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New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: Cockburn on Judy Miller's War: Unnamed Sources, the Direct Line to Rummy, Timely Book Promotion; St. Clair on Bush's Main Man, Marc Racicot: Why Do They Call Him "the White Colin Powell"; What Did He Do to Montana?; JoAnn Wypijewski on the Supremes and Sodomy: It's a Sex Thing; FrankenFoods & World Hunger: More Crap from Monsanto; What's in a Name: Smith/Smythe and NPR. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide web audience is soaring, with more than 60,000 visitors a day. This is inspiring news, but the work involved also compels us to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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From Common Courage Press

Recent Stories

July 23, 2003

Uri Avnery
Caesar's Favor

David Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft Rebuked

Mano Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists

Steve Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies

John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?

Patrick Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission

Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman

Paul Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal

Robert Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance Will Grow

William Witherup
Georgie Porgie

Website of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last

July 22, 2003

Diane Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces; Peace Frees

Jeremy Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran

Steve Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization

Sam Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle

James Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera

Lucretia Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life: January 18, 2003

Website of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties

 

July 21, 2003

Edward Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping of Arabs

Ron Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot

Allan J. Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?

Elaine Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment Camps

Bruce Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica

Website of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim by Claim

 

July 19 / 20, 2003

Arthur Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable Than the Dot.com Bubble?

Julian Bond
We Shall be Heard

Cynthia McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad

Mel Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?

Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz

Mickey Z.
History Forgave Churchill

Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message

Jon Brown
Whipping the Post

Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps

Steven Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC

Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters

Khaldoun Khelil
Capturing Friedman

Jeffrey St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed

Lenni Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus

Vanessa Jones
Three Dog Night

Adam Engel
Video Judas Video

Poets' Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Illegal Art

 

July 18, 2003

David Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo

Rahul Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep

John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World

Harold A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave

Alvaro Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists

David Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island

Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal

Website of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair

 

July 17, 2003

Ron Jacobs
Sometimes Even the President of the United States Has to Stand Naked

Lisa Walsh Thomas
Bush Country: the Venom and Adulation of Ignorance

Martin Schwarz
Bush Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine is the Bane of Non-Proliferation Watchdogs

Heidi Lypps
Better Justice Through Chemistry? Forced Drugging and the Supreme Court

Norman Madarasz
Third Ways and Third Worlds: Lula at the Progressive Governance Conference

Pankaj Mehta
Criminalizing the Palestinian Solidarity Movement

Marjorie Cohn
Bush, War Lies & Impeachment: the Boy Who Cried Wolf

Hammond Guthrie
(Dis) Intelligence Revisited

Website of the Day
No Force, No Fraud: the Soul of Libertarianism

July 16, 2003

Jason Leopold
Wolfowitz Told White House to Hype Dubious Uranium Claims

William Cook
Defining Terrorism from the Top Down

Elaine Cassel
Judge Brinkema v. Ashcroft: She Whom Must Not Be Obeyed

Jason Leopold
How Can They Justify the War If WMDs Are Never Found?

Linda Heard
Bondage or Freedom?

Raymond Barrett
From Detroit to Basra

Jeffrey St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala: The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt

 

July 15, 2003

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS

Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers: the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack

Chris Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries

Jason Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries

Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please

John Troyer
The Niger Syndrome

Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David Orrr

Uri Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb

Website of the Day
Cost of Iraq War

 

July 14, 2003

Lisa Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah

Walter Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain

SOA Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US

Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued

Website of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties


July 12 / 13, 2003

Arthur Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future

Standard Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an Interview with Michael Hudson

John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang

Ron Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran

Elaine Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights

Tom Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11

David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"

Jason Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11

Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?

Mickey Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa

Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group

Ramzy Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Adam Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist

Robert Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream

Poets' Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie

 

July 11, 2003

Conn Hallinan
The Coin of Empire

Tim Wise
God Responds to Bush

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa

Edward S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor

David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?

David Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary

Website of the Day
Dead Malls

 

July 10, 2003

Ron Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody Profits of General Dynamics

Sean Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia

Yemi Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?

Robert Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ali Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated

Joanne Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions

Website of the Day
Electronic Iraq

 

July 9, 2003

David Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on Bush?

David Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons

Mickey Z.
Why Speak Out?

Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud

John Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie

Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq

Website of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years

 

July 8, 2003

Elaine Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological Dissents of Scalia

Alan Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor

Chris Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag

Linda S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice

Brian Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders

Charles Sullivan
Bush the Christian?

Saul Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age

Website of the Day
Occupation Watch

 

July 7, 2003

William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head

Ramzy Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons

Simon Jones
What Progressives Should Think About Iran

Lesley McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh

Uri Avnery
The Draw

Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3

 

July 4 / 6, 2003

Patrick Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July

Frederick Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?

Martha Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation and Neglect

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture

Standard Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004

Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today

Elaine Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth

Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?

Wayne Madsen
A Sad Independence Day

John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War

Jim Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment

John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke

Lisa Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim

David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite

Adam Engel
Queer as Grass

Poets' Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian

 

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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

Elaine Cassel
Civil Liberties Watch

Michel Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians"

Uzma Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go

Paul de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda

Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream

Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution

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July 24, 2003

The Ugly Truth of Camp Cropper

A Torture Story to Shame Us All

By ROBERT FISK

Now here's a story to shame us all. It's about America's shameful prison camps in Iraq. It's about the beating of prisoners during interrogation.

"Sources" may be a dubious word in journalism right now, but the sources for the beatings in Iraq are impeccable. This story is also about the gunning down of three prisoners in Baghdad, two of them "while trying to escape". But most of all, it's about Qais Mohamed al-Salman. Qais al-Salman is just the sort of guy the US ambassador Paul Bremer and his dead-end assistants need now. He hated Saddam, fled Iraq in 1976, then returned after the "liberation" with a briefcase literally full of plans to help in the restoration of his country's infrastructure and water purification system.

He's an engineer who has worked in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is a Danish citizen. He speaks good English. He even likes America. Or did until 6 June this year.

That day he was travelling in Abu Nawas Street when his car came under American fire. He says he never saw a checkpoint. Bullets hit the tyres and his driver and another passenger ran for their lives. Qais al-Salman stood meekly beside the vehicle. He was carrying his Danish passport, Danish driving licence and medical records.

But let him tell his own story. "A civilian car came up with American soldiers in it. Then more soldiers in military vehicles. I told them I didn't understand what had happened, that I was a scientific researcher. But they made me lie down in the street, tied my arms behind me with plastic-and-steel cuffs and tied up my feet and put me in one of their vehicles."

The next bit of his story carries implications for our own journalistic profession. "After 10 minutes in the vehicle, I was taken out again. There were journalists with cameras. The Americans untied me, then made me lie on the road again. Then, in front of the cameras, they tied my hands and feet all over again and put me back in the vehicle."

If this wasn't a common story in Baghdad today--if the gross injustices meted out to ordinary Iraqis and the equally gross mistreatment in America's prison camps here was not so common--then Qais al-Salman's story would not be so important.

Amnesty International turned up in Baghdad yesterday to investigate, as well as Saddam's monstrous crimes, the mass detention centre run by the Americans at Baghdad international airport in which up to 2,000 prisoners live in hot, airless tents. The makeshift jail is called Camp Cropper and there have already been two attempted breakouts.

Both would-be escapees, needless to say, were swiftly shot dead by their American captors. Yesterday, Amnesty was forbidden permission to visit Camp Cropper. This is where the Americans took Qais Al-Salman on 6 June.

He was put in Tent B, a vast canvas room containing up to 130 prisoners. "There were different classes of people there," Qais al-Salman says. "There were people of high culture, doctors and university people, and there were the most dirty, animal people, thieves and criminals the like of which I never saw before.

"In the morning, I was taken for interrogation before an American military intelligence officer. I showed him letters involving me in US aid projects . He pinned a label on my shirt. It read, Suspected Assassin'."

Now there probably are some assassins in Camp Cropper. The good, the bad and the ugly have been incarcerated there: old Baathists, possible Iraqi torturers, looters and just about anyone who has got in the way of the American military. Only "selected" prisoners are beaten during interrogation. Again, I repeat, the source is impeccable, and Western.

Qais Al-Salman was given no water to wash in, and after trying to explain his innocence to a second interrogator, he went on hunger strike. No formal charges were made against him. There were no rules for the American jailers.

"Some soldiers drove me back to Baghdad after 33 days in that camp," Qais al-Salman says. "They dropped me in Rashid Street and gave me back my documents and Danish passport and they said, Sorry'."

Qais al-Salman went home to his grief-stricken mother who had long believed her son was dead. No American had contacted her despite her desperate requests to the US authorities for help. Not one of the Americans had bothered to tell the Danish government they had imprisoned one of its citizens. Just as in Saddam's day, a man had simply been "disappeared" off the streets of Baghdad.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.


Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003

Arthur Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable Than the Dot.com Bubble?

Julian Bond
We Shall be Heard

Cynthia McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad

Mel Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?

Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz

Mickey Z.
History Forgave Churchill

Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message

Jon Brown
Whipping the Post

Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps

Steven Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC

Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters

Khaldoun Khelil
Capturing Friedman

Jeffrey St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed

Lenni Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus

Vanessa Jones
Three Dog Night

Adam Engel
Video Judas Video

Poets' Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis

Website of the Weekend
Illegal Art

 

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