Today's Stories

July 16, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Star Whores: How John McCain Doomed Mt. Graham

July 15, 2008

Michael Hudson
Why the Bail Out of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae is Bad Economic Policy

Brian Cloughley
Iran's Missile Tests

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Militia May Live to Fight Another Day

John Ross
Crunchtime for Mexico's Oil

Howard Lisnoff
When Torture Was Practiced on U.S. Soil

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament

July 14, 2008

Uri Avnery
Will Israel and / or the US Attack Iran?

Paul Craig Roberts
Enabling Tyranny

Trish Schuh
Talking to Iran's Only Jewish Member of Parliament: an Interview with Morris Motamed

Patrick Cockburn
Immunity in Iraq

Mike Whitney
Betancourt Unbound

Alan Farago
Will Miami's Cubans Vote Blue?

Seth Sandronsky
Taxing U.S. Stocks and Bonds

Phyllis Pollack
Stones Paint It Black

Website of the Day
Our Pal in Butte, Jackie Corr, RIP

July 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Lock and Load--It's the Law!

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Origins of the Western Greens

James Abourezk
Talking World War III Blues: From Dylan to Iran

Nicole Colson
The Ethanol Scam

Stan Cox
Fixing a Broken Agriculture

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Is There an Oil Shortage?

Wajahat Ali /
Omid Safi
The Future of Iran: an Interview with Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi

John Stauber
There May be a Left, But is it Moving? An Interview with David Sirota

Alan Farago
The Crash of the King of Liquidity

Missy Beattie
Dark Neighborhoods

Robert Fantina
Bush's Last Yes Man: Canada, Guantanamo and Yankee Poodles

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak Hires the Mosque

Gregory Kafoury
After the Obama Betrayal

Fran Shor
The Audacity of Hype

Martha Rosenberg
Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung

David Macaray
Will There be an Actors Strike?

Andrew Wimmer
No Lies! No War!

Ron Jacobs
They Call Me the Seeker

Farzana Versey
The Kashmir Chiaroscuro

Kim Nicolini
Angelina Jolie's Wanted: Taking the M-Fers Down with Guns and Exploding Rats

Poets' Basement
Wright, Fleming, Solomon and Birnbaum

Website of the Weekend
Parsing Jesse Ventura

July 11, 2008

Kevin Alexander Gray
Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Historical Amnesia and the Shoot Down of Iran Air Flight 655

Peter Morici
Breaking Down the Trade Deficit

Mike Whitney
Worse Than McCain?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Oiling the War Machine

Robert Weissman
Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil

Ramzy Baroud
The Not-So-Historic Barak-Talabani Handshake

Kelly Overton
If There is a Chimp Heaven

Adrian Burgos
In Praise of Jules Tygiel

Website of the Day
Wendell Berry on Mountaintop Removal

July 10, 2008

Brian McKenna
McCain's Melanoma Cover-Up

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

Saul Landau
Mississippi River Blues

Ron Jacobs
Who Will Leave Iraq First?

Joshua Frank
Cutting Deals with Big Timber's Darth Vader

Peter Morici
What's Driving the Wall Street Rout

Alan Maass
Jesse Helms Finally Does the Right Thing

Robert Weissman
Humanitarian Failure at the G8

William Blum
Dr. Strangelove

Alan Farago
Coral Reef Meltdown

Website of the Day
Lieberman Must Go!

July 9, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Are They Really Oil Wars?

Luis Rodriguez
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions

Sheldon Richman
What's Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Lessons from Sa'di of Shiraz on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

Chad Hanson
Blowing Smoke: Logging Industry Lies on Forest Fires and Climate Change

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Problems with the FISA Bill

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Defining Deviancy Down with FISA

Dave Lindorff
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot

Stanley Heller
A Damned Good Assembly

Philip Rizk
Sick at the Gaza Crossing

Website of the Day
Mumia on Nader

July 8, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
Riding the Colombia Gravy Train

Laura Carlsen
North America Doesn't Exist: the New Geography of Trade

Mike Whitney
Bush's Rampage in Somalia

Andy Worthington
Scandal at Diego Garcia

Patrick Irelan
The Empire Goes to the Movies

Chellis Glendinning
The Un-tied States of America

David Macaray
A Union Story

Dave Lindorff
Mumia's Long-Shot Appeal

John Chuckman
The Myths of Independence Day

Phillip Doe
FISA and the Decline of America

Website of the Day
Daniel Ellsberg on Warrantless Wiretap Bill

July 7, 2008

Patrick Bond
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?

