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Inside Iraq's Resistance HOT HOT HOT New CounterPunch Print Edition! Meet actual Iraqis and not just Western caricatures. Laith al-Saud interviews top man in Iraq's national resistance. It's not just Abu Ghraib and bids to kill Fidel Castro. Torture and assassination are integral parts of America's imperial machine. Don't miss Andrew Wimmer's searing journey into the soul of a nation that tortures as a way of life. Plus Alexander Cockburn on the killing of General Kassem. PLUS Sam Sillen's rollicking exhumation of Edmund Wilson as Malthusian Trostskyite. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Get CounterPunch's Print Edition By Email! Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683 or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558

Today's Stories October 15, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Ayatollahs of the Apocalypse October 14, 2005 Farrah Hassen A Somber Ramadan in Syria Ron Jacobs The Black Panthers: They Haven't Forgotten; Neither Should We Sasha Kramer USAID and Haiti: the Friendly Face of Imperialism? Katrina Yeaw The Student Struggle in Italy Nicole Colson Bird Flu: Militarizing Health Care Raúl Zibechi Survival and Existence in El Alto Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez and the Politics of Race Website of the Day LA Filmmakers Collective October 13, 2005 Jeremy Scahill Mr. Bush Goes to Tikrit (Sort Of) Jeff Birkenstein A Thoreau for Our Time: Why Cindy Sheehan Matters Brendan Smith / Jeremy Brecher Harriet Miers: Bush or the Constitution? Stan Cox Did You Know This About Iraq? Anis Memon The Curious Case of Russ Feingold Gary Leupp Miller, Libby and the June Notes Dave Zirin A Tribute to August Wilson Matthew Koehler America's Endangered Forests Werther The Two-Headed Monster Website of the Day Hurricane Song October 12, 2005 Omar Waraich Britain and the Quake: Mean and Stingy William Cook Voices Behind the Entombment Wall Phil Gasper Countdown to a Legal Lynching Dave Lindorff Impeachment Now and Then: Clinton, Bush and the Polls Matt Vidal Capital, Power and Class John Gautreaux New Orleans will Never be the Same Diana Johnstone Srebrenica Revisited: Using War as an Excuse for War Mark Weisbrot The IMF Has Lost Its Influence Brian J. Foley Gitmo Tribunals Endanger Public Safety Website of the Day Columbus Day Lies   October 11, 2005 Roger Morris / Steve Schmidt Strategic Demands of the 21st Century Lila Rajiva Live from New Orleans: Abu Ghraib Bill Quigley New Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again Paul Craig Roberts Natural Born Liars Dave Lindorff Recruiters in Schools: No Lie Left Untried Dr. Teresa Whitehurst Suspect Thy Neighbor Mitchel Cohen Showdown at Chuck E. Cheese Tariq Ali Pakistan will Never Forget This Horror Website of the Day L'Heure Americaine   October 10, 2005 Cindy and Craig Corrie Rachel's Words Live Joshua Frank Washington's War Dems Gideon Levy The Beautiful Life Without Arafat Alan Wallis The Fight for Free Speech at Union Square Mickey Z. In Defense of Liars CounterPunch News Service Vermont Independence Convention Paul Craig Roberts The Police State is Closer Than You Think Website of the Day Dylan's Chronicles   October 8 / 9, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Rhetoric and Reality in the Business of Getting Rid of Black People Ralph Nader Katrina and the Growls of Greed Jennifer Van Bergen New American Law: Legal Strategies in the Dharfir Case Saul Landau An Oily Religious Dream Jeff Halper Setting Up Abbas Lenni Brenner The Millions More Movement and Zionism Nikolas Kozloff Bird Flu and Bush Brian Cloughley Training Soldiers in Iraq Alice Slater A Nobel Prize for Chernobyl? John Gautreaux A View from Cajun Country Fred Gardner Does the Controlled Substances Act Mean What It Says? Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Leveethan Approach M.G. Piety Rot in the Ivory Tower: Collusion, Cover-Up and Kierkegaard Tom Gorman The Hitchens Doctrine Mike Whitney Bunker Days with George Aseem Shrivastava Beyond the Wasteland: Lessons from Afghanistan Ben Tripp Religion, an Epistle Poets' Basement Albert, Engel and Ford   October 7, 2005 Larry Johnson The Plame Case: the Real Issues Will Youmans Why Do We Hate Our Freedom? Recruiters and Thugs on Campus Dave Lindorff Bird Flu: Evolution or Intelligent Design? Judith Scherr Haiti's Children's Prison Russell D. Hoffman Nukes for Peace, Revisited?: Nobel Prize Debacle Jared Bernstein Katrina and Jobs Jennifer Van Bergen New American Law: the Case of Dr. Dhafir Website of the Day FBI Witchhunt October 6, 2005 P. Sainath "Take That, Tom Friedman": Indian Masses Reject NYT's Neoliberal Idol Again Scott Parkin When Antiwar Activists Get Mugged Paul Craig Roberts Blundering into Syria Andréa Schmidt Haiti's Biometric Elections: a High-Tech Experiment in Exclusion Dave Lindorff Easy Money in the Big Easy Joshua Frank In Defense of Lew Rockwell M. Junaid Alam Jackboots at George Mason Matthew Koehler Cock and Bull on the Bitterroot Robert Pollin Is the Dollar Still Falling?   October 5, 2005 Heather Gray Militarization is Not an Answer for Reconstruction: the Case of the Philippines Robert Jensen Is Bush a Racist? Ramzy Baroud Bush's Final Choice: America or the Empire Col. Dan Smith Keeping Promises to Iraq: "Everything is Bad" Dave Zirin Barry Bonds Laughs Last Paul Craig Roberts Liberal Guilt? How the Neocons Took Over Alan Maass Doing the Right Wing's Dirty Work   October 4, 2005 Nikolas Kozloff Shocking the Two Party System: a Political Opportunity for Sheehan and the Antiwar Mvt. Mike Roselle Houston, You've Got a Problem Joshua Frank The Scoop on Harriet Miers John Chuckman War Porn: What the Gruesome Images Say Alan Farago Storm Warning for Jeb: Developers, Hurricanes and the Keys Mickey Z. An Interview with Thaddeus Rutkowski Christine & Ethan Rose Home Depot Exploits Hurricane Victims Gary Leupp An Earlier Empire's War on Iraq: a Lesson from Roman History Website of the Day Rodney Crowell on Bob Dylan   October 3, 2005 Vijay Prashad Desperation at Holyoke Paul Craig Roberts Condi Rice: Gunslinger Joshua Frank An Interview with Cindy Sheehan Seth Sandronsky The Hiring Crisis for Black Teens Jeffrey St. Clair The Great Green Scare   October 1 / 2, 2005 Cockburn / St. Clair Democrats Sink Deeper into the Ooze Dave Marsh A Direction Home: a Message from Bob Dylan Ralph Nader Gutless, Spineless and Clueless Flavia Alaya Showdown at Sheriff's Plaza Uri Avnery The Gladiators: Sharon's Victory Chris Kutalik The Battle at Northwest Airlines Greg Moses Bill Bennett's Book of Cracker Virtues Brian J. Foley I Gave My Copy of the Constitution to a Pro-War Vet Nicole Colson Hunger Strike at Gitmo Ray McGovern Abu Ghraib is a Command Responsibility Fred Gardner Ricky Williams Takes a Late Hit Justin Felux Save America from Crime: Abort Every White Baby! Will Youmans "Free the P": Hip-Hop for Palestine Mike Ferner What Else Shall We Do? David Krieger The War in Iraq: a Broken Covenant Agustin Velloso Samson Returns to Gaza Saul Landau The Constant Gardener: Serious Cinema Ben Tripp Right Down the Middle Poets Basement Peddibone, Crowell, Engel and Albert Website of the Weekend Holler If Ya Hear Me   September 30, 2005 Mary Geddry Why I Marched: They Made My Son Kill Paul Craig Roberts Bush is Cooking Up Two New Wars Dave Lindorff Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time Gregory Wilpert "The Osama Bin Laden of Latin America" Benjamin Dangl "Gringo, Go Home:" an Interview with Orlando Castillo James McMurtry We Can't Make It Here Anymore T.R. Johnson Return to the Ninth Ward   September 29, 2005 Sen. Russ Feingold Bush's Iraq War is Weakening America Carl G. Estabrook Obama the Enabler Ramzy Baroud Rhetoric and Reality of War Dave Lindorff What Opposition Party? Mike Whitney Brownie's Comic Opera Jozef Hand-Boniakowski What Noble Cause? Gary Handschumacher Getting Arrested with Cindy Sheehan Winslow T. Wheeler No Leaders in Congress Against This War: Lame Democrat and Tame Republicans   September 28, 2005 Dr. Eyad Serraj Letter from Gaza: What Disengagement Sounds Like William A. Cook Bush's Security Barrier Liaquat Ali Khan The Invention of Porno Torture Mike Whitney Apartheid Justice in America Joshua Frank Sheehan and the Democrats: Anybody Home? CounterPunch Wire New Orleans Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters Chris Genovali Cutting the Bears Out of the Great Bear Rainforest Linn Washington, Jr. White Affirmative Action: How John Roberts Got to the Top   September 27, 2005 Forrest Hylton Political Murder in Puerto Rico: a Matter for Our Movement Jason Leopold The Decline and Fall of Bill Frist Jennifer K. Harbury Torture is US Policy, Not an Aberration Ray McGovern Torture and Cowardice: Why are American Religious Leaders Silent? Mike Ferner Bringing the War Home: Arrested at the Pentagon Antony Loewenstein When the Truth Comes to Town: What You Can't Say About Israel in Australia Harry Browne Live from Hollywood: the IRA Disarms   September 26, 2005 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Assassination in Puerto Rico: the FBI Murders a Legend Joshua Frank Democrats Flee Peace Protests Lamis Andoni The Railroading of Taysir Alony Mike Marqusee Those Pesky "Urban Intellectuals": Blair, Spiro Agnew and the Antiwar Movement Rep. Cynthia McKinney They Can't Fool Us Anymore Ron Jacobs A Small March for Me, a Giant March for the Antiwar Movement Norman Solomon The Media and the Antiwar Movement John Chuckman Bush in a Bottle Paul Craig Roberts America is Running Out of Time   September 24 / 25, 2005 Kathy and Bill Christison Polluting Palestine: Settlements & Sewage Ralph Nader Stealing the Moment: How Corporations Cashed in on Katrina Saul Landau The Terrorist Resumé of Luis Posada Greg