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Today's
Stories
June
5, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
John Walker Lindh, Revisited
June
4, 2004
Chris
Floyd
Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's
Animal House
Cornwell
/ Penketh
Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy
Wayne
Madsen
Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink
Greg
Moses
Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq
Yitzak
Laor
Before Rafah
Ghali
Hassan
Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte?
Jane
Stillwater
God, the Rapture and Vera Casey
CounterPunch
Wire
D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage?
John
Borowski
Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush
Mike
Griffin
Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW
Alexander Cockburn
Has Bush Gone Over the Edge?
Website
of the Day
Aquae Urbis Romae:
Water and Empire
June
3, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Iran's Nuclear Dilemma
Dr.
Susan Block
America in tha Hood
Michael
Donnelly
The Bully and the Brahmin
John
Chuckman
Insanity in America: US Ranks Number
One in the Deranged
Christopher
Brauchli
The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome
on $12,000 a Month
Samia
Nassar Melki
Caravaggio in Iraq
Mike
Whitney
Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case
Diane
Rejman
Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead
Scott
Morris
"WMDs" in Cuba
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
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
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
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Weekend
Edition
June 5 / 6, 2004
A
First Glimpse at Bush's Tortureshow
John
Walker Lindh, Revisited
By
DAVE LINDORFF
Now that we know the truth behind how
U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been treating captured
fighters (and captured innocent bystanders), it's time to revisit
the case of John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban
fighter" who is now serving 20 years in federal prison.
For had Lindh pursued his case in court, instead of settling
and getting slapped with a gag order, he might have exposed the
whole prisoner abuse scandal two years ago, and spared the U.S.-and
a whole lot of abused or slain POWs-the Abu-Ghraib fiasco.
Lindh, it may be recalled,
was among a group of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters captured and
later, for the most part, slaughtered in northern Afghanistan
by American soldiers and their Northern Alliance allies.
Initially threatened by U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft with being tried as a traitor,
Lindh was eventually charged with terrorism, consorting with
Al Qaeda, and attempting to kill Americans. But he never went
to trial. Instead, he pleaded guilty to just two relatively innocuous
charges. But for those two charges-the first of which (carrying
a grenade), probably innumerable Americans are guilty of, and
the second of which (providing services to an enemy of the U.S.),
could more properly be brought against a number of major U.S.
corporations--Lindh had the book thrown at him by a compliant
federal judge in Virginia. The judge, at the government's request,
also hit him with a gag order barring him from talking about
his experience. As part of his plea bargain agreement, Lindh
was even forced to sign a statement saying: "The defendant
agrees that this agreement puts to rest his claims of mistreatment
by the United states military, and all claims of mistreatment
are withdrawn. The defendant acknowledges that he was not intentionally
mistreated by the U.S. military."
This outlandish and over-the-top
effort to legally muzzle Lindh appears in a harsh new light now
that we know the criminal nature of U.S. prisoner-of-war policies.
In the run-up to his trial,
it was clear from documents submitted by the defense that Lindh
had been viciously treated in captivity. Shot in the leg prior
to his capture, and already starving and badly dehydrated, Lindh
unconscionably was left with his wound untreated and festering
for days despite doctors being readily available. Denied access
to a lawyer, and threatened repeatedly with death, he was duct-taped
to a stretcher and left for long periods of time in an enclosed,
unheated and unlit metal shipping container, removed only during
interrogations, at which time he was still left taped to his
stretcher. (Hundreds of his Taliban and Al Qaeda comrades actually
were deliberately allowed to die in those same containers in
one of the more monstrous war crimes perpetrated during this
conflict.)
In truth, the government's
case against Lindh was always spurious at best. A 20-year-old,
white, middle-class convert to Islam from Marin County, California,
Lindh had only gone to Afghanistan in August 2001, scarcely a
month before the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasion
of Afghanistan. At the time of his arrival there, the Taliban
government, far from being an enemy of America, was still receiving
funding from the U.S. government. Lindh, to the extent that he
was ever a fighter with the Taliban (he hadn't had time for a
decent "boot camp"training in weapons use), was in
fact fighting the Northern Alliance, not America, at the time
of the U.S. invasion. His attorneys maintain that he never was
an enemy of his own country, and in fact had been trapped with
the Taliban in Afghanistan by the surprise U.S. invasion.
What appears to have led Ashcroft
and the U.S. government to drop its serious charges against Lindh,
and to agree to a settlement on minor charges, was his defense
attorneys' plans to go after testimony about his treatment from
other Afghani captives being held at Guantanamo who had witnessed
it.
Had those witnesses been permitted
to testify in his case--as the judge had already said he would
probably agree to, given Lindh's constitutional right to mount
a vigorous defense--there would have been plenty of embarrassing
evidence presented about torture and abuse at the hands of U.S.
troops.
This sorry legal history raises
a couple of very troubling questions.
First of all, the haste with
which the government deep-sixed this case, after first trumpeting
it as a highlight in the "war on terror," and the lengths
to which the attorney general went to silence Lindh, suggest
that the Bush administration well knew what was coming and was
determined to keep its criminal treatment of POWs in Afghanistan
a secret. Second, the closing off of evidence of torture, to
which Lindh himself could have testified, along with any witnesses
he might have called-witnesses who might well have included some
of his torturers and their superior officers-allowed an official
campaign of torture and abuse of POWs to continue and to expand
into Iraq, ultimately leading to the Abu Ghraib scandal and the
discrediting of the entire U.S. war effort. Last, but certainly
not least, Lindh himself, terrified at being railroaded to a
potential death sentence or a sentence to life in prison without
parole, and already a victim of torture and abuse at the hands
of his federal captors, remains almost certainly wrongfully imprisoned-just
one more victim of America's criminal violation of the Geneva
Conventions and our own constitutional right to a fair trial.
In a fair world, Judge T.S.
Ellis, who accommodated the Justice Department by slapping Lindh
with a brutally harsh sentence, and by gratuitously silencing
him and forcing him to forswear any future claim of torture,
would reopen this case in view of what is now known about how
prisoners like Lindh were being treated by U.S. forces.
This is not, however, a fair
world-or a fair legal system--and as more and more judges like
Ellis are appointed to the federal bench, it is becoming even
less fair as time goes by.
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new
book of Counterpunch columns titled "This Can't be Happening!"
to be published this fall by Common Courage Press.
Weekend Edition
Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
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