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Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories May 28, 2004 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5 Greg Moses Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib Dave Lindorff Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work Norman Solomon Leaping for Lies at the Times Rep. Bill Delahunt Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba Paul McGeough Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves Niranjan Ramakrishnan India and Nehru: 40 Years After Alexander Cockburn NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little" May 27, 2004 Amy Goodman / David Goodman Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times Douglas Valentine Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs John L. Hess The Times Confesses...Kind Of Stew Albert Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist Dave Dellinger a 1993 Interview Christopher Brauchli Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids Rampton / Stauber Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony May 26, 2004 Ron Jacobs Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours Robert Fisk The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech Zeynep Toufe New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation Conn Hallinan Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection Tom Stephens 2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes Derek Medley Protesting Gov. Bigot CounterPunch Wire FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art Andrew Cockburn The Trail to Tehran   May 25, 2004 Joe Bageant The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas Col. Dan Smith A Question of Human Dignity Gary Handschumacher Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home Toni Solo A Developing War in the Andes Marc Estrin September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11 Stephen Banko, III A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops" Website of the Day The Wizard of Whimsy May 24, 2004 Ron Jacobs Dan Senor is Safe! Kurt Nimmo Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages Sam Hamod Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" Mike Whitney The Wedding was a Bomb Stan Goff Open Season on MAMs Image of the Day A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs   May 22 / 23, 2004 Paul de Rooij Colin Powell, a Political Obituary Jeffrey St. Clair When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer Brian Cloughley America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq Saul Landau Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People Brandy Baker Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry Randall Robinson Bushwhacked in the Caribbean Uri Avnery The Rape of Rafah Ben Tripp Assume the Worst Bruce Anderson News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business Josh Ruebner Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers Peter Wolson, Ph. D. Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib Chloe Cockburn In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy Linda Burnham Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value Adrien Rain Burke War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse David Krieger Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy Ron Jacobs Turnaround Poets' Basement Ford, Albert & LaMorticella May 21, 2004 Ray Close The Canards of the Apologists Christopher Brauchli "The Object of Torture is Torture" Amira Hass Darkness at Noon Jack McCarthy Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army? Bill Kauffman Nader v. Bush Omar Barghouti No More Tears for America Ghali Hassan Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza Christopher Reed How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture Website of the Day Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much   May 20, 2004 Andrew Cockburn The Truth About Chalabi Kathy Kelly A Visit from the FBI Niranjan Ramakrishnan Brown and Bored of Education in India Tom Stephens & John Philo The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co. Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan Genocide by Public Policy Robert Ovetz Ending the Race for the Last Turtle Billy Wilson The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year Website of the Day Rafah Today May 19, 2004 Elizabeth W. Corrie Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing, Now Bill and Kathleen Christison The US Can't Win Vijay Prashad For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004 Ray Hanania Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.? Greg Moses Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC Michael Gillespie Who is Kenneth deGraffenried? Josh Frank Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry? Gary Corseri Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave Kevin Alexander Gray If Malcolm Were Alive   May 18, 2004 Neve Gordon The Gaza Debacle Doug Stokes Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib Shouldn't Surprise Us Bob Wing The Color of Abu Ghraib Vanessa Jones Man on a Leash Thomas P. Healy Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden Zeynep Toufe Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations Kenneth Roth Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush Elaine Cassel Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later Website of the Day Truth Against Truth   May 17, 2004 Kurt Nimmo The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain Laura Santina Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib Mickey Z. With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness Frederick B. Hudson Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice Shakirah Esmail-Hudani Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera Boris Leonardo Caro The Revelations of Mr. W. Alex Dawoody Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation Victor Kattan On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg 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             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

Weekend Edition May 29 / 31, 2004 Collective Penalities in Iraq On Their Way to Abu Ghraib By MIKE FERNER ABU SIFFA, IRAQ. "How could this happen?" nearly everyone asks these days. But as the U.S. now releases hundreds of men from Abu Ghraib prison, another question, "why were so many Iraqis locked up there in the first place?" is likely to become part of the debate. The story of this farming hamlet 30 miles north of Baghdad sheds a lot of light on that question. "On December 16, 2003, at 2:00 am, on a rainy night, all the houses in Abu Siffa, about two dozen, were surrounded by U.S. troops in tanks and humvees. They surrounded the fields of the farmers by tanks and they destroyed the fences of the fields," citrus farmer, Mohammed Al-Tai explained to a delegation from Christian Peacemaker Teams visiting the village to document detainees' stories. Soldiers from the Army's 4th Infantry Division rounded up two attorneys, 15 schoolteachers, men in their 80's, a blind man, police officers, young teens, and an elderly man so frail he had to be carried by the soldiers, Al-Tai said. In all, 83 men disappeared