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Hezbollah's Rise, Israel's Fall

Peggy Thomson visits Hezbollah's southern commander. Guerilla warfare Comanche-style: The greatest light cavalry since Ghenghis Khan; How the whites got the Texas that the Bush family moved to. Alexander Cockburn on why Israel lost. What you just missed, but can still get, in our last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. 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 towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

September 6, 2006

Dave Zirin
Cops vs. Jocks: the Shooting of Steve Foley

John Ross
The Death of Mexican Presidency

September 5, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Will Robert Fisk tell us the whole story? Time For A Champion of Truth to Speak Up

Patrick Cockburn
Better Not Meet at the Casbah

Mike Whitney
The Worst Secretary of Defense in U.S. History? You Be the Judge

Roland Sheppard
The Civil Rights Movement is Dead and So is the Democratic Party

James Petras
As Bush Regime Faces Twilight Slide, How Much Havoc Can Paulson Wreak?

Alexander Cockburn
Will Bush Bomb Teheran?

 

September 4, 2006

Clancy Sigal
The Women Who Gave Us Labor Day

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Remaking of Cataract Canyon:
Part 2

Anthony Alessandrini
The Great Debate about Aroma Coffee: Why I Boycott

Dennis Perrin
The Great Debate in Tarrytown: Straight Zion, No Chaser

Daniel Cassidy
'S lom to Slum

Paul Craig Roberts
The War Is Lost

 

September 2 / 3, 2006

Uri Avnery
When Napoleon Won at Waterloo

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Premature Burial: the Remaking of Cataract Canyon

Ralph Nader
The No-Fault White House

Noam Chomsky
Viewing the World from a Bombsight

Allan Lichtman
Arrested Democracy: Letter from the Baltimore County Jail

Stanley Heller
When Criticism of Cluster Bombs is "Anti-Semitic"

Rana el-Khatib
Invasion's Child: the Making of Issa

Peter Montague
Taking on the Pentagon: Chemical Weapons to Burn

Laura Carlsen
Mexico on a Collision Course

Dr. Susan Block
Bush Hate Rising

Joe Bageant
Roy's People: Why Progressives Need to Listen to Orbison, Not Policy Wonks

Scott Stedjan / Matt Schaaf
A New Generation of Landmines?

Gary Leupp
The Emperor Has Been Exposed

Stephen Fleischman
The Great American Oligarchy

Paul Balles
Has Ahmadinejad Already Checkmated Bush?

Ingmar Lee
Canada's $450 Million Gift to Bush: the Softwood Lumber Slush Fund

Jane Stillwater
Burning Man: the Good, the Bad and the Evil Twin

Ron Jacobs
Dylan Faces the Apocalypse, Again

St. Clair / Bossert
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Grima, Engel, Orloski and Davies

Website of the Weekend
To New Orleans: a Photo Journal

 

September 1, 2006

Uri Avnery
Olmert Agonistes

Paul Craig Roberts
Of Wolves and Men (and Impotent Democrats)

Bill Ayers
Exclusionary Signs of the Times

Kevin Zeese
The Best War Ever

Xochitl Bervera
The Forgotten Children of New Orleans

Norman Solomon
Bush vs. Ahmadinejad: a TV Debate We'll Never See

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah Denounces Nasrallah Interview as a Fake

Richard Neville
Rupert Murdoch's Victims

Website of the Day
The Uranium Flood

 

August 31, 2006

David MacMichael
Can the Iran Nuke Crisis be Defused?

John Ross
Diary of the Mexican Earthquake

Edward Said
Mahfouz, 9/11 and the Cruelty of Memory

Amira Hass
The Burden of Collaboration

Missy Comley Beattie
Circle in a Spiral: Families at War

Lee Sustar
The Case of Elvira Arellano: Racism, Divided Families and Deportation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Myths: Deception as a Way of Life

Website of the Day
The Case for Impeachment: CSPAN

 

August 30, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
The Five Morons Revisited

George Salzman
The Revolutionary Surge in Oaxaca

Dave Lindorff
I Am a Curious Yellowcake: the Armitage Confession and the Niger Question

Leigh Davis
Privatizing New Orleans' Schools

Alan Maass
The Crimes Katrina Exposed: an Interview with Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Slonsky

Mike Whitney
Pop Goes the Bubble!: the Great Housing Crash of '07

Eliza Ernshire
Murder on Rucarb Street

Website of the Day
CNN = iPoop2?


August 29, 2006

Saul Landau
Misreading Cuba, for 47 and a Half Years

Jeffrey Buchanan
Human Rights and the Realities of Returning to New Orleans: Lip Service and Profiteering

Dave Lindorff
War? What War?

