionaries of the center/left have dared construct a very simple truism; invasions are invasions. By nature they are a colossal theft, if anything, of the societal resources of the invaded and the invading nations, by the invading nations' governments and elites. And it costs something very dear: the 'native' people and the children of the invaders sent to do the killing and the humiliating, and their future state of being. One further cost. Who pays for the war? Citizens. And who receives the profits, whose margins are astronomical compared to 'normal' market conditions? The corporations that provide the invading armies with all their necessities. So, not only was the US (and other) national wealth utilized to put a band of criminals in charge of Iraq's natural and national resources, the ruling thieves in the same process transferred a gigantic amount of money from the pockets of taxpayers into those of the corporations all the thieves came from. So, no, nothing was mishandled. So far, everything is going as planned. Those who are suffering do not matter to those who wield the power. The meek may as well be ants, their communities anthills littering the path of 'progress' and 'security'. As for the invaded nation, nothing that results from the arrival of foreign armies can be so politely characterized as a 'mishandling'. For the invaded, the entire episode, from the first step, has a name that does not lend itself to categorizations that have any capability of being mishandled. That name is Rape. Mishandlings have meaning only for the rapist. And the only thing that can really bugger up a rapist's plans is resistance. Resistance, resistance, resistance! No wonder then that the now-infamous photos of the Iraqi prisoners of Abu Ghuraib have done so much damage to the armor of the invaders. Those photos, bearing witness, brought to life the bigger picture. And in true 'rationalist' fashion, not losing a beat after the pictures started to reveal a truer story, the media machinery was put into action to derail the truth yet again, and to refocus the attention of the US public on the details and the minutiae, to talk of exceptions, and to hide the nature of this murderous venture. Do not let the big picture disappear! Spread the outrage and organize it! Reza Fiyouzat can be reached at: rfaze@gol.com 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 WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /