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Today's
Stories
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
February 20,
2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Lies
and Spies
Paul Krassner
My
Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The
Pakistani Elections
Farzana Versey
The
Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch
Allan Nairn
Dying for a Second Round: Israel's
New Plan to Attack Lebanon
John V. Whitbeck
If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization?
Steve Eckardt
Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News
Lee Sustar
Union-Busting at Freightliner
Mike Ferner
How Sick of It are You?
Website of the Day
The US Military Index
February 19,
2008
Uri Avnery
Blood
and Champagne
Paul Craig
Roberts
Paying
Insurgents Not to Fight
Gary Leupp
The Independence of Kosovo
Fidel Castro
The Moment Has Come
David Macaray
Management's Dirty Little Secret
Reza Fiyouzat
Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections
Valerie Morse
The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie
Walter Brasch
Bush on Safari
Website of the Day
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
February 18,
2008
Wajahat Ali
Free
Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan
Diana Johnstone
NATO's
Kosovo Colony
Paul Craig Roberts
What Do We Stand For?
Andy Worthington
Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along"
Debbie Nathan
Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes
Anthony DiMaggio
Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business
of Elections
Bill Simpich
Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq
Eva Liddell
A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash
Christopher Brauchli
The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans
Stephen Soldz
Wikileaks is Under Attack!
Johann Rossouw
The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism
Website of
the Day
Sick of It Day!
February 16
/ 17, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan
Ralph Nader
We
the Corporations ...
David Macaray
The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin?
William J.
Peace
Wheelchair Dumping
Ron Jacobs
War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption
Diane Christian
War Corrupts
Alan Maass
Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen
(and Beyond)
Ramzy Baroud
Iraq and the US Elections
Michael Donnelly
Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Art of Finding Whalers
James L. Secor
China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008
Eve Bachrach
Bush Returns to Africa
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army
Stephen Gowans
Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian
Missy Beattie
To Vote or Not to Vote?
David Michael
Green
Warming Slowly to Obama
Wajahat Ali
Attack of the Info-tainment Circus
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther
Website of the Day
Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!
February 15,
2008
George Szamuely
The
Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo
Patrick Cockburn
Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability
to Baghdad?
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban,
Bin Laden and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg
Alan Farago
God and the Democrats
Chris Genovali
Alberta's Black Gold Rush
Jacob Hornberger
Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture
Dave Lindorff
Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull
Website of the Day
Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams
February 14,
2008
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Palestine
in the Mind of America
Mike Whitney
Swan Song for NATO
Clancy Sigal
Strike Notes from a Screenwriter
George Wuerthner
A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter
Peter Morici
Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit?
John Ross
Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border
Allan Nairn
Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can
Whack Anyone
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon's Warmongers
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein
Donna Volatile
Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It
Seth Sandronsky
The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes
Website of
the Day
Conventions: the Land Around Us
February 13,
2008
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet
John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America
Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line
Christina Kasica
King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America
Vicente Navarro
How to Read the U.S. Primaries
Hall Greenland
Australia's Finest Hour
Lee Sustar
Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most
David Macaray
The Writers' Strike Finally Ends
Roderick Frazier
Nash
Celebrating Wilderness
Patrick Irelan
Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT
Anthony Papa
Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases
Carl Finamore
Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted
by Politicians
Website of
the Day
John He Is
February 12,
2008
Frank J. Menetrez
The
Case Against Alan Dershowitz
Paul Craig
Roberts
War Without End
Dr. Trudy Bond
The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink
Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the
Torture?
Col. Dan Smith
The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away?
Ronnie Cummins
Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road
Ralph Nader
Open the Government
John V. Walsh
Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered
Dave Lindorff
Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms
the Candidate
Michael Donnelly
Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules
Ron Jacobs
La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life"
Ben Tripp
Beggars Collide
Website of the Day
Springsteen and Youngstown
February 11,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Lessons
for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate?
Wajahat Ali
A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby
Ray McGovern
Waterboarding for God and Country
Allan Nairn
The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta
Uri Avnery
An End Foreseen?