Kathy Kelly
Cold Shoulders

Andy Worthington
Repatriation as Russian Roulette

Clifton Ross
A Rescue Staged for the Screen

Elizabeth Schulte
Obama's War Room

Ralph Nader
The Patriotism of Deeds

Dave Lindorff
Keeping Count

Binoy Kampmark
The World According to Jesse Helms

Stephen Fleischman
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Change

Website of the Day
Time for a Change

July 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Could Anyone be "Worse" Than Bush?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Preliminary Notes from No Man's Land

Patrick Cockburn
Blowback from a Strike on Iran

Mike Whitney
Hunkering Down in Afghanistan with Field Marshall Obama

Robert Fantina
Obama, Iraq and Change

Binoy Kampmark
The Anwar Case: Snitching and Sodomizing

Rannie Amiri
Can Nasrallah Unite Lebanon?

Eric Ruder
Hidden Casualties

Brian Cloughley
Israel Flexes Its Muscles

William Blum
Some Thoughts on Patriotism

Frank Barat
The One-Word Solution

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Phony Pollution Accounting

David Yearsley
Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth

Ron Jacobs
U.S. Blues

Karim Makdisi
On Soccer and Politics in Lebanon

Wendy Thompson /
Chris Kutalik
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?

N.D. Jayaprakash
The NPT as a Roadblock to Disarmament

Ramzy Baroud
Journalistic Imperatives

Kelly Overton
Animal Rights and Obama

Richard Neville
Bitch Fights and Tomorrow's Top Model

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Gibbons, Matson and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
Ginsberg and Cassady on "Extremists"

July 4, 2008

Kathy Kelly
Istiklal

Dave Lindorff
My War Story

Paul Krassner
Confessions of a Barista

Jackie Corr
In the Footsteps of Evel Knievel: Obama Heads Back to Butte

Laray Polk
Military-Industrial Convergence

Dan Bacher
Dead Runs: Salmon Fishing Banned in Central Valley Rivers

Walter Brasch
The Rocket's Red Glare--May be Chinese

Charles Modiano
Hall of Fame Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Springsteen: Independence Day

July 3, 2008

Sharon Smith
Exxon's Legal Guardians

Andy Worthington
Another Torture Victim Gets Charged

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA and the Elephant in the Room

Peter Morici
Crisis Grips the Jobs Market

Ramzi Kysia
Breaking Into a Prison

Martha Rosenberg
Mandatory School Milk and the Early Death of Football Players

Anne Landman
Who Really Benefits From Voluntary Codes of Corporate Conduct?

Dave Zirin
Grand Theft Hoops

Kristin Bricker
US Contractor Leads Torture Training in Mexico

Website of the Day
Bush Tours America to Survey Damage from His Presidency

July 2, 2008

Patrick Irelan
Holy Obama

Vijay Prashad
Lunch with Karzai

Brian Cloughley
Sense of Honor, French and US Style

Ralph Nader
Economic Domino Theory

Robert Fantina
General Stupidity: McCain, Obama and Clark

Dave Lindorff
What's So Special About Veterans?

Parvez Ahmed
Obama and Those Pesky Muslim Rumors

Robert Bryce
The Democrats and Off-Shore Drilling

Website of the Day
King Corn: Q&A

July 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Two Months Later, Seymour Hersh Strains to Catch Up With CounterPunch

Mike Whitney
Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Douglas Macgregor
Obama's General?

Steven Higgs
Fighting the NAFTA Super-Highway

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
The Global Seed Police

Dave Lindorff
Blood Money Democrats

Roger Burbach
Fighting Food Fascism

Richard W. Behan
The Story Behind George Bush's Lies

Gary Leupp
The McCain Edge Among Voters on Iraq

Website of the Day
Mountaintop Removal and the Fight for Coalfield Justice

July 16, 2008

The Ordeal of Omar Khadr

Torture for Torturers?