James Brooks
The US Peace Movement and Hezbollah

John F. Burnett
Katrina and the Media: "I Know Y'All Want Our Story, But We Need Help"

Walter A. Davis
J'Accuse: the Media and Jonbenet Ramsey

Rich Gibson
Detroit Teachers Strike Again

Amira Hass
The Accidental Immigrant

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Turns His Terror War on the Homeland

 

August 28, 2006

John Walsh
With Lieberman's Loss, the Lobby Takes a Second Hit

Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver
Hillary Clinton: a Fool's Vessel

Ramzy Kysia
For Israel's Security? A Visit to Houla, Lebanon

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Nativo Lopez

Gideon Levy
The Reservists' Protest

Missy Beattie
Yes, Virginia, There is a Rumsfeld

Virginia Tilley
Putting Words in Ahmadinejad's Mouth


August 26 / 27, 2006
Weekend Edition

Uri Avnery
America's Rottweiler

Alexander Cockburn
Israel on the Slide

Jordan Green
Profiting from Disaster: Greed Has Stallled Gulf Coast Recovery, But Made Some Very, Very Rich

Azmi Bishara
Israel at a Loss

Ray Close
Why Bush Will Choose War Against Iran: Reflections of a Former CIA Analyst

Gary Leupp
The Lebanon Ceasefire and the Coming Assault on Iran

Ralph Nader
AIDS in Black America

Joe Allen
Free Gary Tyler: Thirty Years of Injustice

Fred Gardner
The Miraculous Resurrection of Dr. John Lee

Dave Lindorff
The Crime of Frag Weapons

David Krieger
Why are There Still Nuclear Weapons?

Stephen Fleischman
Jurassic White House: the Reptilian Brain of George W. Bush

Mary Turck
Elections and Lessons from Mexico

Walter Brasch
Sports Afoul: Canned Hunts

Jim Scharplaz
Oil and the American Farmer

Israel Shamir
The Grapes of Wrath

Alexander Cockburn
About That Nasrallah Interview

Charles Henderson
Scientology: a Typically American Religion?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Grima, Ford and Mickey Z.

 

August 25, 2006

Elena Everett
The Women of New Orleans After Katrina

Juan Cole
Iran's Nuclear "Threat"

Chris Moore
Religious Motives Behind Iraq War Deception?: Revelations from the Watada Court Martial

James Marc Leas
How Lebanese Civilians Thwarted Israel's War Plans

Salah Obeid
The Price of Ignoring the Elephant

Claudio Albertani
Mexico Piquetero

Tom Barry
Gangster Diplomacy: Elliot Abrams in Jerusalem

Website of the Day
Congress, the Defense Budget and Pork: a Snout to Tail Charcuterie


August 24, 2006

CounterPunch News Service
Penis Pump or Bomb? Bum Rap at O'Hare

Uri Avnery
Stop the Cancer, End the Occupation

Nermeen al-Mufti
"The Strong Do as They Can": an Interview with Noam Chomsky

Norman Solomon
The Mythical End to the Politics of Fear

Megan Wiles
American Responsibility and Palestine

Laura Santina
Busting Loose of the War Engine: a Female Perspective

Mike Whitney
Restarting the 34 Day War

Seth Sandronsky
Millionaires Make a Killing as Killings Continue

Christopher Brauchli
Consider the Uighurs: Freedom in a Cage

 

August 23, 2006

Dr. Trudy Bond
Calling Dr. Mengele: APA Whitewashes Torture By Shrinks

Ramzy Baroud
The Real Terrorism Plot

Ron Jacobs
The Liberal Warmongers are at It Again

Heather Gray
Palestinian Sense of Place: You Can't Bomb It Away

Amira Hass
The Occupier Defines Justice

Mavis Anderson
Castro's Health and US Meddling

Ingmar Lee
The Great Game Goes On: India's Occupation of Ladakh

Francis Boyle
Statement on Behalf of Lt. Watada

John Ross
Mexico Approaches the Combustion Point


August 22, 2006

Gilad Atzmon
Israel Must Win

Jack Heyman
The Iron Heel Revisited: Cops as Provocateurs on the Docks

Eamon McCann
Bereft Belfast Mother Charges Security Firms with Wanton Murder in Iraq

Sharon Smith
Bush's Failing War on Terror: When in Doubt, Go Racist

Edward S. Herman
Faith-Based Analysis

Ramzi Kysia
My Journey to South Lebanon

Bill Quigley
Trying to Make It Home: New Orleans One Year After Katrina

August 21, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Caught in a Net of Delusion

Paul Craig Roberts
Artificial Recovery; Real Job Losses

Kathy Kelly
Israel's "Proportionate Response": Measured Amid the Wreckage

Mike Roselle
Irony Runs Through It: Making a Ruckus

Lenni Brenner
Mayor Bloomberg: the Flying Faker

Maher Osseiran
Osama's Confession; Osama's Reprieve

 

August 19 / 20, 2006
Weekend Edition

Uri Avnery
The 155th Victim

Eliza Ernshire
Terror and Freedom on the West Bank

Virginia Tilley
Inside 1701: What the UN Ceasefire Resolution Actually Says

Kathy Kelly
Funerals at Qana: a Journey to Southern Lebanon

Marc Levy
You are What You Dream: "Before you talk of heroes you must feel, taste, touch, smell the horror."

Stephen Bradberry /
Jeffrey Buchanan
Hopes and Homes: Subject to Seizure on the Katrina's Anniversary

Barbara Rose Johnston
Banking on Violence: Guatemalan Genocide and US Security

William Blum
Perpetual Fear: Saved Again, Praise the Lord!

Stephen Fleischman
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon

Ralph Nader
The Legacy of John Kenneth Galbraith

Dave Lindorff
Busted, Again: Bush is Two Times a Criminal

Fred Gardner
When Cannabis Failed to Sell

David Krieger
Nuclear Insecurity

Dan La Botz
The Minutemen: Mad at the Wrong Guys

Poets' Basement
Davies / Engel

 

August 18, 2006

Brian M. Downing
American Generals and Iraq: Time to Call for a Rapid Withdrawal

John Blair
Divine Strike in the Bible Belt: Will They Bomb Bedford?

Alan Hart
The Lebanon War, a Post Mortem

Craig Murray
Hitting a Nerve: the Hair Gel Terror Hype

Chris Dols
Confronting Madison's NaziFest

Emily Kirksey
The Cuban Mirage: Self-Deception in Miami and Washington

Joaquín Bustelo
Forging a New Strategy for Immigrant Rights: Report from Chicago

William S. Lind
Beaten: Why the IDF Lost in Lebanon

Podcast of the Day
The F-22 PodCast

Website of the Day
Burn a Brick for Jesus

 

August 17, 2006

CounterPunch News Service
"Goodbye to the Unipolar World": an Interview with Hasan Nasrallah

Barucha Peller
This Pain Has No Ceasefire

Ramzy Baroud
Lebanon: a Critical Battlefield for the New Middle East

Rothem Shtarkman
Gen. Dan Halutz: Inside Trader

Craig Murray
The UK Terror Plot: What's Really Going On?

Samar Assad
Gaza: One Year After Disengagement

Mike Ferner
Lt. Watada's Challenge

Arnold Kohen
A Second Rebirth for East Timor?

Kevin Zeese
Does the Invasion of Lebanon Foretell a Regional War?

Missy Comley Beattie
Open Wounds

Uri Avnery
From Mania to Depression

Video of the Day
Neil Young: After the Garden

Website of the Day
Art for Peace

 

August 16, 2006

Merav Yudilovitch
Apocalypse Near: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on Lebanon

Robert Fisk
Behind the Lies of Bush and Blair: It Falls to Assad to Tell the Truth

Mark Williams
The Missiles of August: The Lebanon War and the Democratization of Missile Technology

John Ross
End Game Engulfs Mexico

Christopher Brauchli
The Poor Are Such a Nuisance

John Walsh
AIPAC Congratulates Itself for Slaughter in Lebanon

Ron Jacobs
Gee, Your Hair Smells Terror-ific!: Shampoo, Fear and Elections

Rachard Itani
It Ain't Over: What Did and Didn't Happen in Lebanon

Felice Pace
Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains: The Real Threat is Not What You Expected

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Lieberman the Enabler

Frank, Sharma and Peterson
Venezuela's Revolution of Hope: "In Two Years, Everything Has Changed!"

Jonathan Cook
Real Photo Fakers; Real War Crimes

Website of the Day
You Too Can Paint Like Jackson Pollock!

 

August 15, 2006

Andrew Ford Lyons
Why Hezbollywood Was Born: Digitally Erasing a Massacre

Binoy Kampmark
Terrorism and the Art of Flying

Robert Fisk
Israel Wasn't Hoping for This

Ralph Nader
Bush to Israel: Take Your Time Destroying Lebanon

Todd Chretien
The US Antiwar Movement: Weak, Passive, Distracted

Chris Floyd
It's Bigger Than the Neo-Cons

Mark Engler
WTO: Best Left for Dead?

George Galloway
"You Don't Give a Damn:" the SkyNews Debate

Laray Polk
What's More Obscene: War or Sex?

Trish Schuh
Operation Change of Location?: Where Were the IDF Soldiers Captured?

Website of the Day
Jesus Never Existed


August 14, 2006

Uri Avnery
What the Hell Happened to the Israeli Army?

Karim Makdisi
The Flaws in the UN Resolution

Kathy Kelly
Approaching a Ceasefire

Robert Fisk
The Truce That Won't Last

Norman Solomon
Who's Afraid of Hillary Clinton? MoveOn, for One

Sunsara Taylor
Ned Lamont and the Antiwar Movement: False Hopes, Bad Terms and Ticking Clocks

Robert Jensen
Outside the Frame: The Limits of George Lakoff's Politics

Mike Whitney
The Litani Gambit: Ceasefire or Trojan Horse?

P. Sainath
An Indian Farmer About to Commit Suicide Writes a Note of Clarification

Goretti Horgan
The Raytheon Nine: Irish Antiwar Protesters Face "Terrorism" Charges

Christopher Reed
London Fog: Doubts Hang Over Terror Plot

 

August 12 / 13, 2006
Weekend Edition

Jean Bricmont
The De-Zionization of the American Mind

Norman Finkelstein
Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?

Robert Fisk
How the London Terror Scare Looks from Beirut

Adrian Grima
Forget the 50 Civilians: Watching Lebanon from Malta

Barucha Peller
Letter from Lebanon: the Proximity of Death

Omar Barghouti
The UN, Lebanon and Palestine

Adam Engel
Tearing Down the Master's House: an Interview with Derrick Jensen

Conn Hallinan
How the Irish Could Save the Middle East

John Stauber
Meet the GOP's Latest Smear Machine: Vets for Freedom

Rev. William Alberts
Bush's Primetime Lies Still Go Unchallenged by the Press

Fred Gardner
Hollywood Does Cannabis: "Weeds," the First Season

Lucinda Marshall
Penis Politics: Does Dick Cheney Want Us All to Fly Nude?

Ron Jacobs
Kill the Precedent: an Interview with Rapper Nate Mezmer

CounterPunch News Service
Kerala Throws Out Coke and Pepsi

Poets' Basement
Katz, Davies and Orloski


August 11, 2006

Col. Dan Smith
Crimes Against Peace: Beyond Nuremberg

John Ross
Class War in Mexico City's Gridlock

Michael Donnelly
Sore Loserman, Redux

William S. Lind
Collapse of the Flanks

Linda Milazzo
Chertoff's New Math: Hair Gel Plot Might Have "Killed 100s of Thousands"

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Something is Happening Around the World

Azmi Bishara
When the Skies Rain Death

Henri Picciotto
Jewish Dissidents Must Challenge Israel

CounterPunch News Wire
The Warrior Lawyer: Tom Crumpacker, 1934-2006

Dave Lindorff
War Crimes in Lebanon

Jonathan Cook
From High Wycombe to Nazrareth: How I Found Myself with the Islamic Fascists

 


August 10, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Buck Stops Where?

Dave Marsh
Who Are Mr and Mrs Lamont?

Gabriel Kolko
Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Arthur Versluis
How Neocons' Nazi Hero Schmitt Spawned Bush's Totalitarian Lunge

Jennifer Loewenstein
Awakening the Resistance


August 9, 2006

Linda Schade
Incumbents Beware: Peace Voters Mean Business

Jackie Mason
Defends Mel Gibson; Ridicules Abe Foxman

Jonathan Cook
Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah

Gilad Atzmon
Operation Security Roof

Charles Hirschkind
Doing the Lebanese a Favor

Tom Barry
Right-wingers Ramp Up War on Migrants

Cockburn & St. Clair
The Sweetness of Lieberman's Defeat

 

August 8, 2006

Patrick Cockburn
Requiem for Baghdad

Paul Larudee
The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions

Joan Roelofs
The Malleable US Constitution: a Deterrent to Democracy?

Dimi Reider
An Interview with IDF Refusenik Sgt. Zohar Milchgrub

John A. Murphy
The Democrats: a Party on the Run ... from Its Own Members!

Eliot Katz
The View from the Big Woods: In Which a NYC Antiwar Poet Takes a Summer Vacation in Canada's Boreal Forest

Tim Llewellyn
Into the Valley of Death

Website of the Day
Galloway Speaks!

 

August 7, 2006

Uri Avnery
The Junkies of War

Karim Makdisi
The Draft UN Resolutions: the View from Beirut

Nadia Hijab
What Israel and the US Wanted May Not Be At All What They Get

Sharon Smith
Birth Pangs and Dead Babies

Magan Wiles
Encounter at an Israeli Checkpoint

George Beres
A New Kind of Bigotry: Lebanon War Exposes Strange Religious Bedfellows

Rachard Itani
Nice Try, Mr. Bolton

Norman Solomon
Some Nukes Are A-Okay with the US Media

Stan Cox
Presidential Doping Scandal Erupts!

Mickey Z.
Go Ahead, Please Stare at Her Chest

Jonathan Cook
The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN

Website of the Day
Sam Husseini Interrogates Newt Gingrich on Lebanon

 

August 5 / 6, 2006

Virginia Tilley
Boycott Now!: the Case for Boycotting Israel

Uri Avnery
The Black Flag

Patrick Cockburn
Yes, It is a Crusade!: Blair's Mad Speech on Iraq

Sgt. Martin Smith
Military Training and Atrocities: Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree

Gary Leupp
America's Heroes on Trial

Neve Gordon
The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom After 9/11

Ralph Nader
Hey Joe!: the Ghosts of Lieberman's Past

Peter Bouckaert
For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game

Peter Montague
Nukes Rising: Bush Oversees a Global Nuclear Expansion

David Krieger
Global Hiroshima: the Stakes Have Been Raised

Michael Donnelly
"Sir! No Sir!": the Story of the GI Anti-War Movement

Fred Gardner
Dr. Denney Sues the DEA

Catherine Norris
Seeking Justice Abroad: Spanish Courts Issue Arrest Warrants for the Butchers of Guatemala

Imraan Siddiqi
The Smokescreens of War: Moral Superiority, 9/11 and Islamic-Fascism

Missy Comley Beattie
One Year After the Death of Chase Comley

Ira Kay
Where is Geography? Getting Beyond the Place Name Game

Dave Lindorff
Let's Build a Wall

Pratyush Chandra
Nuclear Fascism in India

Ron Jacobs
Keeping It Radical

St. Clair / Donnelly
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Katz and Davies

Website of the Day
Defend Bear Butte

Video of the Weekend
Rainbows Bust Pig Blockade

 

August 4, 2006

Ralph Nader
Joe Lieberman and the Secret Chamber

Brian Cloughley
Osama Has Won

Eliza Ernshire
No Lights in Gaza: "We Have a Death Warrant for Your Home"

Roger Assaf
Letter from Lebanon: Adjusting the Heroic Commando Raid Story

George Bisharat
When I Last Saw Lebanon

Remi Kanazi
Out to Lunch: The US Media's "Special Relationship"

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Critical Moment: The Boardrooms vs. the Street

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Fig (Leaflet) of Warning

Derrick O'Keefe
Ripe Fruit and Rotten Imperial Ambitions: US Reaction to Castro's Illness

Mickey Z.
Some Context on Castro and Cuba

Col. Dan Smith
The New Gonzales Standard for Torture: No Standards, No Accountability

Website of the Day
Israel's TV War


August 3, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Civilian Casualties and the War of Media Deception

Uri Avnery
Knife in the Dark

Saree Makdisi
Time to Call It Quits: Israel's Raid on Baalbeck's Hospital

Robert Fisk
The Family That Stays Together Dies Together

Farrah Hassen
Bush's Nutty Syria Policy: a Report from Damascus

Nicola Nasser
The De-Arabization of the Arab League

Ron Jacobs
The Hollow Body: When Exactly Did the UN Lose Its Street Cred?

Mitchel Cohen
Mexico Rising

Seth Sandronsky
Migrant Labor and Uncle Sam

Bruce K. Gagnon
Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah's Top Ally in Israel


August 2, 2006

John Ross
Mexican Civil Resistance in Five Acts

Chip Mitchell
Kudos to Hitchens!

Saul Landau
Want Peace in the Middle East? End the Occupation

Naseer Aruri
The UN at the Dustbin of History: Does It Have the Capacity to Intervene?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress and the Pentagon: Co-Abusers of the War Budget

Matthias Gebauer
News on a Platter: the Middle East PR War

Joshua Frank
How the Kyoto Protocol Was (Al) Gored

Bill Quigley
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and North Dakota

Manuel Yang
A View of Gaza and Lebanon from the Interior

Shamai Leibowitz
Whitewashing Atrocities: the Tortured Language of War

David Himmelstein
Pulling the Plug on Israel

Lara Marlowe
The Total Destruction of Srifa

Website of the Day
As a Nuke Plant Falls

 

August 1, 2006

Michael Neumann
What is to be Said?: War on the Blathersphere

Robert Fisk
Into the Meat Grinder: NATO and Lebanon

Omar Barghouti
The Massacre at Qana: Were Racism and Fundamentalism Factors?

Marc Levy
Whatever You Did in the War will Always be With You

Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague
Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups

Claud Cockburn
Scenes from the Spanish Civil War

Ross Eisenbrey
When is a Raise Not a Raise? House Bill Actually Cuts Wages for Some Workers by $5.50 an Hour!

Dave Lindorff
Making the World Safe ... for Dictatorship

John Chuckman
Canada's Harper Blames the UN Dead

Francis Boyle
Prosecuting Israel: a War Crimes Tribunal May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War

Phil Doe
Bleak House Revisited: My Vacation in Water Court

Stephen Soldz
Psychologists, Guantanamo and Torture

Website of the Day
An Unfair War

 

July 31, 2006

Jonathan Cook
Birth Pangs or Death Throes?

Uri Avnery
Syria in the Gunsight

Robert Fisk
Atrocity in Qana: Israel Kills 34 Kids

Amina Mire
The Struggle for Somalia: Warlords, Islamists, US Global Militarism and Women

Marjorie Cohn
Bush's Enemy Du Jour

Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver
All That's Given Up in the Name of Security

John Ross
Report from a Red Alert: Zapatistas at Critical Crossroads

Stanley Rogouski
Why Howard Dean Denounced Our Puppet in Iraq

Gideon Levy
Days of Darkness: the Cruel, Collective Punishment of Lebanon

Ron Jacobs
No One Is Illegal

James Ridgeway / Alicia Ng
Witch Hunting Russell Tice: 3 Films

Brian Tokar
The Visionary Life of Murray Bookchin

Alexander Cockburn
The Triumph of Crackpot Realism

July 29 / 30, 2006
Weekend Edition

Michael Neuman
Humanitarian Intervention: The White Man's Burden

Vijay Prashad
Cry Havoc: Anyone Who Opposes Israel is Labeled a Terrorist

Ramzi Kysia
Lebanon's Children: Voices from an Invasion

Werther
The Manchurian Clergyman: Rev. John Hagee's War

Robert Fisk
Bush and Blair: "Keep It Up!"

Patrick Cockburn
Repeating the 1982 Fiasco

Ralph Nader
Big Oil's Biggest Score: Who Says Crime Doesn't Pay?

Rachard Itani
Professor of Propaganda: the Lies of Alan Dershowitz

Eduardo Galeano
One Country Bombed Two Countries

Gary Leupp
Cowboys Still in the Saddle: Neocon Plans in the MIddle East

Eve Poretsky
The Biggest Stick in the Middle East

John Chuckman
Delusional Expectations: How Israel Could Destroy Itself

Fred Gardner
San Diego v. Prop 215

Juan Santos
Apocalypse No!: an Indigenist Perspective

Punyapriya Dasgupta
Israel's Foes as Beasts and Insects

Liaquat Ali Khan
The War Crime Machine: Defeating the IDF

Israel Shamir
Friends, True and False

William A. Cook
The Power of Evil

Stanley Heller
Bill Clinton Comes to Lieberman's Rescue

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War Crimes Dodge

Moshe Adler
Kelo, a Year Later: Property Sezied By Eminent Domain Must Remain Public

Susie Day
Comrade Bush: Back in the USSA

Pat Williams
The Right's Pre-Election Sleight of Hand

Anthony Papa
Collateral Damage from the War on Drugs

John V. Whitbeck
Imperial Overreach: Suez 1956 to Lebanon 2006

Jackie Corr
Last Rites for Evel Knievel

Myles Palmer
Old Soul: James Hunter's "People Gonna Talk"

Tom D'Antoni
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Louise, Davies, Engel and Meyers

Website of the Weekend
Electronic Lebanon

 

July 28, 2006

Jonathan Cook
The Lies Israel Tells Itself

Uri Avnery
Who is Winning? Questions and Answers About the War in Lebanon:

Renee Bowyer
When Condi Came to Ramallah

Robert Fisk
Smoke Signals from Bint Jbeil

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad's Death Squads, Official and Otherwise

Ramzy Baroud
The War in Lebanon: More Than Meets the Eye

Don Fitz
Half-Hour Hurricanes: Where Were the Warnings About St. Louis's Ultra Storm?

Elaine Cassel
The Second Andrea Yates Verdict: Why the Jury Did the Right Thing

David Price
Much Ado About Landis: What Kind of Tour de France Was It?

Mike Whitney
Bull's Eye: Israel's Targeted Assassination of UN Peacekeepers

Mickey Z.
Power (Outage) to the People: Why Queens Went Dark

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Power of Arrogance in a World Without Deterrence

Charles Glass
Operation "Save Israel's High Command"

Website of the Day
Military Intelligence and You!

 

July 27, 2006

Tanya Reinhart
Israel's New Middle East

Saul Landau
Castro at 80: History Absolved Him, Now What?

Ramzi Kysia
Watching Lebanon Burn: Notes From a Free Fire Zone

Tom Barry
John Bolton: Israel's Man at the UN

Joseph Grosso
Israel and Iraq: Hillary's White House Ticket

Sharon Smith
Lebanon and the Future of the Antiwar Movement

Gale Courey Toensing
9/11 Nablus: First, Destroy the Archives

Christopher Reed
Hirohito's Ghost: Japan's New Militarists

Werther
Hoosier Hooey: Is Terre Haute the Peshawar of the Midwest?

Yusuf Mansur
Can the Crime Justify the Act?

Richard Harth
Squeezing the Last Drops from Palestine

Website of the Day
Who's Arming Israel?


July 26, 2006

Norman Solomon
Applauding While Lebanon Burns: Richard Cohen's Blood Lust

Barbara Olshanksy
Gitmo: Justice Denied is Murder, and a War Crime

David Nally
The Detention of Ghazi Walid Falah: Israel Arrests Geography Professor from University of Akron

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September 6, 2006

Bad Faith and Distortions From the American Psychological Association

Protecting the Torturers

By STEPHEN SOLDZ

 

"A torturing nation uses fear, persuasion, and propaganda to secure the assent to torture from society in general and from members of its legal, academic, journalistic, and medical professions."

-- Steven Miles, M.D.,
Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror

Bahraini national al-Dossari has been imprisoned at Guantánamo Naval Base for over four-and-a-half years. Amnesty International has obtained his account of his treatment in United States care in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo Naval Base. Here is one excerpt:

"The investigators would also put psychological pressure on me. Some of the things that happened to me during investigations are: I was threatened with being murdered, tortured and having to spend the rest of my life in jail in Cuba, my daughter Nura would be kidnapped, they would make trouble for my family in Saudi Arabia and they threatened to assassinate me after I am released. They put very strong detergent in the investigation room and poured it all around me until I almost suffocated. They put a music stereo record on very, very loudly, they put very bright torches to my face, they put me in a very, very cold room and reduced the temperature to the lowest temperature for many long hours and did not allow me to have food or drink, go to the toilet or perform my ablutions to pray.

"There were many other things such as they tied my hands to my feet in the ring on the floor of the room. All the investigation rooms have a metal ring fixed in the floor to tie the detainees' feet to it.

"As for sexual assaults, many things happened to me and I will mention some of them here. One day, on a Saturday ­ I will tell you the reason for why I remember this date later ­ the soldiers took me at night for investigation. In the investigation room, they tied my feet to that steel ring and then they left me and went away. I sat alone for a long time. Then the door was opened forcefully and four soldiers wearing black masks and a female investigator came in. The soldiers started terrorising me by raising their voices and one of them had a video camera in his hand that he was taping this with. Then this investigator said to me, 'now we want you to confess that you are with Al Qaeda or that you have some connection to the attacks in America, otherwise tonight we will show you something that you will never ever forget for the rest of your life', and of course, I will never forget what happened for as long as I live. I told her that I had no connection to what she was talking about. They also had extra shackles with them that the soldiers moved in their hands to terrorise and frighten me. They started threatening me and when I realised that something serious was going to happen to me, I started screaming and shouting so that perhaps one of the brothers would hear my screams. However, that was out of the question as all the investigation rooms were soundproof. She said to me, laughing, 'it's Saturday, it's the weekend, it's late at night and there are no officials around'. After one final attempt to threaten me, she ordered the soldiers to start ­ what they had previously been ordered to do; the soldiers came and took me off the chair. My feet were tied to that ring as I mentioned before. They then laid me out on my back and put the extra shackles on top of my hand shackles and pulled me by them forcefully and brutally in the opposite direction, towards my feet, while I was lying on my back. Then the investigator signalled to a soldier who [had] a pair of scissors in his hand to cut off all my clothes (sic). The soldiers cut off all my clothes, removed them and threw them in a corner of the room. The investigator then started taking off her clothes ­ the soldier with the camera was filming everything. When she was in her underwear, she stood on top of me. She took off her underpants, she was wearing a sanitary towel, and drops of her menstrual blood fell on me and then she assaulted me. I tried to fight her off but the soldiers held me down with the chains forcefully and ruthlessly so that they almost cut my hands. I spat at her on her face; she put her hand on her dirty menstrual blood that had fallen on my body and wiped it on my chest. This shameless woman was wearing a cross on a chain. The cross had a figure of a crucified man on it. She raised the cross and kissed it, and then she looked at me and said that this cross was a present for you Muslims. She stained her hands with her menstrual blood and wiped my face and beard with it. Then she got up, cleaned herself, put her clothes back on and left the roomthen the soldiers took my hands and tied them to my feet on the ground. All the soldiers left once they had taken my clothes from the corner of the room and left me in this state ­ tied up, naked and smeared with [] menstrual blood... [J]ust before dawn. I was in a hysterical state, I was in a really bad state; I almost went mad because of what had happened, how it had happened and why it had happened."