Chris Floyd
American
Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech
Martha Rosenberg
School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows
Stephen Fleischman
The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics
Marc Lamont Hill
Not My Brand of Hope
Liliana Segura
Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation
Peter Morici
Challenges for the New President
Christopher
Brauchli
A Drug Rant from a Former Taker
Website of the Day
Annie vs. the Blue Angels
February 8
/ 10, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Does
the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves?
Patrick Cockburn
Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold?
Mike Whitney
The Great Bust of '08
Anthony DiMaggio
How the Press Covers Waterboarding
Andy Worthington
The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists?
Linn Cohen-Cole
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?
Firmin DeBrabander
Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency
Cpt. Paul Watson
The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering
and Deaths of the Great Whales
Kenneth S. Pope
Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association
Jacob G. Hornberger
American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy
Robert Bryce
Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ...
Then What?
P. Sainath
The Last of the Buccaneer Editors
Allan Nairn
Give Me Back My Land
Fred Gardner
/
Pebbles Trippet
"The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the
Law!"
Andrew Wimmer
Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death
Robert Fantina
America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr
David Michael Green
Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves
Kevin Zeese
Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd?
Peter Morici
Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence
Chris Driscoll
Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008?
Prairie Miller
Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen
Poets Basement
Davies and Buknatski
February 7,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Baghdad Will Explode Again
Bill Christison
Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians
David Anderson
NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for
the Sake of Ratings
Ron Jacobs
Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill
Nikolas Kozloff
Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing
Jane Rockefeller
The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation
Andy Worthington
On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden
Dave Zirin
Instep Intifada
Saul Landau
The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln
Susie Day
Our Blob in the White House
Website of the Day
George Carlin on Voting
February 6,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
Super
Tuesday's Vote for Chaos
Ben Rosenfeld
Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters
Vijay Prashad
An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out
Joe Bageant
Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned
Michael Donnelly
What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths
Allan Nairn
Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion?
Kathryn Gray
Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit
Ray McGovern
Powell's UN Fiasco
Sheldon Richman
The Whining Empire
Paul Cantor
/ Roger Sparks
A
Presidential Aptitude Examination
John Chuckman
Political Bits and Pieces
Website of
the Day
Save the Albatross
February 5,
2008
Winslow T.
Wheeler
The
Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget
Tariq Ali
Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair
Stephen Soldz
The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize
War Crimes?
Chris Floyd
Strange
Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War
William S. Lind
Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win
Martha Rosenberg
Live From the Killing Floor
Heather Gray
Conversations with Georgia Voters
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics
David Macaray
Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice
Eliza Ernshire
Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run
Brenda Norrell
Hated Nation
Website of
the Day
The Things I Used to Do
February 4,
2008
Marc Levy
Winter
in America
Patrick Cockburn
The Bird Market Bombings
Saree Makdisi
Strangling Gaza
Uri Avnery
From Stalingrad to Winograd
Alan Farago
Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer
Ben Tripp
Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter
Paul Wolf
Civil Wars North and South
Paul Craig
Roberts
Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed?
Joshua Frank
MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change
John Halle
Whither Progressive Democrats?
Website of the Day
How to Cheat in School
February 2
/ 3, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Hot
Democratic Properties
Pam Martens
Bankers
Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense
Ralph Nader
The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked
John Ross
Hilaria
vs. "El Moreno"
Wajahat Ali
Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with
Imam Zaid Shakir
Robert Fantina
A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American
Empire
B. R. Gowani
Not All Veils and Guns
James L. Secor
China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow
John V. Walsh
The Invisible Green Primary
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble
Dave Zirin
Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul?
Jeremy Scahill
Blackwater and Blood
Fidel Castro
Reflections on Lula
Joe Allen
Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War
Stephen Lendman
Life in Occupied Gaza
Patrick Irelan
What Happened to the Streetcars?
Andrej Grubacic
Ziga Vodovnik
Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo
Josh Karpoff
Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement
Ron Jacobs
Carl Oglesby's War
Paul Krassner
Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel
Website of the Weekend
Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart
February 1,
2008
Ray McGovern
The
Iniquities and Inequalities of War
Diane Farsetta
The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman
Patrick Cockburn
The
Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists
Tariq Ali
Et
Tu, New York Times?
