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New Special Double Issue of Print Edition of CounterPunch

The Trial of Milosevic: What Does It Portend for Saddam? by Tiphaine Dickson; Dr. Dean Wraps It Up...or Does He? by Alexander Cockburn; Bush Oil Grab in Alaska: How Clinton Opened the Door by Jeffrey St. Clair; The Magnificient 9: CounterPunch's Annual List of Groups That Make a Difference; The Sabotage of Matt Gonzalez by Ben Terrall; Arnold and Parole: Already Better than Gray Davis! by Scott Handleman. CounterPunch Online is read by 70,000 visitors each day, but we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

December 20 / 21, 2003

Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis

December 19, 2003

Elaine Cassel
Courts Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution

Robert Fisk
Raid on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back

Zoltan Grossman
The Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis

Mike Whitney
Bush's Afghan Highway to Nowhere

Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?

Gary Leupp
The Neocon's Dream Memo

 

December 18, 2003

Ann Harrison
A Landmark Victory for Medical Pot

John L. Hess
Catfish Blues: The SOB's from Out of Town

Karyn Strickler
Ebola is Good for You!

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Duryodhana Dies

Harry Browne
Hail Jim Hickey, the "Irish Hero" of the Colonial Occupation of Iraq

Hammond Guthrie
Captured in Abasement

December 17, 2003

Robert Fisk
Saddam's Cold Comforts

Gideon Levy
"Don't Even Think About the Children"

Marjorie Cohn
The Fortuitous Arrest of Saddam: a Pyrrhic Victory?

Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's Last Act


December 16, 2003

Robert Fisk
Getting Saddam...15 Years Too Late

Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain

John Halle
Matt Gonzalez and Me

Josh Frank
The Democrats and Saddam

Tariq Ali
Saddam on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism


December 15, 2003

Robert Fisk
The Capture of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War

Dave Lindorff
The Saddam Dilemma

Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein

Norman Solomon
For Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun

Patrick Cockburn
The Capture of Saddam

Stew Albert
Joy to the World

 

December 13 / 14, 2003

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli Connection

Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural

Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory

Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet

Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry

Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to Gov. Mitt Romney

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD

Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand

William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War

Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency

Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy

Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East

Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman

Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised

Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed

Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review

Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee

Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians

Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race

 

December 12, 2003

Josh Frank
Halliburton, Timber and Dean

Chris Floyd
The Inhuman Stain

Dave Lindorff
Infanticide as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies

Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?

Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva Accords

David Vest
Bush Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton


December 11, 2003

Siegfried Sassoon
A Soldier's Declaration Against War

Douglas Valentine
Preemptive Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program

John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra

Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride

James M. Carter
The Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq


December 10, 2003

Kurt Nimmo
The War According to Newt Gingrich

Pat Youngblood / Robert Jensen
Workers Rights are Human Rights

Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children

CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart Case

Dave Lindorff
Gore's Judas Kiss


December 9, 2003

Michael Donnelly
A Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder

Chris White
A Glitch in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?

Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style

Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus

Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now

Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens

Ron Jacobs
Remembering John Lennon

 

December 8, 2003

Newton Garver
Bolivia at a Crossroads

John Borowski
The Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville

William Blum
Anti-Empire Report: Revised Inspirations for War

Tess Harper
When Christians Kill

Thom Rutledge
My Next Step

Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear Terror and Psychic Numbing

Michael Neumann
Ignatieff: Apostle of He-manitariansim

Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak

 

December 6 / 7, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
The UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great

CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of Anti-Semitism"

Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist

Saul Landau
"Reality Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq

Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win

Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer

Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?

Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire

Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami

Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia

Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia and Dominican Republic

Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank

Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race

Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN

Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise

Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation

Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley

Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday

Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean"

Jeffrey St. Clair
A Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston

Mickey Z.
Press Box Red

Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert

T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?

