Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
24, 2004
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
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
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
Bill
and Kathleen Christison
The US Can't Win
Vijay
Prashad
For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004
Ray
Hanania
Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.?
Greg
Moses
Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC
Michael
Gillespie
Who is Kenneth deGraffenried?
Josh
Frank
Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry?
Gary
Corseri
Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave
Kevin
Alexander Gray
If Malcolm Were Alive
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
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
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
24, 2004
Open
Season in Iraq
MAMs
(Military-Age Males) Are Back
By
STAN GOFF
In 1963, well before the American public
generally understood where Vietnam was, a young Army captain
led a South Vietnamese unit through the A Shau Valley to systematically
burn villages to the ground. This was to deprive the so-called
Vietcong of any base of support, and was called "draining
the sea," a reference to Mao's dictum that the guerrilla
is the fish and the population is the sea.
That captain would later write,
"I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age
male. If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked
remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and
fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence
of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at
him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom
I had served... was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing
MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The
kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions
of right and wrong."
On March 16, 1968, the US Infantry
of C Company, Task Force Barker, 11th Infantry Brigade, Americal
Division went into a Vietnamese hamlet designated My Lai 4 and
killed 347 unarmed men, women, and children, engaging in rape
and torture along the way for four hours before a US helicopter
pilot who observed the massacre ordered his door gunners to open
fire on the grunts if they didn't desist. The chopper pilot,
however, did not report the massacre.
Six months later, a young enlisted
man, Spec 4 Tom Glen, sent a letter to General Creighton Abrams,
commander of US forces in Vietnam. Without specifically mentioning
My Lai, Glen said that murder had become a routine part of Americal
operations. The letter was shunted over to Americal Divison,
and then to the office of the same officer who had been leading
the South Vietnamese arson campaign five years earlier, since
promoted to major. He was now the deputy assistant Chief of Staff
of the division--a functionary who was directed to craft a response
to this report of widespread atrocities against Vietnamese civilians.
"In direct refutation
of this portrayal," wrote the officer dismissively and with
no investigation whatsoever, "is the fact that relations
between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
Perhaps he believed that those killed were MAMs, and therefore
outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions and international
law.
That officer is now the Secretary
of State, Colin Powell, who is still dutifully spinning out prevarications
and excuses for his massahs. Apparently his  perceptions of right and wrong
are still dulled by his brief experience of "combat,"
burning people's houses and barns and crops and ordering that
young men who run from heliborne machine gun fire be killed because
running away from machinegun fire is... "hostile."
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the
MAMs are back.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt,
the rat-faced boy of CENTCOM, with help from a Marine moron named
Mattis, has resurrected the MAM to justify coordinated air-land
attacks against weddings.
At 3 AM, on May 19th, 2004,
the Rakat family of Makr al-Deeb--a village in western Iraq--were
winding down after an all night party celebrating a double wedding,
when American war planes suddenly screamed in from over the dark
horizon and dumped a fiery axis of bombs across the village.
In the wake of the bombing "prep," ground troops equipped
with night vision equipment, explosives, and expensive aimpoint
sights on their weapons, swept over the shattered ruins and through
the terrified and fleeing wedding guests delivering a kind of
close-up coup.
Neil McKay writes a harrowing
account in the Sunday Herald, in which witnesses describe the
ground assault as little different than the My Lai incident,
just shorter and on a smaller scale. Troops were razing buildings
and killing people as they were encountered. People's children
were killed in front of them.
There is an unofficial excuse
making the rounds that this was a mistake, that war planes targeted
the wedding because this "alien culture" fires weapons
into the air during celebrations. This comports well with the
notion that being sodomized and sexually humiliated and beaten
to death are "particularly offensive to Arabs," as
if Americans, for example, would equate this treatment to root
canal work--unpleasant but tolerable.
If it were an error from the
air, how in the hell did a ground force follow through for the
air attack? I can tell you how. There was no error. These planes
were not randomly cruising the Iraqi skies at 3 AM, and suddenly
responding to ground fire. And ground troops don't suddenly show
up at the same place. Combined air-ground operations require
detailed planning and coordination, which means this attack was
planned in advance. I don't know what really happened that killed
45 people at Makr al-Deeb, but I can assure readers that this
premeditation is part of it.
The official line, adopted
as the Abu Ghraib scandal metastasizes into a political crisis
for the Bush administration, is that there was no error at all,
and that there was no wedding. They were combatants, pure and
simple, and goddamit we are not going to apologize to anyone
for it. Foreign fighters every one of them, and that whole fucking
village is just a pack of rag-headed liars.
"How many people go into
the middle of the desert to hold a wedding eighty miles from
the nearest civilization," scoffed Major General James Mattis
of the 1st Marines. "There were more than two dozen MILITARY-AGED
MALES."
Either Mattis is shameless
or he is an idiot. We can't rule out either... or both. It's
in the job description for senior officers right now--probably
a line on their officer evaluation reports--if they want their
careers to progress.
Makr al-Deeb is a real village
in a real civilization that is, oh by the way General, a hell
of a lot older than the one you hail from.
Kimmitt apparently felt compelled
to top Mattis for stupidity, when he blurted out last week that,
"There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people
have celebrations, too."
The manufacture of evidence
is now experiencing a speed-up, with Kimmitt telling a yet-again-obedient
press corps that there were military items and even possibly
cocaine (!) on the site (no fetishes for devil worship... yet)
, and no evidence of a wedding. To bolster this preposterous
case, they have provided snapshots of (gasp) binoculars, and
virtually the entire US press corps has forgotten that Colin
Powell presented doctored photos to the UN just last year. The
press forgot, because they never reported it. Now they are submissively
echoing the Kimmitt evidence photos and the cover story that
goes with them. Kimmitt says there is categorically no evidence
of a wedding at all, and he stubbornly denies that ANY children
were killed, even though every Iraqi medical official says there
were at least 15. Liars, according to Kimmitt.
"In direct refutation
of this portrayal," Kimmitt might have said, "is the
fact that relations between American soldiers and the Iraqi people
are excellent."
Lo and behold, however, there
is an independent press still surviving in the marginal niches
of post-modern capitalism--where the image is all--and they are
hauling facts out from time to time that smell up the area like
a pile of decomposing bodies. A video has surfaced of the site,
and there is ample evidence of dead children, musical instruments,
and all the paraphernalia of... a wedding. Oops.
The footage was shown on Al-Arabiya
television, whereupon the weasel Kimmitt and his dour gangsters
demanded that Al-Arabiya give them the name of the cameraman
who shot the video. Maybe they planned a Mazen Dana treatment
for the offender--Dana being the Reuters journalist who was shot
dead by US troops when his camera's eye had drifted to close
to their actions.
We are reaching a point of
polarization with respect to this war, where these oxygen thieves
with suits and stars feel they can get away with the MAM argument,
justifying the murder of anyone who is male, military-aged and
brown. We have reached some kind of social baseline of racially-stupefied
consensus, where all that PC posturing is no longer necessary,
where another half-wit in Congress can say he is "outraged
at the outrage," and there is 35% of the US population that
will sit perfectly still for it, many even cheering it on. For
that polarization to be complete, we need 35% of the population
that sets aside their maddening liberal squeamishness and dithering
and demands that these suits and stars be strung up by their
testicles.
We need a good, in-your-face,
knock-down, drag-out fight in this place.
Anyone who thinks, at this
point, that the election of that hound-dog from Massachusetts--when
he promises to send MORE troops to Iraq--is going to fundamentally
change any of this is smoking angel dust. It's getting close
to grown-up time, and we're going to have to put aside our electoral
cake and ice cream.
This place hasn't had a good
old fashioned DEEP-DOWN change since Reconstruction. It's time.
Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous
Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti"
(Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full
Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He
is a member of the BRING
THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special
Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier.
Email for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is bthn@mfso.org.
Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org
Weekend Edition
Features for 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
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