that night, virtually every male in the village. His description of that night continued. "They destroyed the doors of the houses and of the rooms. At night usually the doors of the bedrooms are locked, so they kicked the doors in and destroyed them by their weapons. After that they gathered the men, beating them severely. One was an old man and they smashed his glasses, and for that old man they had to guide him." Before the soldiers finished the Abu Siffa raid, Al-Tai added that they also "stole from Imad, the attorney, about 14 million dinars ($10,370). >From his father, Kamel, they stole 4.5 million dinars ($3,300). They stole 4 million dinars ($3000) from Ziad, an Iraqi police officer, and from all the other houses together, about 100,000 to 150,000 dinars ($75 to $110). They also took five cars. Later they returned two of them that belonged to police officers who died in the line of duty." The reason for the raid was to apprehend Kais Hattam, Al-Tai said, adding that Hattam claimed he planned to surrender to the Americans the following morning. In a later interview, Lt. Colonel Nathan Sassaman, commander of the division's 1st Battalion, the unit responsible for the district including Abu Siffa, confirmed that Hattam was their man, but doubted he would have surrendered voluntarily. Sassaman said that Hattam was on a "wanted" list because his name appeared in Ba'ath Party documents found with Saddam Hussein, captured less than three days before the Abu Siffa raid. He described Hattam as a "key figure, one of five regional directors of the Ba'ath Party." The Lt. Colonel's version of the raid was that 73 people, not 83 were rounded up, all adults. He said his men found a several-acre compound with a large quantity of material for making IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), weapons, and "just a ton of explosives." He added that three of the detainees were later released for health reasons. Asked why so many villagers were rounded up after the Army got the man they were looking for, he replied that the amount of weapons and explosives implicated Abu Siffa was a center of resistance, further proven by the fact that his base had been mortared from that area. The CPT delegation in Abu Siffa listened to Mohammed Al-Tai and several of his neighbors explain that six weeks after the December pre-dawn raid on their village, 79 adult men were still held in Abu Ghraib, still without visiting privileges. They said that one ill detainee had been released. Contrary to Sassaman's claim that no children were apprehended, Al-Tai said three children had been transferred to Al-Karkh, a special youth prison in Baghdad. The farmer and another villager said they'd been able to visit, albeit under difficult conditions. "It is not easy to get there, the lines are very long, and even family members are kept behind a line 20 feet away from their children." Hania, wife of attorney-detainee, Kamel Khoumais, added in sad tones, "For 47 days I did not see him. I tried. I went to Abu Ghraib prison twice. I was turned back with tears." On the night of the raid, soldiers took their family car, she related, and her little finger, still swollen and red, was broken when the keys were ripped out of her hand. The raid that swept up all of Abu Siffa's men is only part of that village's story. After describing the December 16 roundup, Al-Tai took the delegation on a door-to-door tour of his village, starting with a vacant house where Abbas Abdwahid had lived with 15 members of his extended family. The 41 year-old primary school teacher and several other former residents of the home were now living in Abu Ghraib. Large holes in the brick walls, daylight through the roof, and an orange and white VW Passat taxi smashed up against a rear corner of the house by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle were silent reminders of the Army's second raid on Abu Siffa, on New Year's Eve. No men were apprehended this time, Al-Tai said; "there were none left." The purpose of the return visit was made clear when the Bradley gunners opened fire with the 25mm Bushmaster chain gun and the 7.62mm machine gun, blasting holes large and small into the brick and cement-block home. On January 2 the military came back. Al-Tai showed us the rear of another vacant house where he said four brothers, now all in Abu Ghraib, once lived. Still visible were the tracks the Bradley made as it approached the home of Hamis, Abd Kadir, Mohammed and Jasim. As with the previous raid, there was no resistance, Al-Tai said. After another display of firepower the soldiers left. The uninhabitable home, a flattened brick outhouse, a pile of 25mm shell casings and a steel door shot off its hinges, bleeding rust stains from dozens of bullet holes, spoke of that night's violence. As the CPT delegation listened, one of the villagers added, "The soldiers warned the people that they will make this area 'just like the land of the moonit will not be good to plant...it will be like the desert.'" When asked why the Army returned twice to destroy homes, the 1st Battalion's Executive Officer, Major Rob Gwinner, countered the homes were "still habitable. People are living in them." His boss, Lt. Col. Sassaman, said the subsequent raids were a reaction to mortar attacks against his base from the Abu Siffa area. Pentagon casualty reports state that on January 2, 28 year-old Captain Eric Paliwoda was killed in a mortar attack at the 1st Battalion's base. The prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib is providing the public with a painful education on the Geneva Conventions. To that lesson we can add the story of how people are rounded up and homes destroyed in places like Abu Siffa-both violate the Conventions' prohibition against "collective penalties." Mike Ferner returned to Iraq this year for two months to write on developments since his trip just prior to the war with Voices in the Wilderness. He served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman during Vietnam, is a member of Veterans for Peace and a former member of Toledo City Council. He can be reached at: mferner@utoledo.edu Weekend Edition Features for May 22 / 23, 2004 Paul de Rooij Colin Powell, a Political Obituary Jeffrey St. Clair When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer Brian Cloughley America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq Saul Landau Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People Brandy Baker Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry Randall Robinson Bushwhacked in the Caribbean Uri Avnery The Rape of Rafah Ben Tripp Assume the Worst Bruce Anderson News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business Josh Ruebner Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers Peter Wolson, Ph. D. Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib Chloe Cockburn In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy Linda Burnham Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value Adrien Rain Burke War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse David Krieger Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy Ron Jacobs Turnaround Poets' Basement Ford, Albert & LaMorticella WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /