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Worse Than Ever? an Evening with Cockburn and Chomsky at MIT

Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!

Today's Stories

May 4, 2004

Kurt Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture

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

 

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.

 

 

Subscribe Online

 

May 4, 2004

"What's the Difference Between Them & Saddam?"

Iraqis: Disgusted, But Not Surprised at Torture

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Baghdad

Iraqis were disgusted yesterday at further accusations of brutality and torture at the hands of western troops, but few expressed surprise.

"I expect much worse than that to come out," said Abu Hashem, an engineer, said, referring to the pictures of naked detainees being ill-treated by US guards in Abu Ghraib prison. "They said they were liberators but in fact they are occupation troops."

There have been rumours of torture in US-run prisons in Iraq for months, so many Iraqis said the latest revelations only confirmed what they suspected.

Karim Hassan, a retired teacher, said: "There was a story going around that the Americans were torturing people, and the imam in the local mosque said female detainees were raped by American soldiers."

Kamal Hassan, the younger brother of Karim, said: "I was shocked at what I saw. In the beginning I thought the Americans really were liberation forces. Now what is the difference between them and Saddam? They also are killing and torturing."

Only one of those interviewed defended what had happened. Ziyad Rabiya, a petrol pump attendant, said: "They deserve what happened to them. Either they were killers or looters. I heard from one of my friends, who was picked up because he was wearing black and the soldiers thought he was one of Saddam's fedayeen, that he was well treated. Of course, if they belonged to the resistance they did not deserve it."

In three of Asia's main Muslim countries, the alleged abuse of prisoners by US and British forces was condemned as a "despicable" show of western hatred of Muslims, and their immediate departure from Iraq was demanded. In Pakistan, an important ally in the US-led war on terrorism, Masood Khan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "Our revulsion at the sadistic and shameful nature of the treatment given to the prisoners is shared by people across the globe."

Newspapers in Malaysia and Indonesia - South-east Asia's two biggest Muslim populations - had front-page photographs showing a hooded Iraqi prisoner reportedly beaten by British troops. Other media carried pictures of US soldiers giving thumbs-ups signs beside hooded, naked prisoners.

Nasharuddin Isa, the secretary general of the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, the country's largest opposition political group, said: "Such despicable acts prove the double standards of America, a country that preaches about human rights to the rest of the world. The US and British troops must leave Iraq immediately. Their actions have clearly shown the hatred of their countries toward Islamic people. How can they continue to say their intention all this time has been to liberate the Iraqis?"

Activists in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, said more mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners might have remained unreported.


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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