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Today's Stories November 6, 2007 Andy Worthington The Torture of Ali al-Marri November 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer David Macaray How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer) Gary Leupp General Musharaff's "State of Emergency" Dave Lindorff Those Minot Nukes Ludwig Watzal Israel's Dilemma in Palestine Patrick Cockburn Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan Peter Stone Brown John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past Michael Simmons Yo! What Happened to Peace? Website of the Day Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students   November 3 / 4, 2007 Tariq Ali Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship Jeffrey St. Clair Splitsville Alan Farago The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class Paul Krassner He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards Rannie Amiri Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals P. Sainath Indexing Humanity, Indian Style Ayesha Ijaza Khan Pakistan in a Daze Robert Fantina Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran? Seth Sandronsky The Politics of Health Care in California Ron Jacobs The Bebop of Baraka Ramzy Baroud A Case for Arab Dignity Heather Gray When Capitalists Get a Free Ride   November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as ... . Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

November 6, 2007 A Flashback to the Horrors of America's Past The Return of Water Torture By WILLIAM SCHRODER In the 1970s, while cleaning my closet one day, my sainted grandmother leaned into my room and said, "You should hold on to those platform shoes. They'll come back in style someday." Mercifully, that particular item of 1970s male apparel has not yet reappeared in America's prêt-à-porter, but Granny was right about the whole concept of cycles, closed loops, patterns and history repeating itself. Today, another piece of America's past once again rears its ugly head--water boarding. Water torture or drinking by force, a method of inflicting pain as punishment or to extract information, has been around as long as man has been near water. One of the earliest written records of the practice is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), which decreed that if a person suspected of sorcery survived a dunking in the Holy River, he was innocent. Throughout the centuries, societies have continued to use water as a tool to terrorize and no doubt, torturing with water survives today over other ancient practices such as quartering or burning chiefly because water leaves no incriminating marks on the victim. In 1899, during what history books call the "Philippine Campaign," occupying American forces learned of the procedure from the Spanish, who had practiced the "Water Cure" on defenseless Filipino peasants for centuries. As an extension of the Spanish/American War, American soldiers invaded the Philippines and fought a bloody, brutal nine-year guerilla action against Filipino resistance fighters for possession and control of the Islands. While researching and writing a 2004 historical novel of that period, I was surprised and disappointed to learn American hands were frequently bloodied in the act of torturing Filipinos--civilians and soldiers. Man's inhumanity to man rattles the sensibilities of all but the most hard-hearted, and like any other American, I was appalled to read the accounts of the very powerful (us) inflicting great harm on the weak and defenseless (them). Un-American to the core, torture by any method offends and repels, but nothing could have prepared me for the shocking, horrifying, de-humanizing accounts of the Water Cure inflicted by American soldiers on captured Filipino guerillas. Whether any form of water boarding can be torture is beneath debate, and Attorney General nominee, Michael Mukasey, was horribly wrong to equivocate on this issue when questioned before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The following, excerpted from my 2004 novel, is a fictitious description of the Water Cure performed by American soldiers on a captured Filipino youth. Although the characters are products of my imagination, their actions are derived from numerous original sources, official record and eye witness testimony. I invite you to determine for yourself whether this practice is torture: The men of H Company didn't know what the water cure was, but Captain Baston's Kansas volunteers did. In no time, the camp came alive with activity. Three men carrying ropes scurried up the rock ledge to the edge of the outcropping high over the mouth of the cave. Reaching the top, they dropped the lines down to men waiting below. The soldiers built a sling, placed an empty sixty-gallon barrel in it, and then hoisted it to the highest spot they could find. The sergeant and two others stripped the boy and staked him out on his back, the barrel twenty feet over his head. The rest of the men formed a chain and passed buckets of water up the line and fed the barrel until full. This done, a soldier attached a long hose to the spigot at the bottom of the barrel and tossed the other end to the sergeant below. Captain Baston shook the amputee awake, and then dragged him to the mouth of the cave, where the boy was pegged down. He'd lost a lot of blood from his stump, and his face was pail and drawn tight with pain. The captain knelt in front of him while a soldier fisted a handful of hair and lifted his head. "I would like to know your name," the captain said. The man croaked, "Antonio Salud." "Tell me where Aguinaldo is, Mr. Salud, and you will save this boy's life." The man looked down at the boy on the ground next to him. "He is my nephew, Captain. I beg you to let him live." Baston shrugged. "His life is not in my hands, it's in yours. I want Aguinaldo, not you or this boy." Antonio Salud pleaded through his tears, "I cannot tell you what I do not know, sir." Captain Baston stood and turned to the sergeant. "Proceed." The sergeant placed one big hand under the boy's neck and lifted his head. Another soldier pried his jaws open, while a third jammed the rubber hose deep into his throat. The young Filipino screamed in horror and struggled desperately against the ropes that held his arms and legs. "Lay still, you slope-headed gook bastard," the soldier cursed and shoved the hose deeper. The boy wretched and coughed blood, tried to turn away from his tormentors. When the hose would go no further, the soldier looked up at the captain. "Ready, sir." Baston gave a signal to the men on the rock outcropping over the mouth of the cave, and one reached down and opened the spigot. In the moments that followed, a strange silence settled over the camp. The only sounds were the popping and hissing of the fire, its flames lighting the faces of Captain Baston and the men, as all eyes traced the invisible flow of water from the barrel high overhead to the boy on the ground. For a long moment, nothing happened. Fagan wondered whether something had gone wrong; maybe they'd made a mistake somewhere. Even the boy had stopped struggling against the hose, although his eyes still darted in panic from one soldier to another. Then it happened. The sergeant saw it first and smiled up at the captain. The rush of flowing water finally reached the boy's stomach and forced his mid-section to swell and grow, and then become so grotesquely extended, it looked ready to burst. The boy let out a wild, animal scream, his face turned blue, and his eyes bulged as yellow water gushed from his nose. His stomach grew to four times its normal size, and still the water continued to flow. Fagen was sure the boy would drown in his own bile, but somehow, he clung to life. Another minute passed. Fagen thought then the boy must have been driven insane. He'd stopped struggling against the ropes, but his eyes had rolled up in his head, and his body twitched and flopped like a fish out of water. Finally, the captain gave the signal, and the sergeant pulled the hose from the young rebel's throat. Baston squatted alongside the boy for a moment then turned to the amputee. "Mr. Salud, are you willing to let this boy die? By the looks of him, I'd guess you have another ten seconds to decide, and I should warn you, if he dies, you're next." The amputee looked at the captain through tears of shock and pain. "Please, no more. I beg you for mercy. I will tell you. Aguinaldo has a jungle camp, like this one, three days northeast of San Isidro, near the big waterfalls. I think that is where he has gone." "Well done, Mr. Salud." The captain smiled, and then with a little flourish, said, "Now observe while I bestow the gift of life on this young man." Baston rocked forward and pressed both knees deep into the boy's bloated stomach. The youth's choked, agonized screams filled the night and echoed through the jungle mountains, as a torrent of water gushed from his nose and mouth. The captain pressed harder, and bloody vomit pooled around his boots. Then he let up for a moment and gazed around at his men. As the boy choked and struggled for air, the officer stood up and motioned to a nearby soldier. "Finish this," he said. "I've got what I wanted." Then, he walked casually into his tent and closed the flap. William Schroder lives in Washington State. He is a Vietnam veteran and with Dr. Ron Dawe, co-author of Soldier's Heart: Close-up Today with PTSD in Vietnam Veterans.   The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! Israel's Very Dangerous Gamble STEPHEN GREEN reports on the real motivations behind Israel's MISSILE STRIKE on SYRIA. PETER MONTAGUE on the NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE or How the Nuke Industry is using Gore's Prize and Global Warming to Plot Its Big Comeback. WILLIAM BLUM on the DEVALUING of "ANTI-SEMITE" or How to Make a Term Meaningless. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. 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