Al-Dossari's account is far from unique. Treatment such as that described has been routine at Guantánamo and other United States detention centers in the Global War Against Terrorism.

A significant aspect of the treatment at Guantánamo constitutes what Physicians for Human Rights has called (in their report Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces) "psychological torture." Included under this term are "techniques such as sensory deprivation, forced nudity, forced grooming, isolation, and use of detainees' phobias, such as fear of dogs" (p. 25).

Integral to the interrogations at Guantánamo, and to the psychological torture that commonly occurred during them, has been the participation of members of the so-called "helping professions," including physicians, nurses, and psychologists. Perhaps most innovative is the existence of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, or BSCT (pronounced "biscuits" in military jargon) consisting of psychologists and psychiatrists participating in interrogations and consulting on interrogation strategies for particular detainees.

A July 2004 New Yorker article by Jane Mayer presented circumstantial evidence that these BSCT staff received specialized training by psychologists from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program. This SERE program teaches military officers how to resist torture by subjecting them to a brief period of extreme psychological abuse. At the time of Mayer's article, hard evidence that Guantánamo interrogators had been trained in SERE techniques was lacking, despite the fact that top SERE staff were kown to have consulted at Guantánamo. Recently Salon found direct evidence that SERE techniques were indeed taught to Guantánamo interrogators. The Salon article details some SERE techniques reportedly utilized at Guantánamo (and at Abu Ghraib): "forced nudity, stress positions, isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and exhaustion from exercise." Also used were extremely loud music and prolonged cold. Physician and bioethicist Steven Miles has reported the participation of BSCT psychologist Maj. John Leso in the brutal and prolonged interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani. (See also the detailed interrogation log on al-Qahtani, referred to as Detainee 063.) During al-Qahtani's interrogation he was subjected to extreme cold to the point where his heart slowed and he was hospitalized (he was then warmed up and again subjected to extreme cold), he was injected with several bags of saline solution while being strapped to a table until he urinated on himself, and he was forced to bark like a dog; we are not told what was done to him to get him to bark.

As the nature of the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo was revealed, this treatment was condemned as an illegal violation of human rights by numerous international organizations including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Amnesty International.

Al-Dossari described the involvement of psychiatrists, other doctors, and nurses in his interrogation. As a result of repeated accounts like these, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association have barred the participation of psychiatrists and, indeed, all medical doctors in interrogations.

Unlike the medical and psychiatric associations, the American Psychological Association, as I documented in my recent article, A Profession Struggles to Save Its Soul: Psychologists, Guantánamo and Torture, has steadfastly refused to condemn (mis)use of psychological techniques to break detainees at Guantánamo or elsewhere and has consistently refused to forbid members to participate in interrogations at these facilities. In fact, the Association leadership has worked persistently to protect the ability of psychologists to participate in "national security" interrogations, even, at times, claiming an ethical obligation to do so to prevent harm to society, presumably from the "terrorists" imprisoned there for the last four-and-a-half years. (See also Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter's report on the Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) she chaired: "as experts in human behavior, psychologists contribute to effective interrogations.")

In recent months the opposition to Association policy from within has strengthened. However, these efforts have been limited in nature and opponents have, in every instance, been outmaneuvered by the Association leadership. In addition to the disturbing events reported in my previous article, more evidence on the smokescreen of manipulations, distortions and downright lies used by the Association raises additional questions as to what the Association leadership is up to.

Ethics Code Exempts Government and Military Employees: Endorsing the Nuremberg Defense

"Psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm."

-- American Psychological Association Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct

One questionable action concerns the Association ethics code that governs members' professional behavior, which was changed in 2002 so as to exempt psychologists working for the government (including the military) from being bound by the Association code. Thus, the 1992 code had a somewhat ambiguous clause:

"1.02 Relationship of Ethics and Law.

"If psychologists' ethical responsibilities conflict with law, psychologists make known their commitment to the Ethics Code and take steps to resolve the conflict in a responsible manner."

In 2002 this clause was changed to read:

"1.02 Conflicts Between Ethics and Law, Regulations, or Other Governing Legal Authority

"If psychologists' ethical responsibilities conflict with law, regulations, or other governing legal authority, psychologists make known their commitment to the Ethics Code and take steps to resolve the conflict. If the conflict is unresolvable via such means, psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing legal authority."

Note that the new wording explicitly exempts psychologists aiding torture or abuse under military or government orders from being charged with ethics violations as long as they can claim they took steps to resolve the conflict. By this change the Association in 2002 would have implicitly endorsed the defense of Lieutenant William Calley (convicted for ordering the My Lai massacre), Adolf Eichmann and other Nazi war criminals, and many others who claimed they were simply following orders, a defense that was rejected by the United States and the world through the Nuremberg and other war crimes trials.

In addition to directly incorporating the Nuremberg Defense into the ethics code, this change also has other harmful effects. By weakening the prohibition against acting in conflict with the ethics code, the Association significantly weakened the standing of any military psychologists desiring to refuse an immoral order or to refuse orders that violate international law. They could no longer call upon the ethics code as requiring refusal. While military personnel are allowed to refuse illegal or immoral orders, they do so at profound risk to themselves. In the case of military psychologists contemplating refusal of orders, the Association has increased this risk tremendously.

This change in the Association's ethics code has the effect of making other Association statements on allowable psychologist behavior largely irrelevant. Thus, statements forbidding psychologists from participating in torture or other abusive behavior have no standing if the psychologists are ordered to participate by a "governing legal authority," e.g., a commanding officer.

As long as Section 1.02 remains in the Association ethics code, efforts to get the Association to adopt statements on torture, coercive interrogations and the like (see next section) are essentially exercises in futility as these statements would not be binding on psychologist members working for the military or other government agencies (e.g., the CIA). Association critics working for such changes should realize that they have been wasting their time for the last several years pursuing what would have been ineffective changes in the ethics code. Some critics have recognized the problem and have tried for years, unsuccessfully, to get Section 1.02 amended to require adherence to international human rights standards when following laws or government orders.

Given the long history of discussion of the "following orders" defense, there is no possibility that the Association "ethics" leadership did not know exactly what they were doing. The only question is why they felt the need to build the Nuremberg Defense directly into the ethics code. Were there particular ethics violations they were aware of and were trying to protect, or did they have a more general goal of allowing free reign to psychologists enlisted in the then-beginning "Global War on Terror?" It is interesting that this revision occurred just as the first information was coming out about the torture occurring at Guantánamo and in Afghanistan and prior to the public awareness that psychologists were an intimate part of the interrogation apparatus there.

Revising Anti-torture Statement to Reduce Influence of International Law

"Every torturing government tries to apply a patina of law to these crimes. Any government can find lawyers or legislators to renounce, suspend, or define away the world's settled opinion opposing torture, expressed in documents like the Geneva Conventions." -

- Steven Miles, M.D., Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror

At the APA Convention this August, the Association's Peace Psychology Division introduced a resolution to reaffirm long-standing APA opposition to torture. At the same time, this Division and the Association's Divisions for Social Justice (a coalition of 10 divisions supporting social justice initiatives) declined to put forward a resolution banning psychologists' participation in coercive interrogations, at least partially out of concern that such a resolution would be defeated. Between the final draft version of the anti-torture resolution prepared by proponents and the version that was actually adopted and published, crucial wording defining proscribed behavior was changed in a subtle, but profound way.

The original Final Draft clearly defined torture and abuse using the United Nations Declaration and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It contained the following language:

"[T]he term 'torture' means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted upon a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official [e.g., governmental, religious, political, organizational] capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to lawful sanctions [in accordance with both domestic and international law]."

The inclusion of this statement would seem to be a clear and unambiguous acceptance by the Association of international law and understandings as to what constitutes torture.

However, in the published version the following paragraph defining "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of punishment" was added:

"BE IT RESOLVED, that the term 'cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment' means treatment or punishment by any psychologist that is of a kind that, in accordance with the McCain Amendment, would be prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984."

This all sounds relatively benign. But the phrase "United States Reservations" should raise one's interest. Just what are these Reservations and what are they doing in the Association's resolution? It turns out that, when the United States ratified this UN Convention, the U.S. government took steps to significantly reduce or even eliminate its potential impact. (Several countries, namely Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland took exception to the U.S. Reservations at the time.) As I, a non-lawyer, read these Reservations, there are two potentially relevant clauses (Daily Kos diarist Valtin provides a somewhat different discussion of the impact of the second of these clauses but seems to have missed the first). The first of these clauses states:

"That the United States considers itself bound by the obligation under article 16 to prevent 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment', only insofar as the term 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States."

That is, for behavior not rising to the level of "torture," U.S. ratification of this Convention did not make anything illegal that was not already illegal according to U.S. law. No international understandings will be binding. Interpretations of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of punishment" by other countries, by the United Nations, or by other international organizations and institutions are irrelevant. By this means, also, the U.S. made its obligations under the Convention subject to the vagaries of U.S. law in this area. If U.S. courts interpret U.S. law as constitutionally allowing a certain type of behavior, that behavior would then by definition not be banned by U.S. adherence to the Convention. As long as that behavior was not quite "torture," it wouldn't matter if it was proscribed by every other country on earth. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear that the "psychological torture" techniques used by U.S. interrogators are violations of the U.S. Constitution.

As John Shifton argued in a recent article in Slate (Criminal, Immunize Thyself: The Bush administration's get out of jail card for torturers; see also Marty Lederman: The CIA Cruelty Authorization Act of 2006), the Bush administration is currently pushing to amend the U.S. War Crimes Act to legalize all abusive behavior that fails to meet the legal definition of torture. The added paragraph in the Association resolution will thus pass any new immunity down to psychologists engaged in interrogations. As U.S. law changes with regard to "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," so potentially will the ethical obligations of psychologists.

The second potentially relevant clause in the U.S. Reservations is concerned with limiting the definition of the most severe behaviors, those that are clearly proscribed by U.S. ratification of the UN Convention:

"That with reference to article 1, the United States understands that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality." (Emphases added)

Interestingly for psychologists, this, the longest clause in the U.S. Reservations, is explicitly designed to circumscribe the definition of torture so as to exclude most psychological torture. With the exception of attempts to create a "profound" disruption of "senses or the personality" or of threats to self or others of death or severe physical pain, the prolon