Allan Nairn
Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti
Rannie Amiri
Collective Punishment in Beirut
Ramzy Baroud
People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It
Kenneth Couesbouc
The Mother of All Snowballs
Peter Morici
Recession Looms
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro
Rosemary Jackowski
27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President
Scott Campbell
Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges
Website of the Day
Betes et Hommes
January 31,
2008
Saul Landau
Return
to Afghanistan
Andy Worthington
Horror at Guantánamo
Mike Whitney
Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System
Jeff Ballinger
Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the
"Suharto of the Steppe"
Tiffany Ten
Eyck
The Saga of the Freightliner Five
William Loren
Katz
Waterboarding:
Torure or Mystery?
Alan Farago
Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble
Col. Dan Smith
Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget?
China Hand
Slouching Toward Islamabad
Dave Lindorff
The Usual Suspects Once Again
Wadner Pierre
Fake Democracy in Haiti
Website of the Day
One Big Union
January 30,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
McCain
vs. Clinton?
Christopher
Ketcham
The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex
Robert Weissman
America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union
Neve Gordon
An Experiment in Famine
Paul Craig Roberts
Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse?
Joanne Mariner
How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech
David Macaray
Labor's Only Real Weapon
Liaquat Ali
Khan
Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan?
Raymond J. Lawrence
Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication
Dan Bacher
The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon
Website of the Day
Onward Through the Fog
January 29,
2008
Franklin C.
Spinney
Bush's
New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off
Mike Whitney
The Great Credit Unwind of 2008
Alan Farago
Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders
Association
Patrick Cockburn
"The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction"
Gary Leupp
"We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel
Edmonds Timeline
R. F. Blader
A
World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania
Ahmad Faruqui
Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect
Fran Shor
Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In"
Jeremy Scahill
Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater
Protesters
Allan Nairn
Bush's
SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All
Website of the Day
The Ghost of Rambo
January 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
Return
to Fallujah
Paul Craig
Roberts
The End of American Liberty
Allan Nairn
The Breaking of the Gaza Wall
Eyad al-Sarraj
/ Sara Roy
Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza
Martha Rosenberg
Obit for the "Front Page" City
Corporate Crime
Reporter
How They Rip Us Off
David Michael Green
Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War
Jennifer Van
Bergen
What's Left?
Nancy Oden
Survival Tips for Hard Times
Divya Karnad
Saving India's Sea Turtles
James L. Secor
Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp
Website of
the Day
Yellow Journalism?
|
March
4, 2008
It Wasn't On Oprah
or Fox News
How
Could Hillary Have Known?
By WILLIAM BLUM
Hillary Clinton and many other members
of Congress claim that their support of the invasion of Iraq
was based on faulty intelligence reports. How could they dispute
the research and analysis of all those experts, so well trained
and experienced in their fields?
Well, apart from the fact that
American intelligence agencies and their reports were by no means
of one opinion (one well-publicized CIA paper, for example, predicted
all manner of devastating consequences which could result from
an invasion and occupation) ...
Apart from the fact that there
were several public statements, including some on American TV,
from Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister, and other statements
made by Iraqi scientists to American media and to American intelligence
that Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction ...
Apart from the fact that UN
nuclear inspectors had determined before the war that Iraq did
not have a nuclear weapons program ...
Apart from the fact that Colin
Powell, speaking in February 2001 of US sanctions on Iraq, said:
"And frankly they have worked. He [Saddam Hussein] has not
developed any significant capability with respect to weapons
of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power
against his neighbors."
Apart from all that, this question
must be asked: What did the millions of Americans who marched
against the war before it began know that all those members of
Congress didn't know? At a minimum, they knew that nothing the
Bush administration had told them came anywhere close to justifying
dropping bombs on the innocent people of Iraq. They also knew
that nothing the Bush administration had told them could be trusted.
All it took to reach this advanced stage of awareness was not
being born yesterday.