Moses A Movement Gathers Power on the Sorrow Plateau Roger Burbach Hugo Chávez's Mission Vijay Prashad America's Shame Laura Carlsen After NAFTA Robert Fisk When Man and Nature Conspire to Expose the Lies of the Powerful Dave Lindorff A Gusher Called Katrina: They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They? Kirkpatrick Sale / Thomas Naylor Secession from the Empire: the Middlebury Declaration Maj. Anthony Milavic The US Military and Torture: the View of a Former Interrogator Brian Concannon, Jr. Haiti: the Time for Action is Now   September 23, 2005 CounterPunch News Service In Which, Phil Donahue Demolishes Bill O'Reilly Diane Farsetta Katrina and Right-Wing Think Tanks Robert Sandels Militarizing the Market Christopher Brauchli Bush: the Good Samaritan for Corporations Alan Farago Bird Flu Takes Flight Dave Zirin When Sports & Politics Collided: Redeeming the Olympic Martyrs of 1968 Maxine Conant A Simple Test for Bush David Price Workers Get Hit Twice: Katrina and Davis-Bacon Profiteering   September 22, 2005 Smith, Wood, Leas, and Greenfield Which Way Forward for the Green Party? a Report from Tulsa Patrick Cockburn Iraqis: This Government has No Authority Manuel Garcia, Jr. Thinking is Religious Freedom Lucia Dailey Trial of the St. Patrick's Four: Day One Mokhiber / Weissman Are You a Speed Freak? Russell D. Hoffman The Nukes in Rita's Path Kona Lowell God's Hurricane? Jason Leopold GOP Fiscal Policy and Katrina Website of the Day Robert Pollin on the Global Economy   September 21, 2005 Jorge Mariscal Military Recruiters: Counselers or Salesmen? Linda S. Heard Double Standards in Iraq: Basra Brit Jailbreak Joshua Frank NYPD Unplugs Cindy Sheehan Eric Ruder "The Problem in Iraq is the US": an Interview with Camilo Mejia Pierre Tristam The Struts and Bull Presidency Dave Lindorff The Real Story of the German Elections Mike Ferner Sit Down in DC Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Katrina Bling Bling Jeffrey St. Clair W Marks the Spot Website of the Day New Orleans: Survivor Stories   September 20, 2005 Steve Breyman Toxic Gumbo: Katrina and Environmental Justice George Galloway Et Tu, Greg Palast? Patrick Cockburn What Happened to Iraq's Missing $1 Billion? M. Shahid Alam Gen. Musharraf and Israel: Is Pakistan Selling Out? Mike Whitney The Gitmo Hunger Strikers Winslow T. Wheeler It's Not Rocket Science Niranjan Ramakrishnan Back to the Future: North Korea's Gambit Paul Craig Roberts Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?         Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition October 15 / 16, 2005 Nothing New Going On Here POW Abuse by the US By MICKEY Z. As news of a prisoner hunger strike finally begins to trickle out from Guantanamo, rest assured any wrongdoing will be pinned on a few bad apples. However, even a cursory glance at U.S. treatment of enemies captured during military interventions will demonstrate that the goings-on at Gitmo (or Abu Ghraib for that matter) are standard operating procedure for the home of the brave. During the Second World War, for example, it required a mouthpiece none other than prominent racist Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. to expose American tactics in the Pacific. His sentiments are summed up in the following journal entry: "It was freely admitted that some of our soldiers tortured Jap prisoners and were as cruel and barbaric at times as the Japs themselves. Our men think nothing of shooting a Japanese prisoner or a soldier attempting to surrender. They treat the Jap with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone. We claim to be fighting for civilization, but the more I see of this war in the Pacific the less right I think we have to claim to be civilized." "When Lindbergh finally left the Pacific islands and cleared customs in Hawaii," says author John Dower, "he was asked if he had any [Japanese] bones in his baggage. It was, he was told, a routine question." While the treatment of Japanese POWs was commonly little more than making sure there were no Japanese POWs, those Axis soldiers captured in the European theater often learned firsthand how good the good guys were. "Before the invasion of Sicily, General Patton told his men to accept no surrender from enemy soldiers who continued to fire within the highly lethal 200-yards range," says historian Michael C.C. Adams. "At Biscari, U.S. troops killed thirty-four unarmed prisoners who had given up at the correct distance, but these GIs had seen buddies killed, and they didn't feel that a few yards made any difference...[Even] Audie Murphy told new men to take no prisoners and to kill Axis wounded." Many of those who were actually taken prisoner may have soon wished they were killed. "Captured Germans held in France under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower were systematically starved," writes David K. Wright while another 676,000 or so German prisoners were shipped to the United States between 1942 and 1946. Alexander Cockburn adds: "In U.S. camps, POWs were starved to the point of collapse, performed 20 million man-days of work on army posts and 10 million man-days for contract employers. Some were assigned to work for the Chemical Warfare Center at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland." Some 372,000 German POWs in the United States were forced-at the behest of Eleanor Roosevelt-to undergo a re-education program, "to return them to 'Christian practices' and to reject 'German thinking,' says Cockburn. "As time wore on, the name of the program was changed to 'intellectual diversion'." Canadian writer James Bacque, in his book "Other Losses," goes even further, claiming that up to one million German POWs in Europe died from Allied neglect while others were used by the French to fight the Vietnamese. While perusing "Good War" documents called the "Weekly Prisoner of War and Disarmed Enemy Report," Bacque found statistics under the heading "Other Losses" which he interpreted to mean POW deaths. The author consulted with Colonel Philip S. Lauben, who had been chief of the German Affairs Branch of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). "[Other Losses] means deaths and escapes," Lauben explained. When asked how many escapes he recalled, Lauben replied, "Very, very minor." Bacque later discovered the number was less than one-tenth of one percent. "It is beyond doubt," Bacque writes, "that enormous numbers of men of all ages, plus some women and childen, died of exposure, unsanitary conditions, disease and starvation in the American and French camps in Germany and France starting in April 1945." Bacque puts those numbers at "almost certainly over 900,000, and quite likely over a million." Needless to say, these controversial figures have been vigorously denied by official sources. Adams addressed Bacque's unsettling work in his book: "Bacques' crediblity has been assailed by Stephen Ambrose, a biographer of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who would bear ultimate responsibility for these crimes. Ambrose points out that Bacque at times relied on slender or circumstantial evidence and that it would have been hard to keep so great a scandal quiet for so long [New York Times Book Review, February 24, 1991]. On the other hand, American guards have come forward to support Bacque. One wrote: 'I witnessed the atrocities Stephen E. Ambrose tries to deny or gloss over' [New York Times Book Review, April 14, 1991]...The truth is probably somewhere in the middle...As another guard admitted: 'we sometimes slipped over the boundary of civilized behavior and resembled to some extent what we were fighting against.'" With the high level of censorship existing in the Allied theater of operations, perhaps the key to keeping "so great a scandal quiet for so long" is that, for most people, it never existed. At the time, General George S. Patton wrote in his diary: "Ike made the sensational statement that while hostilities were in progress, the one important thing was order and discipline, but now that hostilities were over, the important thing was to stay in with world public opinion-apparently whether it was right or wrong...Eisenhower talked to us very confidentially on the necessity for solidarity in the event that any of us are called before a Congressional Committee." No matter who's in office or where the war takes place, it's all the same. Mickey Z. is the author of "The Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda" (Common Courage Press). For more information, please visit http://www.mickeyz.net.                                       CLARIFICATION ALEXANDER COCKBURN, JEFFREY ST CLAIR, BECKY GRANT AND THE INSTITUTE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF JOURNALISTIC CLARITY, COUNTERPUNCH We published an article entitled "A Saudiless Arabia" by Wayne Madsen dated October 22, 2002 (the "Article"), on the website of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity, CounterPunch, www.counterpunch.org (the "Website"). Although it was not our intention, counsel for Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi has advised us the Article suggests, or could be read as suggesting, that Mr Al Amoudi has funded, supported, or is in some way associated with, the terrorist activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. We do not have any evidence connecting Mr Al Amoudi with terrorism. As a result of an exchange of communications with Mr Al Amoudi's lawyers, we have removed the Article from the Website. We are pleased to clarify the position. August 17, 2005

Coming in the Fall from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Click Here to Advance Order Philosopher Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz WHAT'S INSIDE Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair