Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
24, 2004
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
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.
|
May
24, 2004
Those
Missing Taguba Pages
More
Dirty Tricks in TortureGate
By
KURT NIMMO
It sure is curious how documents entering
the Bush Machine exit with blank pages. It happened with Iraq's
11,800-page dossier on weapons and now it has happened again
with the report on prison abuse produced by Major General Antonio
M. Taguba.
"The copy [the Senate
Armed Services Committee] got after Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's testimony on May 7 was a thick document with 106 annexes,
and it was quickly arranged into separate binders. Only later
did the committee stack up all the pages, compare them with a
ream of 6,000 blank pages and decide that at least 2,000 pages
were missing," reports Time Magazine.
If indeed the Bushites filched
the pages it would hardly be surprising or unusual. This is a
criminal administration at ease with deception and thievery.
Lies, dirty tricks, and theft are their modus operandi -- from
the 2000 election onward.
Obviously, the pages in question
are not missing because they contain embarrassing nudie shots
of the Bush twins. The pages are missing because there is ample
evidence of Bush administration complicity in the torture of
Iraqi detainees.
"Interviews and government
documents obtained by The New Yorker and Newsweek show that the
very highest levels of the Bush administration -- including President
George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld -- set up programs
designed to extract more information out of detainees by  circumventing
international laws banning torture. Moreover, they were fully
conscious that in doing so they were violating US and international
law and leaving themselves open to prosecution for war crimes,"
writes Alex Lefebvre.
Seymour Hersh's article The
Gray Zone reveals how the Bushites set up torture mills after
September 11, 2001. From the very outset of the so-called war
on terror the Bush administration and the Pentagon neocons have
conspired to violate international law.
"If the government is
not handed over to the Iraqis, if Osama Bin Laden is not arrested
and if torture photos keep coming in, Bush will lose the election,"
predicts Joseph Napolitan, a former political adviser to John
F. Kennedy.
Napolitan would be correct
under normal conditions. However, since Bush stole the 2000 election,
conditions have been anything but normal. Is it outrageous to
believe Bush will steal it again or contrive a situation where
the American people believe they have no choice but to hand him
the election? Bush's only option may be to demand a rally.
"Even though Bush II will
lose the popular vote in the US presidential election of 2004,
his electoral college victory seems assured. With Republican
party governors firmly in charge of Florida, California, Texas
and New York, and supported by a whopping Bush campaign war chest
approaching $200 million, dubious electronic voting schemes courtesy
of Diebold, Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors (<http://www.blackboxvoting.com>),
it seems certain that Bush will make it back to the Oval Office
through the back door that is the Electoral College," writes
John Stanton. "And if not the Electoral College then by
benefit of a rebel attack on US soil which kills thousands of
Americans and leads to the suspension of the US Constitution."
Stanton's mention of a "rebel
attack" on the US during or prior to the election is not
the fictional meandering of a conspiracy theorist. Condi Rice
talked about just such a possibility recently. "I think
that we do have to take very seriously the thought that the terrorists
might have learned, we hope, the wrong lesson from Spain,"
Rice told Fox News Sunday. And then there is the "nightmare
scenario" floated by the White House. "We assume an
attack will happen leading up to the election," a senior
official told US News & World Report.
David Rothkopf, former Clintonite,
made similar observations. "Recently, I co-chaired a meeting
hosted by CNBC of more than 200 senior business and government
executives, many of whom are specialists in security and terrorism
related issues," Rothkopf wrote in a Washington Post op-ed
piece. "Almost three-quarters of them said it was likely
the United States would see a major terrorist strike before the
end of 2004."
Bush and Crew believe the Taguba
report is little more than a troublesome public relations problem.
It will not be allowed to get in the way of the neocon plan to
attack the Arab Middle East and cripple Islam. Four more years
will give the Pentagon neocons time to set up bases in Iraq ---
these "enduring camps" are in the process of construction
(as Christine Spolar wrote the Chicago Tribune) -- and devise
pretexts to invade Syria and Iran.
"Pentagon hardliners are
drawing up plans to invade Iran once Iraq and its oil are 'liberated.'
They hope civil war will erupt in Iran, which is riven by bitterly
hostile factions, after which a <pro-U.S>. regime will
take power. If this does not occur, then Iraq-based U.S. forces
will be ideally positioned to attack Iran. Or, they could just
as well move west and invade Syria, another of Israel's most
bitter enemies," Eric Margolis wrote in November, 2002.
"Israel's Likudniks thirst for revenge against Syria --
and also Iran -- for supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah movement,
which drove Israeli forces from Lebanon."
None of this should be particularly
surprising. It's all spelled out in A Clean Break: A New Strategy
for Securing the Realm, written by Richard Perle, James Colbert,
Charles Fairbanks, Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, Jonathan
Torop, David Wurmser and Meyrav Wurmser way back in 1996 for
then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "It
provides an early window into some of the current administration's
thinking. For one, it predicted that toppling the Hussein regime
could be the beginning of a larger rollback of autocratic, terrorist-supporting
states such as Syria and Iran, blamed for supporting Hezbollah
guerrillas operating in southern Lebanon and accused of terrorism
against Israel and the United States," reported the Boston
Globe last August.
But it's not simply Hezbollah
or the mullahs in Iran. It's the whole neoliberal global game
plan -- or rather the neocon take on it -- that's at stake if
Bush is shown the door in November.
Team Bush will do whatever
it takes to get Dubya reinstalled in the White House, even if
it means the installation process -- some of us still refer to
it as democracy -- is circumvented entirely. Treason concerns
them little.
As Joe Nichols writes in Asia
Times Online, the central issues beyond Israeli dominance in
the Middle East are "oil, the prospects for privatizing
the region, derailing any possibilities for a common currency
among Arab nations, the position of the dollar in petroleum markets
and for the central reserves in Asia, and the balance of trade
between the US and the nations of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries." These issues are so important to our
rulers they will not allow an election to get in the way.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon rolled
out glib excuses for the crucial pages missing from the Taguba
report. "If there is some shortfall in what was provided,
it was an oversight," explained Pentagon spokesman Larry
Dirita.
Sure it was, Larry. And so
was the bogus report that Saddam had acquired uranium from Niger,
a crudely fabricated lie Bush pawned off on the United Nations
and the world in order to invade Iraq and kill 10,000 innocent
civilians. Bush has amassed a pile of lies as of yet unanswered
for -- the aluminum tubes, the WMD trailers, the fictious links
between al-Qaeda and Saddam, misrepresentations concerning weapons
inspections and the International Atomic Energy report alleging
that Iraq was "six months away" from developing a nuclear
weapon. All clear-cut lies. Is there any reason to believe the
curious disappearance of pages from the Taguba will be any different?
Is it foolish to believe the election is so hallowed Karl Rove
and his dirty tricksters will not subvert it, especially now
that Bush is running neck and neck with that other neolib, John
Kerry?
Is it possible the Bush neocons
in the Pentagon will stage a terrorist attack as the election
approaches, or take advantage of a terrorist "event"
in order to steal the election?
Considering the pathological
lies and dirty tricks of this administration -- lies and dirty
tricks resulting in war crimes and arrogant disregard for international
law -- a "nightmare scenario" cannot be ruled out.
In fact, as continuous scandals
and evidence of misdeeds pile up on Bush's doorstep -- and as
an inevitable result he falls behind in the polls -- the American
people should expect nothing less than dirty tricks.
Question is, will they sheepishly
accept it?
Or will enough finally be enough?
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 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
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|