Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Will Not Vote in 2004
Prince
Screw Electoral Politics
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.
|
Weekend
Edition
May 8 / 9, 2004
Torture, the
CIA and the Press
Who Let the
Dogs Out?
By DOUGLAS VALENTINE
"O, pardon me, thou bleeding
piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!"
Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I.
Finally, a period of re-evaluation.
Too bad it took a war crimes scandal to bring it about, and
that the entire Iraqi misadventure was a criminal fraud to being
with.
But here we are, with calls
from Congress for the resignation of the once popular, infallible
Donald Rumsfeld, and the absence of that permanent, arrogant
smirk from George Bush's face, as he disingenuously apologizes
to the hitherto demonic Arab world. We are even engaged, it
seems, in that most un-American activity: self-criticism.
This window of moment will
not last for long, for even as we examine our policies and policy-makers,
US Army snipers are peering out of minarets, picking off civilians
on the bloody streets of Fallujah and Najaf, and a dozen other
anonymous outposts in Iraq. So while the opportunity presents
itself, let's be quick about this, and ask the overarching question:
How did we get from 9/11 to Abu Ghoryab?
From my point of view
that of a literary critic the corporate media was one of
several determining factors. In particular, I blame the journalists
who chose not to call for restraint in the aftermath of the Twin
Towers, but who filled their columns and articles not with calls
for restraint, but for swift revenge. In one sense, that of
impulse, theirs was a perfectly human response. But in another
sense, that of reasoned logic, it was suspect for journalists are educated people,
and they ought to understand the lessons of history. Many would
be familiar, for example, with cautionary words with which Homer
began the Iliad: "The Wrath of Achilles is my theme,
that fatal wrath which, in fulfillment of the will of Zeus, brought
the Achaeans so much suffering and sent the souls of many noblemen
to Hades, leaving their bodies as carrion for dogs and passing
birds."
But there was no reference
to "the fatal wrath" in the journals and magazines
that mother our minds. Instead, the vast majority of publications
incited the Bush Regime to pursue a violent course of action
that, as we know in hindsight, was planned even before Bush's
pseudo-election. Fist came the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan,
then the promulgation, six months before the invasion of Iraq,
of "The National Security Strategy of the United States,"
through which the Bush Regime conferred upon itself the divine
right to devastate any nation it disliked, or had vast oil fields
that it coveted. This first-degree-murder strategy made, at the
time, about seventy percent of Americans feel confident that
Bush was a man of resolve, with their best interests at heart.
This popular support was due,
in no small part, to the constant barrage of righteous saber
rattling, aimed at the malleable public, by the corporate media.
Simply stated, it was no mistake.
"You give me an incident
and I'll give you a war."
Publisher W. R. Hearst
Of all the journalists who
walk the national security beat, none is as well informed, as
well connected, or as well respected as Seymour Hersh. To his
credit, he has been exposing government wrongdoing since 1970,
when he wrote about the My Lai Massacre in South Vietnam. His
dry, detached writing style lends credence to what he reports,
but and he is not alone in this respect the voices
he chooses to quote are often full of passionate rhetoric, and
it is through this device that he leads us to certain seemingly
preconceived conclusions.
To wit: In sorting through
the rubble of the World Trade Towers for leads as to how such
a calamity might have occurred, Hersh interviewed a number of
often anonymous sources for a 1 October 2001 article in The
New Yorker. For those who do not recall the article, it
contained an implicit clarion call for unleashing the CIA on
Osama bin Laden and his Al Qeada accomplices.
Hersh chose to quote one anonymous
"general" as saying: "We must now make a difficult
transition from reliance on law enforcement to the preemptive."
Upon reflection, is it not
eerily prescient how that word "preemptive" would soon
become central to Bush Administration policy?
The "general" went
on to say that it was time to stop hiring "computer geeks"
straight out of college, and, he implied, it was time to get
some killers on the team. "This is about going back to
deep, hard dirty work, with tough people going down dark alleys
with good instincts," Hersh quoted the general as saying.
However, according to Hersh's
primary sources, the CIA didn't have any men like that anymore.
The CIA was, to paraphrase Hersh's sources, basically a bunch
of palace eunuchs.
As we were told in Hersh's
October 1991 article, Bill Clinton's CIA Director, John Deutch,
was the villain who had castrated the CIA. In 1995, when a CIA
employee was linked to the murder of "an American innkeeper
and the Guatemalan husband of an American lawyer," Deutch
issued a "scrub order" that prevented the CIA from
hiring murderers. After 9/11, this "scrub order" seemed
absurd. If it takes a thief to catch a thief, then it takes
a killer to kill a killer. The logic was irrefutable, and suddenly
the corporate media was begging the military and the CIA to adopt
the torture, detention, and assassination techniques of the Israelis
and as early as October 2001, Hersh, for some reason, was
helping to provide a pretext for doing exactly that.
"Today's C.I.A. is not
up to the job," Hersh alerted us. It had "become increasingly
bureaucratic and unwilling to take risks," and under Clinton,
it "promoted officers who shared such values."
We were at risk and unable
to strike back against terrorists, because the CIA had stopped
putting tough agents in the field, Hersh reported, and was relying
on technology and friendly foreign services to do the dirty work.
He said that in the new war on terror, it was no longer feasible
to assign CIA agents undercover as diplomats or cultural attaches
at American embassies in major cities. Having said that, he drew
a blueprint of exactly what was to come: "in Afghanistan,"
he said, "or anywhere in the Middle East or South Asia,
a C.I.A. operative would have to speak the local language and
be able to blend in. The operative should seemingly have nothing
to do with any Americans, or with the American embassy, if there
is one. The status is known inside the agency as "nonofficial
cover," or NOC. Exposure could mean death."
Is this not a recipe for the
type of "contractors" who flooded Iraq after the invasion
and occupation? The only difference is that a CIA agent under
"non-official cover" is no longer referred to as a
NOC, but as an OGA, for Other Government Agency.
Before I continue to put in
context the persuasive impact of what Hersh said two and half
years ago, when he was prodding America to unleash its dogs of
war, let me remind you that the agents who drew the CIA into
the line of fire over the systematic use of torture at Abu Ghoryab
prison as a result, ironically, of Hersh's most recent
"explosive" article in The New Yorker
were two individuals who fit the "nonofficial cover"
bill exactly: Mr. John Israel, a contract US civilian interpreter,
working for the company CACI, and ostensibly attached to the
205th Military Intelligence Brigade; and Mr. Steven Stephanowicz,
a contract US civilian interrogator, also working for CACI, but
not attached to Military Intelligence, and certainly working
for the CIA.
The whereabouts of Messrs.
Stephanowicz and Israel are currently unknown, and CACI doesn't
have to tell, because: 1) as we are told by Hersh, "Exposure
could mean death," and 2) because, their trail leads to
the CIA people who hired them; and the one thing Bush cannot
accept, is having heroic a CIA agent brought up on a murder rap.
Try, if you can, to imagine
a trial by jury, or tribunal, in which a CIA officer was sentenced
to death for killing an Iraqi civilian.
Then come quickly to your senses,
and realize that CIA officers have a license to kill, just as
Army snipers can assassinate Iraqi civilians with impunity.
The fact is, the war crime of murder is not punishable by death
under the Bush Regime, for it was the Bush Regime that lifted
all the moral and legal restraints on its soldiers and spies
in the first place. So far, murdering Iraqis carries with it
only a less than honorable discharges.
Dishonorable
Discharges
Speaking of dishonorable discharges,
the press was crying for blood in the days after 9/11, and fruitcakes
like svelte Ann Coulter were calling anyone who wasn't a "traitor!"
In this respect, Seymour Hersh was running out in front of the
pack. On 1 October 2001, he asked the "hard" (overarching
is a better word) question about the "lengths the C.I.A.
should go to." As a suggestion, he referred to a tactic
used by the Jordanians against the horrible terrorist Abu Nidal.
"The Jordanians did not move directly against suspected
Abu Nidal followers but seized close family members instead-mothers
and brothers. The Abu Nidal suspect would be approached, given
a telephone, and told to call his mother, who would say, according
to one C.I.A. man, "Son, they'll take care of me if you
don't do what they ask." As Hersh reported the official
added. "You have to get their families under control."
