Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
May
7, 2004
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
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.
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May
7, 2004
An Illegal and
Immoral War
Betrayed by
Images of Our Own Racism
By ROBERT FISK
First, our enemies created the suicide
bomber. Now, we have our own digital suicide bomber, the camera.
Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds
the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi. Take a close look at the
leather strap, the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie
could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the
planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to
pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash.
The Muslim suicide bomber cries
Allahu Akbar, God is great. And what does Specialist Charles
Graner--Lynndie's partner-in-crime, the man who appears in several
of the torture photographs posing with Lynndie behind a pyramid
of naked Iraqi prisoners--do back home in Pennsylvania. Why,
his garden is plastered with a legend from the Book of Hosea,
about sowing and righteousness and ploughing.
Could ever Islam have come
so intimately into contact with the sexuality of the Old Testament?
Could neo-conservative Christianity--Lynndie is also a churchgoer--have
collided so violently, so revoltingly, so obscenely with Islam?
And who were the innocent in
these vile photographs? The American torturers and humiliators?
Or the Iraqi victims?
President Bush is fearful of
Arab reaction to these pictures. Why? For a year now, Iraqis
have been trying to tell journalists of the brutal treatment
they are receiving at the hands of their occupiers. They don't
need these incriminating photographs to prove to them what they
already know to be true.
But, in the history of the
Middle East, these pictures already have the status of those
most damaging snapshots of the Vietnam war: the police chief
in Saigon executing his Vietcong prisoner, the naked girl burnt
by napalm, the pile of bodies at My Lai. For Arabs, read Deir
Yassin and the corpses piled in the Palestinian refugee camp
of Sabra and Chatila in 1982.
Not long after the occupation
of Baghdad in April of last year, we got our hands on videotape
of the whipping of Iraqi prisoners by Saddam's security police.
I'm not sure which circle of
hell the victims were enduring in the 45 minutes of sadism which
I still have on one tape. They are whipped, they are kicked into
sewers and they cower like dogs. And why were these war crimes
filmed? I thought at first that it was intended for the enjoyment
of Saddam or his disgusting son Uday. But now I realise the videos
were taken so that the prisoners could be humiliated. Their suffering,
their pathetic pleas for mercy were to be recorded--to add the
final layer of degradation to their fate. And now I realise,
too, that the pictures of the Iraqis so cruelly treated--so tortured--by
the Americans, were taken for precisely the same reason.
Someone decided that the photos
would be the final straw, the breaking point, the moment of capitulation
for these young men. Make them simulate oral sex. Make them look
at the penis of their best friend. Get a girl to admire their
attempted erection. This was truly Saddamite in its perversity.
So let's, as the Americans say, get real. Who taught Lynndie
and her boyfriend and the other American sadists of Abu Ghraib
prison to do this?
I used to ask who taught the
Syrian and Iraqi secret police to do this. The answer to the
latter question was simple: the East German secret police. But
the answer to the first question? Well, we have been told that
there were "contracted" interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
I have reason to believe General
Janis Karpinski, the luckless prison commander who is going to
be dumped out of the army for interrogations over which she had
no control, knew "outsiders" were questioning her inmates.
She was never allowed into the interrogation room. And I can
see why. So, no doubt, can she.
So who were these mysterious
"interrogators"? If they were not CIA or FBI staff,
who were they? Several names are already doing the rounds--journalists
claim they have no final proof--and a number, I understand, hold
more than one passport. Why were they brought to Abu Ghraib?
Who brought them? How much are they paid? And who trained them?
Who taught them it was a good
idea to get a girl to point at an Arab who was being forced to
masturbate, to humiliate an Iraqi by hooding him with a girl's
lingerie?
We are not just talking "sick"
here. We're talking professionals. President Bush at last apologised
yesterday to the Arab world for this filth--only, no doubt, because
of the latest picture on the front of The Washington Post--but
the constant, insistent refrain from US officers that these were
a tiny group of unrepresentative Americans makes me very suspicious.
Lynndie and her boyfriend were
not part of a "rogue" unit. They were told to do these
despicable things. They were encouraged. This was an order from
someone. Who? When can we see their pictures, their identity,
their passports, their orders?
Yes, it's part of a culture,
a long tradition that goes back to the Crusades; that the Muslim
is dirty, lascivious, unChristian, unworthy of humanity--which
is pretty much what Osama bin Laden (now forgotten by Mr Bush,
I notice) believes about us Westerners. And our illegal, immoral,
meretricious war has now brought forth the images that betray
our racism.
The hooded man with the wires
attached to his hands has now become an iconic portrait, every
bit as memorable as the picture of the second aircraft flying
into the World Trade Centre. No, of course, we haven't killed
3,000 Iraqis. We've killed many more. And the same goes for Afghanistan.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and
author of Pity
the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's
hot new book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.
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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