By DAVE LINDORFF

I don’t believe in torture, but right now, I’d like to see a few people subjected to some of the torture techniques that they approved for use against US captives in the so-called War on Terror.

I’d be satisfied if they just stuck to the ones used against 15-year-old Omar Khadr—techniques that a US federal judge established constituted torture under the Geneva Conventions.

I have a 15-year old son, so I’m particularly aware of what an atrocity it has been the way the US has treated Khadr, and some 2500 other young boys and teenagers that it admits to having captured and labeled as “enemy combatants” in its so-called “war on terror.”

Khadr, recall, was sent at the age of 14 to Pakistan by his allegedly terrorist-linked Canadian father to attend a madrassa—one of those fundamentalist Muslim schools.  Like a number of students of those schools, he was indoctrinated in jihad and ended up fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan against the warlords that opposed them. When the US attacked Afghanistan, in 2001, Khadr got caught up in a war against America.  According to the charge against him, he was arrested in 2002 after US Special Forces found him and some adult fighters hiding out in a remote compound in the mountains. The Americans called in an air strike, and then moved into the rubble to find out who was left—quite probably, according to some testimony in the case—to finish them off.  Someone, still alive after the attack, tossed a grenade which killed one of the Americans and blinded another. The others sprayed the wounded fighters, gravely injuring Khadr and killing one of his older companions. 

Khadr was accused of being the grenade tosser, and was reportedly tortured in Afghanistan, before being shipped off to Guantanamo, where he remains six years later, facing a military tribunal. He was interrogated there, not just by Americans, but by Canadians too.

A citizen of Canada, and clearly someone who was captured and held in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which hold that children are “protected persons,” not to be held as POWs if captured in wartime, but rather to be treated as victims of war, Khadr has thus far been abandoned to his fate by his own government. The Conservative prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, anxious to have Canada serve as a willing servant of US military power and foreign policy, has not lifted a finger to help him.

Now a court in Canada has ordered the Canadian government to release videotapes it was keeping secret of Khadr’s interrogations, and they make for ugly viewing.  Khadr is shown weeping, holding up his wounded arms, pleading to be given treatment, pleading to be returned to Canada.  It’s a disgusting scene, especially when we learn that he had already been “softened up” for his Canadian interrogators by American torture specialists at Guantanamo who subjected this boy to three weeks of sleep deprivation and god knows what other creative techniques which we recently learned were copied from the methods developed by the North Koreans and applied to American captives in the Korean War.

It all makes you disgusted to be an American—especially with so many Americans still justifying this kind of grotesque behavior.

But back to my desire to see some torture inflicted.  My profound wish is that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Department of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Canadian Prime Minister Harper all be subjected to no less than a month of torture, to include water boarding, at least 2-3 weeks of sleep deprivation, a variety of 24-stints of being forced into stress positions (Rumsfeld’s should be standing), some violent slapping around, and a bit of creative sexual humiliation. Since we don’t know at this point that anal sodomizing was officially sanctioned, or just was something that the torturers on the ground came up with that was then ignored by superiors, I’m willing to let that one be left up to those performing the torture, but I sure won’t object if it happens.

At this point, I can’t think of anything less than such a punishment that would be fitting for these monsters who are currently still running our, and Canada’s, governments.

When I think of what kind of twisted minds these people must have in order to actually have met in the White House and approved such methods for use against human beings—human beings who under our Constitution are to be afforded the presumption of innocence, and who are promised to be protected against “cruel and unusual” punishments (or in Harper’s case to have known about it and then not protested, even to protect a child born in his own country)—it makes me sick to my stomach.

If there is a hell, I am sure there is in it some special circle reserved for such monsters, but I think, having seen what was done at their direction and with their approval to young Khadr (who after all, if he really ever did toss that grenade, was only doing what any US soldier would hope to have the courage to do in wartime if his unit were attacked), that hell is too good for these leaders. They all need and deserve the special punishment of having done to them what they ordered or allowed to be done to others.

DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist based in Philadelphia. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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