It was rising to that level
of savagery, the CIA man said, "or sitting around making
diversity quilts."
So much for family values.
Seriously, the power of suggestion
is one of the subtlest tools a journalist can use to provoke
a preconceived response from a reader. Which raises the question:
might one of the murder suspects at Abu Ghoryab have read Hersh's
article and taken the anonymous CIA officer's advice literally?
Probably not. Or is it possible that the big brains at CIA
Central read Hersh's article and decided to employ Jordanian
tactics? Very unlikely. Or is it possible that the CIA had
already decided on this course of action, and was using Hersh
(unwittingly, of course) as part of a psychological warfare,
"black propaganda" campaign to put the American people
in the proper, bloodthirsty frame of mind?
Just to remind everyone, Vice-President
Dick Cheney defended CIA Director George Tenet after Hersh broke
the Abu Ghoryab scandal, and said that Tenet had Bush's "full
confidence." This is important to note, for it establishes
the chain of command, which leads from Bush, through Cheney,
through Tenet, to the CIA people who did hire Messrs. Stephanowicz
and Israel; and even more to the point, it illustrates how policies
made by Bush and company flow through the corporate media to
the public, and become directly responsible for the kidnapping,
illegal detention, torture, rape and murder of tens of thousands
of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraqi.
Seymour
and the Circle Jerk
None of this preemptive policy
making would have been possible without popular support, and
garnering that precious commodity is the responsibility of the
corporate media. People like Seymour Hersh, who on 1 October
2001 explained that the hunt for bin Laden had been hampered
because the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center "was not authorized
to recruit or handle agents overseas." Perhaps, he seemed
to be suggesting, 9/11 would not have occurred if the CT Center
had had such an authorization? This is a suggestion that, if
true, would not sit well in any patriotic reader's subconscious
mind.
Hersh then chose to cite former
CIA officer Robert Baer, an avid supporting for unleashing the
CIA, who heaped praise on former CIA officer Duane Clarridge
for running the CT Center properly under Ronald Reagan's CIA
Director, William Casey. This was in the mid-1980s, when mining
foreign ports and forming death squads was permitted. But,
Hersh tells us, Clarridge was eventually fired because the things
he was doing were "too risky."
Hersh, however, did not choose
to use the word "illegal" to describe what Clarridge
did, nor did he choose to mention that Clarridge, who may be
one of his anonymous sources, was indicted in the Iran-Contra
scandal, but pardoned by lame duck President G. H. W Bush in
December 1992.
It's also important to know
that Hersh, in a 20 December 2001 article for The New Yorker,
reported that Duane Clarridge, along with General Wayne Downing
("who ran a Special Forces command during the Gulf War,"
and was a nominee to head the Office of Homeland Security), had
helped Ahmad Chalabi draw up an attack plan for Iraq. Chalabi,
of course, is the discredited leader of the Iraqi National Congress
(and mentor to New York Times reporter Judy Miller), upon
whose word the Bush Regime based many of its claims that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
With this piece of information,
a link is established between Hersh's sources and the nation's
policy makers. We know that he has access to them, and that
he disseminates their plans and strategies, in a context that
subtly tends to support them
In this same December 2001
article, Hersh claims that in 1998, former CIA Director R. James
Woolsey, along with Richard Perle and the "Iraq Hawks"
in the Bush Regime Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and
Donald Feith urged Clinton to support Chalabi's insurgents.
Ironically, Hersh also says that in 2001, Perle and Woolsey
"inspired a surge of articles and columns calling for the
extension of the Afghan war into Iraq."
Again, Hersh is careful in
what he doesn't say. For example, former CIA Director (and unofficial
"black propaganda" minister) R. James Woolsey was,
in 1985, one of seven directors of the Titan Corporation. In
2002, Titan employed Adel Nakhla, who was assigned by Titan as
a civilian translator to the 205th MI Brigade. Notably, Nakhla
is named as a "suspect" in the Taguba Report, which
Seymour Hersh analyzed and then presented to the public in an
article for The New Yorker, even before the Chairman of
the Joints Chiefs of Staff had, by his own account, had a chance
to read it.1
Curiously, this writer knows
of one former CIA contract officer who, before joining the Titan
Corporation, worked as a Phoenix Coordinator in Vietnam in 1967.
This same individual served in 1974 as a congressional liaison
officer for CIA officer Donald Gregg. As Vice-President George
H. W. Bush's National Security Advisor, Gregg helped to create
the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center under Duane Clarridge in 1986.
Gregg had managed the Phoenix Program in III Corps in Vietnam
in 1970.
This unstated connection to
the Phoenix Program, which was a major factor in the May Lai
Massacre, is also significant in understanding what Hersh wants
us to infer from his articles on national security issues. Specifically,
as Hersh informed us in a December 2003 article in The New
Yorker (titled "MOVING TARGETS: Will the counter-insurgency
plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?"), the CIA
had formed a new Special Forces group, designated Task Force
121, to neutralize Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.
According to Hersh, many of the anonymous officials he interviewed
for his article feared that the new operation, called "preëmptive
manhunting" by one of them, had "the potential to turn
into another Phoenix Program."
"Phoenix," Hersh
went on to say, without mentioning the CIA, "was the code
name for a counter-insurgency program that the U.S. adopted during
the Vietnam War, in which Special Forces teams were sent out
to capture or assassinate Vietnamese believed to be working with
or sympathetic to the Vietcong. In choosing targets, the Americans
relied on information supplied by South Vietnamese Army officers
and village chiefs."
What Hersh omits from his description
of Phoenix, is that the CIA officers who managed the program
relied for their information not on "South Vietnamese Army
officers and village chiefs," but on their own unilateral
assassination squads, and a gulag archipelago of secret interrogation
centers manned by members of the South Vietnamese secret police
and contract CIA officers, like the individual who supplied the
blacklist for the village of My Lai. Had Hersh included this
most important piece of information, the public's attention would
have been directed towards the CIA's interrogation practices,
and the location and operations of its existing secret interrogation
centers in Iraq. But the scandal at Abu Ghoryab, although then
well known to insiders, would not have been a sensational scoop.
The Phoenix Program "got
out of control," Hersh reported. "According to official
South Vietnamese statistics, Phoenix claimed nearly forty-one
thousand victims between 1968 and 1972; the U.S. counted more
than twenty thousand in the same time span. Some of those assassinated
had nothing to do with the war against America but were targeted
because of private grievances. William E. Colby, the C.I.A. officer
who took charge of the Phoenix Program in 1968 (he eventually
became C.I.A. director), later acknowledged to Congress that
"a lot of things were done that should not have been done."
Two things require our attention
here. First, why has no one in the press, or Congress, devoted
the same degree of attention to the CIA's death squads roaming
around Iraq, as they have to the Abu Ghoryab scandal? We know
from CNN's David Ensor that " An Iraqi prisoner who died
in November while being interrogated by a CIA officer and contract
translator arrived at Abu Ghraib (sic) prison with "broken
ribs and breathing difficulties" after being arrested by
Navy SEALs, U.S. officials said Thursday. Unnamed Pentagon officials
were quoted Wednesday saying the man had been delivered to the
prison in "good health."
We know from Hersh that Phoenix
is policy in Iraq, and that it got out of control in Vietnam.
We also know that Navy SEALs are one of CIA's primary unilateral
facets of its Phoenix-style Program in Iraq but there's
no accounting for the number of Iraqis killed, abducted or tortured
through the Program. Why not? Why not reporting in it? Must
we wait for some Navy SEL to be brought up on murder charges
first?
The other thing that would
be helpful to understand, in analyzing Hersh's reporting, is
the nature of his relationship with William Colby. It is believed
that they formed a rapport in 1974, while Colby was director
of the CIA. At the time, Hersh had learned of the existence
of documents connecting the CIA to Operation Chaos, which, under
CIA Counter-Intelligence chief James Angleton, spied on tens
of thousands of US citizens. As the story was about to break,
Angleton offered to tell Hersh of other CIA misdeeds if he "would
hold off on the (Chaos) story." According to historian
John Prados, Hersh immediately warned Colby that Angleton "was
off the reservation." What Colby said in response is unknown,
but from that moment on, Hersh seemed to have entered into a
quid-pro-quo with the upper echelons of the underground agency.
