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The Return of Robert Rubin: Kerry, Jobs and the Economy by Alexander Cockburn; Party Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe by Jeffrey St. Clair; The Kill Zone: Caring for the Wounded in Fallujah by David Martinez. In April, CounterPunch Online was read by 16.1 million viewers--by far our biggest month ever. 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 (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

May 12, 2004

Bruce Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator of Them All

Christopher Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA

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

 

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.

 

 

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May 12, 2004

A Rummy Reprieve

What's Taguba to Him or He to Taguba?

By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN

It was rather a gala scene this Monday at the Pentagon. Turning on the television, the eye was treated to that rarest of darshans -- a glimpse of Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Standing beside Cheney was Powell the Principled, America's answer to Sir Thomas More. As George Bernard Shaw once said to Mahatma Gandhi, "There is nothing so bad that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles."

Shaw lived to be 94, but probably not long enough to have encountered anything so novel as the boneless wonder of Foggy Bottom. The things poor Colin has had to do in pursuit of principle! He misled the UN, all the while doubting his own evidence, even as he privately advised the President against invading Iraq. Per Bob Woodward, when Bush ignored his warnings and asked him summarily whether he wanted in or out, he opted in -- on the spot. On later learning not only that his chief had shared the No-Foreigners Iraq War Plan with the Saudi ambassador, but that he had done so even before showing it to his Secretary of State, the Principled One soldiered on. Some small-minded folk who lack vision say he has no self-respect. They fail to see he is merely sticking to his job -- er...that is...principles. And doubtless it was principles that saw him to the stage at this morning's pep rally, whose theme was, "Abu Ghraib was terrible, but hey, nothing wrong with us!".

On the other side of the dais stood Donald Rumsfeld, exhibiting all the cringing relief of an errant schoolboy who has spent the weekend dreading the certain prospect of the birch, only to have fortune intervene Monday morning with the news that the headmaster has decided not only to take the lenient view but actually to fete him!

Surely enough, President George W. Bush was center-stage, showering encomiums upon his Defense Secretary for the stellar job he had done. Under way was an ocular message to Republicans of every size and shape that it was time to close ranks.

In an extraordinary speech, Bush confessed himself disgusted with what he had seen in the photos and videos from Abu Ghraib, and yet, in the same breath, proceeded to extoll Rumsfeld. If you had just returned from a safari in the Masai Mara and missed all the recent scandals out of Iraq, you might have concluded from Bush's speech that Rumsfeld was the hero who had singlehandedly brought to light some outrages in Abu Ghraib.

So touched was the Donald by the special flag march Bush had organized to scare his detractors, that his manner seemed especially obsequious, down to the tentative pat on the back as he saw the President off.

Meanwhile at the Democrats'...

An email received today said Kerry's online campaign for Rumsfeld's ouster had garnered 275000 signatures in just a few days. This was all very well, but I was reminded of the Sikh extremist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (killed in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, in 1984, when the Indian army stormed it after a Najaf-like standoff). A repugnant character who brought untold misery upon the Indian state of Punjab, he nonetheless had one memorable observation about the difference between a dog and a lion. If beaten with a stick, Bhindranwale said, the dog would only think to attack the stick. The lion, however, would go for the hand behind the stick.

Democrats still don't seem to get it. If this is only a matter of prison abuse, then surely Watergate was just a third rate burglary. That noise you hear must be Nixon turning over in his grave.

Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast. His writings appear on http://www.indogram.com/. He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.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

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