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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
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Rafah Today
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
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Steve Niva
Israel's
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Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
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Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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WMD: Who Said What When
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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Weekend
Edition
June 5 / 6, 2004
An
American Way of War
Torture,
Rape, Murder
By
MATT SIEGFRIED
The photographs of US soldiers torturing
Iraqi prisoners have become symbols of American conceit, American
hypocrisy and American brutality. The folly of the Iraq adventure
seems to be summed up by pyres of naked, bound and hooded men
smiled over by the missionaries of American democracy. More than
one right wing commentator in the United States has likened these
acts to college pranks.
Most of the world, however,
fails to see the humor in employing attack dogs, surgical gloves,
digital cameras, sodomizing broom sticks and duct tape to torture
prisoners, many of them guilty of only being Iraqis, in an orgy
of power exercise. The self described experts on the Arab mind
of the North American press have repeatedly told us that sexual
humiliation is especially damaging to the Arab male with their
allegedly macho and homophobic Islamic culture. After all, if
US prisons are any indication, we Americans have a much greater
tolerance for rape than those testy Iraqis do. In this, as in
all things, if only they could be a little more like us these
little misunderstandings would disappear.
It must be said that these
revelations have had the effect they have had, including in swinging
important segments of the American population against the administration
of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and casting their reelection
in doubt, because of two concrete factors. The first is that
they were photographed.
All indications are that these
photographs were taken in part to humiliate and blackmail the
prisoners photographed or to frighten other prisoners into submission
or as souvenirs. How, in the age of the Internet, the Military
Intelligence units thought that these would remain in obscurity
is a testimony to the arrogance of the imperial mindset. Mountains
of words could not have had the same effect. The grinning faces
and thumbs up of the torturers are so damning precisely because
they are not faceless names. They are recognizable as our neighbors,
work mates, parents and children. Society has raised these monsters.
America itself is indicted by the very normalcy of those that
carried out and continue to carry out these crimes.
The second and more important
factor is the strength of the resistance to the occupation. If
this story had broken in the context of a war that had been going
well for the United States it would not have had nearly the power
it has had. Since the capture of Saddam the resistance has grown
dramatically belying the myths and half-truths of the mouthpieces
for American empire.
The resistance has proven to
be varied, contradictory, resourceful and popular. America has
responded brutally to this growth and in the process has served
as recruiting sergeant for the resistance. A predictable turn
of events in the context of an occupation whose aims are at odds
with the interests and desires of the, now vast, majority of
the Iraqi population.
The Iraqi resistance has not
yet found a common political or organizational voice. It is possible,
even likely, that it will not. Elements of the opposition are
undoubtedly criminal or reactionary fundamentalist. Elements
employ tactics that run the gamut from counter productive to
counter revolutionary. Could it be any other way? A brutal occupation
will breed a brutal resistance. Every attempt at colonialism
in its bloody history is witness to this dynamic. Though now
many more are entering the ranks of the resistance out of a desire
to protect their homes, communities and country from the rapacious
onslaught of American tanks bulldozing the way for American corporations.
After the fall of Baghdad in
April of last year there was not only speculation but also plans
for the US military to move on Damascus, and possibly Tehran
and Pyongyang. The United States aimed at a long-term colonial
ownership of Iraq. In the face of growing Iraqi resistance the
US ruling class has, for now, abandoned the possibility of direct
military confrontation with Syria, Iran and North Korea. At the
endgame of a relentless assault by Israel the resistance in Palestine
has been given a moral and morale boost by the people of Iraq.
The occupation itself is in
doubt as the US is increasingly unable to force its agenda on
even the most pliant of Iraqis. Looking to cede its Iraq quagmire
to the United Nations (whose guise the United States has utilized
in numerous previous imperial crusades) the fig leaf of the UN
could placate European and Arab capitals but it is unlikely to
convince the Iraqi people that the occupation has ended. In spite
of the violence and pain inflicted in the course of its insurgency
against US imperialism's aggression the resistance in Iraq has
already and undoubtedly saved many lives.
While the US media has, by
and large, still refused to utter the word "torture"
when describing the actions at Abu Ghraib, Mazar e Sharif, Guantanamo
Bay and so many places in between that is clearly the definition
of those actions. As more and more soldiers return from tours
with stories of abuse, of rape and murder on a wide scale it
is clear that these acts were sanctioned. They were routine.
They were systematic. They came far too easily to some soldiers,
Reservists and National Guards.
In fact some of the actions
of the accused were already taught to and learned by them in
the rape camps and torture chambers of the American penal system.
One of the soldiers facing charges, Corporal Charles Graner,
worked as a prison guard at Pennsylvania's notorious SCI Greene
where African American revolutionary Mumia Abu Jamal sits on
death row and site of numerous allegations of abuse.
Never taken more seriously
than a crude joke on late night television rape has long been
considered part of the sentence for those imprisoned in this
country. The Struckman-Johnson study of prisons in four midwestern
states concluded, "one in five male inmates reported a pressured
or forced sex incident while incarcerated. And one in ten male
inmates reported that that they had been raped." Extrapolating
those percentages nationally makes for a jaw dropping number
of prisoners sexually assaulted (400,000+) or raped in prison
(200,000+).
Any one who has done time in
an American prison could describe innumerable instances of abuse
that are all but identical to the horrors of Abu Ghraib's Wing
1 A. From solitary confinement to four-point shackles and electric
shocks to daily strip and cavity searches the degrading treatment
of human beings at the hands of other human beings is seen as
normal, even necessary, in American society.
The United States is a country
that has well over two million people currently in prison or
jail (1 in 75 male adults) with another four and a half million
people on probation or parole. A country that criminalizes entire
communities placing more black men in jail than college (1 in
5 black men will go to jail in their lives). A country where
the "War on Drugs" places millions of its own citizens
outside the jurisdiction of justice. A country where the imprisonment
of its people is a giant industry generating billions of dollars
in contracts, free labor and entire prisons run for profit. A
country that lectures the world on human rights.
Beyond torture the United States
is one of the few countries that still sanctions state murder-
executions- and regularly carries them out including on the innocent,
on juvenile offenders, on the mentally disabled, on a disproportionately
black and Latino and overwhelmingly poor population. How could
anyone be surprised that in the midst of a racist colonial war
the men and women of the US military were ordered to torture
prisoners and some cheerfully obeyed? After all torture, rape,
murder- it's the American way. And while someday, hopefully soon,
United States will leave Iraq ending this sad chapter what will
it take to put an end to the abomination of the American prison
system and the grossly unequal society it claims to protect?
Matt Siegfried writes for the Irish journal Fourthwrite, where
this essay originally appeared. He can be reached at: almata@hotmail.com
Weekend Edition
Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
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Alfred
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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
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Saul
Landau
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Kurt
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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
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Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
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Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
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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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