As Reeky used to say to Loocy,
"You got a lot of 'splaining to do," Mr. Hersh.
The Company
Man
According to Seymour Hersh,
Titan Corporation Director, former CIA Director, and unofficial
"black propaganda" minister R. James Woolsey was satisfied
with an unstable but "loosely federalized democracy"
in Iraq, the type that Chalabi and Clarridge recommended, while
Pentagon planners wanted a plan that included "feasibility."
Guess which one we got?
Not that it matters. Iraq
doesn't need to be "free" in the sense that US citizens
understand the word. They aren't free from unreasonable searches
or arrests. As any "radical cleric" will tell you,
they certainly aren't free to criticize their overlords.
The plan doesn't matter, as
any "Iraq Hawk" in the Bush Regime will tell you, nor
does this month's "explosive" story about the multiplicity
of American military atrocities in Iraq. There are so many other
buried stories, one can only guess at the extent of the war crimes
that have, and are being committed. Which leads us to the conclusion
that once the Hawks had invaded and occupied Iraq, the only thing
they really needed was an unbridled CIA now totally over
500 officers with its own secret detention and interrogation
facilities, and assassination squads, and, most importantly,
control over the information that reaches the Iraqi and American
public.
Taking care of business in
Iraq is Harris Inc., "a Florida-based communications company
that won a $96 million Pentagon contract in January to develop
the media" in Iraq, according to Lee Keath of the Associated
Press (5/3/2004). Until recently, Harris ran the Al-Iraqiya
newspaper and a number of radio stations. The CIA made sure
to take over all media outlets in Iraq during the invasion, and
when it thought that the dust had settled, it allowed American
corporations to take over the management of what was left, with
one notable exception. That exception was a newspaper run by
the "radical cleric" Muqtada Al-Sadr, who had the balls
to vehemently opposed the American occupation of his homeland
most likely as a result of the US policy of illegal detention
and torture of Iraqi civilians in Abu Ghoryab prison, and the
disappearances (unsolved murders) of several hundred if not thousand
more. So US Proconsul Paul Bremer shut down his presses, thus
inciting Muqtada and the Mehdi Fedayeen into open rebellion.
Inspired by Muqtada, the Iraqi
figurehead publisher at the Harris-managed Al-Iraqiya newspaper
quit, and said that "he was taking almost his entire staff
with him because of American interference in the publication."
If only such a publisher and
staff existed in America!
Instead we have a media represented
by Seymour Hersh, whose sophisticated and well-written "scoops"
keep us on our toes, waiting for the next shoe to drop, while
the revolution saunters by.
Hersh, of course, isn't to
blame for America's preemptive strategy for fighting the phantom
war on terror. That is a projection of our president's sadistic
personality, and his message of hatred that appeals to what is
perverse in American culture of knowingly doing what is
wrong, for the sake of power over others, but denying it to one's
self. In this way Bush's immorality has, in the name of righteous
sake, been adopted by the soldiers and spooks he has sent to
fight a war on behalf of giant corporations.
As Gilbert Achcar explained
in a fine article in CounterPunch,
the "middle does not link the bottom with the top"
of American society. That's the job of Company Men like Seymour
Hersh. In this way, policy made by a ruling elite trickles down
without the responsibility that should accompany it. Even though
Bush let the dogs out, others of inconsequence will pay for his
war crimes. And therein lies the tragedy of this tale.
Douglas Valentine is the author of The
Hotel Tacloban, The
Phoenix Program, and TDY.
His fourth book, The
Strength of the Wolf: The Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930-1968,
is newly published by Verso. For information about Mr. Valentine,
and his books and articles, please visit his web sites at www.DouglasValentine.com
and http://members.authorsguild.net/valentine
Weekend
Edition Features for 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
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