 

 

December 5, 2003

Jeremy Scahill
Bremer of the Tigris

Jeremy Brecher
Amistad Revisited at Guantanamo?

Norman Solomon
Dean and the Corp Media Machine

Norman Madarasz
France Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination

Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan: the Road Back


December 4, 2003

M. Junaid Alam
Image and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein

Adam Engel
Republican

Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI

Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia

Gary Leupp
The Fall of Shevardnadze

Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr

December 3, 2003

Stan Goff
Feeling More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money

Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates

George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?

Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart

John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario

Harry Browne
Shannon Warport: "No More Business as Usual"

 

December 2, 2003

Matt Vidal
Denial and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom

Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas

Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?

Norman Solomon
That Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test

Josh Frank
Trade War Fears

Andrew Cockburn
Tired, Terrified, Trigger-Happy


December 1, 2003

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam

Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland

Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media

Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?

Gilad Atzmon
About "World Peace"

Bill Christison
US Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes


November 29 / 30, 2003

Peter Linebaugh
On the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone

Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos

Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math

Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative

Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview with John Pilger

Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam

Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream

Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia

Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser

Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali

Standard Schaefer
Unions are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes

Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay Bridge

Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again

Adam Engel
The System Really Works

Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool

Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans

Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace

Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy

Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith

 

 

November 28, 2003

William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes

David Vest
Turkey Potemkin

Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks

Wayne Madsen
Wag the Turkey

Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited

Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?

South Asia Tribune
The Story of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words

Website of the Day
Bush Draft


November 27, 2003

Mitchel Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving

Jack Wilson
An Account of One Soldier's War

Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas

Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD

Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer

Neve Gordon
Gays Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa

 


November 26, 2003

Paul de Rooij
Amnesty International: the Case of a Rape Foretold

Bruce Jackson
Media and War: Bringing It All Back Home

Stew Albert
Perle's Confession: That's Entertainment

Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities

David Orr
Miami Heat

Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists on the Beach

Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami

Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates

Kathy Kelly
Hogtied and Abused at Ft. Benning

Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement

 


November 25, 2003

Linda S. Heard
We, the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy

Diane Christian
Hocus Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators

Mark Engler
Miami's Trade Troubles

David Lindorff
Ashcroft's Cointelpro

Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas


November 24, 2003

Jeremy Scahill
The Miami Model

Elaine Cassel
Gulag Americana: You Can't Come Home Again

Ron Jacobs
Iraq Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?

Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant

 

Hot Stories

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Behold, the Head of a Neo-Con!

Subcomandante Marcos
The Death Train of the WTO

Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens as Model Apostate

Steve Niva
Israel's Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?

Dardagan, Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians

Steve J.B.
Prison Bitch

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda in the Iraq War

Wendell Berry
Small Destructions Add Up

CounterPunch Wire
WMD: Who Said What When

Cindy Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

Click Here for More Stories.

 

 

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Weekend Edition
December 20 / 21, 2003

Arrest, Smear and Slink Away

Dr. Lee and Captain Yee

By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

Shoot first and inquire afterwards and if you make mistakes, I will protect you.

Hermann Goering, Instructions to Prussian police

Rhyming last names is not all the two men have in common. Each man, though innocent of the initial charges, gave up something to the justice system. Wen Ho Lee gave up his job and almost a year of his life to solitary confinement in a New Mexico jail. Captain Yee gave up three months to solitary confinement in a naval brig and, very possibly, a marriage. The prosecution in both cases lost nothing more than face.

Wen Ho Lee, a former Los Alamos scientist, was arrested in April 1999 and charged in a 59-count indictment with mishandling highly classified national defense information and violating the Atomic Energy Act and the Federal Espionage Act by secretly moving vast quantities of classified nuclear weapons data from a secure computer at Los Alamos National Laboratory onto an "open" computer system. His computer allegedly had top-secret and "code-word" files about a wide range of CIA activities, including presidentially approved covert action programs.

After Mr. Lee was indicted, the government discovered that the material Mr. Lee had taken was not marked secret or confidential as the indictment alleged. To cure this fatal defect, the prosecution reclassified as secret and confidential all the information that Dr. Lee was alleged to have mishandled, thus saving the indictment.

When Dr. Lee sought release from jail pending trial, Robert Messemer, an FBI agent, lied to the federal judge who was considering whether or not to release Dr. Lee on bail, resulting in Dr. Lee's continued incarceration. When the lies were disclosed at trial, Mr. Messemer said to the judge that he never intended "to mislead you or anyone in this court or any court." He described his lies as "simple, inadvertent error."

Dr. Lee was tried, found innocent on all counts and released from confinement. The case was over and so was Dr. Lee's career as a government scientist.

Captain Yee is a West Point graduate and who converted to Islam. He was assigned to Guantanamo Bay as a chaplain in late 2002. Upon returning to the United States in September 2003 for a family visit, Captain Yee was arrested in Jacksonville on suspicion of espionage. Federal agents said he had sketches of the military prison to which he was assigned and also had documents concerning captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters to whom he ministered. Initial reports about his arrest, many citing unidentified sources, said he was being held on suspicion of sedition and espionage. One spokesman hinted that his activities might qualify Captain Yee for the death penalty.

One month after Captain Yee's arrest, suggestions of treason and espionage were replaced by charges that Captain Yee had disobeyed a general order by taking classified material home and transporting classified material without proper security containers. Unlike the possibility of a death sentence, each of those charges carries a maximum jail term of two years.

Notwithstanding the relatively minor nature of the charged offenses, Eugene Fidell, his lead attorney, in a letter to President Bush, described the conditions in which the captain was held pending trial. He said Captain Yee was in solitary confinement 23 hours a day with only one hour of solitary exercise and was required to wear leg and hand irons when leaving the cell. Brig personnel refused to recognize his status as an officer, would not provide him with a liturgical calendar or prayer rug and refused to tell him the time of day or the direction of Mecca.

On December 8, Captain Yee's pre-trial proceedings began with his wife and four year old daughter in the courtroom. The purpose of that hearingwais to let the presiding officer hear the evidence and decide whether to dismiss all charges, subject the defendant to a general court-martial or do something in between.

The first witness for the prosecution was Lieutenant Karyn Wallace. She did not testify about the nature of the materials found in Captain Yee's computer or the container in which they were placed. That is because by the time the trial began the charges against Captain Yee had been modified once again. On November 26 Captain Yee was charged with committing adultery and storing pornography on his government computer in addition to mishandling classified documents.

Lieutenant Wallace identified photographs showing her and Captain Yee embracing and described their relationship as sexual. Asked what that meant she said "We had sex together." She said that had happened about 20 times. In return for testifying against her former lover, Lt. Wallace was granted immunity.

The hearing ended after one day because prosecutors wanted additional time to review and classify documents taken from Captain Yee when he was arrested. The four months that elapsed between arrest and trial was, they apparently discovered at the last minute, inadequate to enable them to proceed.

The hearing resumes January 19, 2004. Captain Yee is free and ministering to people in the military pending its resumption. The holidays have been ruined for everyone. The prosecution team will spend the holidays reviewing files to see if they can save the part of the prosecution that doesn't pertain to smut. The Yees will have to review their marriage to see if it can be saved. The ends of justice have presumably been served although it's not clear how.

Christopher Brauchli is a Boulder, Colorado lawyer. His column appears weekly in the Daily Camera. He can be reached at: brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu

Weekend Edition Features for Dec. 13 / 14, 2003

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli Connection

Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural

Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory

Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet

Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry

Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to Gov. Mitt Romney

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD

Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand

William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War

Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency

Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy

Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East

Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman

Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised

Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed

Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review

Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee

Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians

Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race

 


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