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Today's
Stories
May
5, 2004
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
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
5, 2004
Tormenting Prisoners,
Torturing Truth
More Than a
Ghraib Matter
By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN
The Indian writer, Saadat Hassan Manto,
wrote a famous a short-story about the partition of India. Assets
had to be divided up between the two new countries of India and
Pakistan. In the story, bureaucrats at a mental asylum are busy
separating the inmates into Indian and Pakistani mental patients.
Manto makes one bureaucrat protest that an inmate his asylum
has been assigned is of the wrong religion, and should be packed
off across the border!
With that little twist of genius,
Manto captures the tragedy of the partition -- the idiocy of
arguments within a nuthouse when when the nation itself had become
one gigantic mental asylum.
Like Manto's bureaucrat, we
too appear to be missing the sad irony of our fate. Engrossed
in the sub-plot of graphic physical abuse, we have been deluded
into forgetting the bigger atrocity: the daily torture of the
truth. If this succeeds, the magicians would have won. The technique,
called misdirection, is used both by master illusionists and
petty pickpockets. While your attention is riveted upon a little
detail, the greater heist is carried out unnoticed.
I am not saying that the torture
of Iraqi prisoners is no big deal. But I am saying it cannot
be discussed in isolation, without considering the circumstances,
any more than one would charge a thief for assault but argue
that it was ok to break into the house.
The prisoners in Iraq were
made to do grotesque acts. But how to explain the contortions
performed daily by our government officials, senators and congressmen?
The same reason -- an insane
fear.
Like Manto's India, a madness
has gripped America after 9-11. Normally sane people have begun
to do insane things:
In the name of fighting the
enemies of freedom, Congress readily signed up to a Patriot Act
which abridges our freedoms. Officials who are supposed to guard
against executive excess vie with each other to defend it. Privacy
is sacred to our government. It says showing flag-draped coffins
of dead soldiers would violate privacy. Not sacred enough, though,
to intrude on the privacy of the living -- the same government
wants to know all about our reading, movie viewing and other
habits on the one hand, and taking away safeguards against arbitrary
search and seizure on the other.
And if you ask Sen. John Kerry
if he would abolish the Patriot Act, what do you think the ultimate
contortionist will say? And after his answer, will you know whether
he said yes or no?
Pity truth's travails in the
Age of Bush. She has been languishing in her own Abu Ghraib,
assailed daily with no reprieve in sight. Long after the denizens
of the real Abu Ghraib get their justice, she will still remain
where she is, disfigured every day by the relentless lies and
half-truths of our government and politicians.
If the song goes, Oh what a
tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive, the
Bush Administration, aided by Democratic mumbling, bumbling and
grumbling, has crafted an entire magic carpet.
First it raised an alarm about
weapons of mass destruction and of imminent danger to our safety.
Nothing there. Then, it was all about liberating the eagerly
waiting Iraqi people. When the welcome committee was found bearing
bombs rather than garlands, the theme became bringing Democrary
to the Middle East, a project given an auspicious start by closing
down a newspaper (not to mention several earlier attempts to
silence Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya broadcasts). Now we were back
to the Old Reliable -- bringing human rights to Saddam's Iraq.
Even on the anniversary of his May 1 Mission Accomplished speech,
President Bush explained that what he had meant by Mission Accomplished
was that the Iraqi people were free of Saddam Hussain's tyranny...[1]
...Only to fall into the hands
of some worthy successors, the Abu Ghraib photographs seem to
suggest.
That these travesties of the
truth took place and were allowed to pass in plain daylight will
remain an enigma to future historians. If allowed to go on they
will damage us more completely than the mistreatment of a few
prisoners.
Yet they are likely to continue.
The sad fact is that we are
now a nation driven by images. If there had been no photograhs
from Abu Ghraib, there would have been no outcry. But the Orwellian
corruption of public discourse (to which Democrats like Kerry,
with their vacuous phrases of 'cannot cut and run', and 'staying
the course' have made their own unique contributions) is no less
real, and is surely far more ruinous of our future. (Perhaps
what would really wake us up is a time-lapse photograph to show
our fate in a few decades.)
Still, some good can come out
of Abu Ghraib. Air America Radio's Randi Rhodes suggested yesterday
that Bush should go to Iraq, to Abu Ghraib, and apologize to
the Iraqi people.
It would be a grand gesture,
more especially if he would also use the occasion to apologize
to other countries which had suffered torture indirectly from
the activities of the notorious School of the Americas.
We need not hold our breath,
however -- the specialty of this administration is the big lie
rather than the grand gesture. This morning, when Rumsfeld was
asked whether he would apologize for Abu Ghraib, he hemmed and
hawed, and said nothing in the end. With its record of arrogance,
an admission of fallibility to this administration would be as
rain to a sandcastle.
Too bad, because piercing the
cloud of insanity which has descended upon us demands speaking
the truth both to ourselves and to those we have mistreated.
The longer we persist in our lies and half-truths, the more difficult
it will be to get back on track.
Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast.
His writings can be found on http://www.indogram.com.
He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com.
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
|