Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
17, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
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
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.
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May
17, 2004
The John-John
Ticket
Kerry Woos McCain
By KURT NIMMO
John Kerry wants John McCain to be his
running mate.
But wait a minute.
John McCain is a Republican
and John Kerry is a Democrat.
No problem.
It would be a "unity government."
"The enthusiasm of Democrats
for Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, is so high that even some
who have been mentioned as possible Kerry running mates -- including
Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska
senator -- are spinning scenarios about a 'unity government,'
effectively giving Mr. Kerry a green light to reach across the
political aisle and extend an offer," reports the New York
Times.
Aisle?
What aisle?
As Gore Vidal tells us, there
is but one party in Washington and it is the Property Party.
In other words, all property worth owning shall remain in the
possession of big honking corporations. Dem-Repub partisanship
is merely a squabble over formula. Our citizen-politicos agree
wholeheartedly with the strikebreaker Calvin Coolidge, who once
said "the business of America is business."
"Democrats say a bipartisan
Kerry-McCain ticket, featuring two decorated Vietnam War veterans
from different parties and regions of the country, would give
them a powerful edge in the debate over who can best lead the
nation in the war on terror."
It does not require a whole
lot of reading between the lines to understand this. In order
to "best lead the nation in the war on terror," Kerry
and McCain -- as determined participants in an immoral war resulting
in the death of 2-3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans --
are remarkably qualified to finish the job in Iraq and in due
course invade Syria and Iran, maybe even Saudi Arabia. Thus the
Johns avidly embrace the degenerate neocon ethos -- that is to
say total and "preemptive" war against the third world
or "under-developed" countries bearing appreciable
measures of oil, minerals, lumber, etc. -- beginning with the
Arab Middle East and its uncooperative Muslim hordes.
Let's call it Bush Lite minus
opposition to abortion.
Naturally, a Kerry-McCain ticket
is a long shot. However, the ABBers (Anybody But Bush) out there
should take note.
Come November, if John is John's
running mate, you will need pinch your nostrils extra tight to
fend off the pervasive stench. Consider:
McCain was one of the Keating
Five. He was investigated on ethics charges for taking contributions
(a generous $112,00) from the swindler Charles Keating who was
convicted of racketeering and fraud in both state and federal
court. Total cost to American taxpayer: $3.4 billion. McCain
hung with Keating at his extravagant Bahamas pad and flew on
the racketeer's airplanes at least nine times. McCain's wife
and father-in-law invested heavily in a Keating shopping center
in Arizona described as a sweetheart deal.
In addition to associating
with bank swindlers, McCain is fond of mobsters. He sent birthday
cards to Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonano, the head of the
New York Bonano crime family, after the notorious mobster retired
in Arizona. I guess sun birds of a feather flock together in
the Grand Canyon State.
John's in favor of allowing
corporations to do whatever the heck they want -- especially
when it comes to raiding the till to support political candidates
such as himself. He opposed legislation that would have forced
companies to get permission from stockholders before using treasury
funds for political activities.
Republicans like to say Democrats
have loose morals -- recall how they so mercilessly lambasted
Clinton for his juvenile dalliance with an intern -- but the
Republican John M. also had a WD40 lubricated zipper. McCain
readily admits his first marriage crashed and burned due to his
fooling around with women other than his wife.
Republicans have zero tolerance
for drug abuse -- or they did until it was discovered Rush Limbaugh
had an obsession for munching pain pills like M&Ms. It seems
McCain's wife Cindy, the daughter of a wealthy Budweiser beer
distributor, was addicted to prescription drugs. Mrs. McCain
even stooped so low as to steal drugs from a medical charity
that she ran.
But when it comes to the drug
abuse of other people -- especially poor people unable to hire
fancy lawyers or acquire country club memberships -- McCain is
about as flexible as reinforced concrete. "Of the four major
candidates, McCain has expressed the most hawkish positions on
drug policy," explains the Issues 2000 website. "He
wants to increase penalties for selling drugs, supports the death
penalty for drug kingpins, favors tightening security to stop
the flow of drugs into the country, and wants to restrict availability
of methadone for heroin addicts." No word if McCain finds
it necessary to shut down doctors and pharmaceutical corporations
that allow rich talkshow hosts to squirrel away thousands of
pain pills and turn the domestic help into couriers.
McCain fully supports the neocon
way of reacting to the world. He believes al-Qaeda and Saddam
were in cahoots and urged Dubya to invade Iraq way back in December,
2001. He mindlessly declared the invasion justified even as a
mountain of evidence began to surface indicating Bush and the
neocons had lied through their teeth about Saddam and his illusory
WMD. McCain supports the so-called missile defense system --
even though the thing is an immense failure and will result in
flushing billions of dollars down the rat holes of gluttonous
defense contractors. For McCain, our future is one of never-ending
war and aggression. According to McCain, the job of the United
States is "not simply to contain rogue regimes, but to drive
them from power."
Finally, McCain is determined
peace will never exist in the Middle East. Like Bush and Kerry,
McCain is all agog over the Butcher of Beirut, Ariel Sharon.
He likes to tell the accused war criminal what a fine job he's
doing turning the Palestinians into impoverished prisoners on
their own land. Last August McCain said "there should be
no linkage of the route" of Israel's apartheid wall to the
$9 billion in loan guarantees the US planned to bestow on the
scofflaw Zionist state. McCain told Israeli Foreign Minister
Silvan Shalom that "the Oslo Accords failed because they
were based on the premise that Palestinians and Israeli could
live peacefully together. The fence is an effort to see if Israelis
and Palestinians can live peacefully apart." In other words,
Palestinian Bantustans are fine by John McCain and John Kerry.
"Israel's security fence is a legitimate act of self defense,"
Kerry believes. "Israel has a right and a duty to defend
its citizens. The fence only exists in response to the wave of
terror attacks against Israel." No mention of the additional
land Israel has stolen in the process, much of it valuable agricultural
land.
A John-John ticket would be
virtually indistinguishable from a Bush-Cheney ticket on foreign
policy. Nothing will change if Kerry-McCain are elected come
November. It will be more of the same -- only the United Nations
and the Europeans will be coaxed back into the fold after they
were so viciously alienated by the boorish neocons. Old Europe
will be back in vogue.
Regardless of Kerry's choice
of running mate, the ABBers will hold their collective noses
and vote for more of the same in November, so desperate are they
to get rid of Bush and his warmongering entourage. It's all about
window dressing.
Is it possible they will come
to their senses in 2008?
Or will they be fooled again?
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer
in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred
blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another
Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for May 15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
|