As I've written before, the
same phenomenon attended the Vietnam War. The anti-Vietnam War
movement burst out of the starting gate back in August 1964,
with hundreds of people demonstrating in New York. Many of these
early dissenters took apart and critically examined the administration's
statements about the war's origin, its current situation, and
its rosy picture of the future. They found continuous omission,
contradiction, and duplicity, became quickly and wholly cynical,
and called for immediate and unconditional withdrawal. This was
a state of intellect and principle it took members of Congress
and the media -- and then only a small minority -- until the
1970s to reach. And even then -- even today -- our political
and media elite viewed Vietnam only as a "mistake";
i.e., it was "the wrong way" to fight communism, not
that the United States should not be traveling all over the globe
to spew violence against anything labeled "communism"
in the first place. Essentially, the only thing these "best
and brightest" have learned from Vietnam is that we should
not have fought in Vietnam. And I'm afraid that the present generation
of "leaders" will learn very little more than that
we shouldn't have invaded Iraq.
A Mecca
of hypocrisy, a Vatican of double standards
On February 21, following a
demonstration against the United States role in Kosovo's declaration
of independence, rioters in the Serbian capital of Belgrade broke
into the US Embassy and set fire to an office. The attack was
called "intolerable" by Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, and the American Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay
Khalilzad, said he would ask the UN Security Council to issue
a unanimous statement "expressing the council's outrage,
condemning the attack, and also reminding the Serb government
of its responsibility to protect diplomatic facilities."
This is of course standard
language for such situations. But what the media and American
officials don't remind us is that in May 1999, during the US/NATO
bombing of Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, the Chinese Embassy
in Belgrade was hit by a US missile, causing considerable damage
and killing three embassy employees. The official Washington
story on this -- then, and still now -- is that it was a mistake.
But this is almost certainly a lie. According to a joint investigation
of The Observer of London and the Politiken newspaper in Denmark,
the embassy was bombed because it was being used to transmit
electronic communications for the Yugoslav army after the army's
regular system was made inoperable by the bombing. The Observer
was told that the embassy bombing was deliberate by "senior
military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US"
as well as being "confirmed in detail by three other Nato
officers -- a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence
officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and
a senior [NATO] headquarters officer in Brussels."
Moreover, the New York Time reported at the time that the bombing
had destroyed the embassy's intelligence-gathering nerve center,
and two of the three Chinese killed were intelligence officers.
"The highly sensitive nature of the parts of the embassy
that were bombed suggests why the Chinese ... insist the bombing
was no accident. ... 'That's exactly why they don't buy our explanation',"
said a Pentagon official. There were as well several other good
reasons not to buy the story.
In April 1986, after the French
government refused the use of its air space to US warplanes headed
for a bombing raid on Libya, the planes were forced to take another,
longer route. When they reached Libya they bombed so close to
the French embassy that the building was damaged and all communication
links knocked out.
And in April 2003, the US Ambassador
to Russia was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry due to
the fact that the residential quarter of Baghdad where the Russian
embassy was located was bombed several times by the United States
during its invasion of Iraq. There had been reports that Saddam
Hussein was hiding in the embassy.
So, we can perhaps chalk up
the State Department's affirmations about the inviolability of
embassies as yet another example of US foreign policy hypocrisy.
But I think that there is some satisfaction in that American
foreign policy officials, as morally damaged as they must be,
are not all so stupid that they don't know they're swimming in
a sea of hypocrisy. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004 that
"The State Department plans to delay the release of a human
rights report that was due out today, partly because of sensitivities
over the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials said. One
official ... said the release of the report, which describes
actions taken by the U.S. government to encourage respect for
human rights by other nations, could 'make us look hypocritical'."
And last year the Washington
Post informed us that Chester Crocker, former Assistant Secretary
of State and current member of the State Department's Advisory
Committee on Democracy Promotion, noted that "we have to
be able to cope with the argument that the U.S. is inconsistent
and hypocritical in its promotion of democracy around the world.
That may be true."
Like pornography,
torture doesn't require a definition. You know it when you see
it. Or feel it.
With all the media coverage
of "waterboarding" and all the congressional questioning
of government officials about their views on the subject, I imagine
that by now many people think that waterboarding must be the
worst kind of torture that the United States has engaged in,
and that if waterboarding is in fact not torture then the idiot
king is correct when he says: "We don't torture." This
is the way myths are born, so let's try and squash this particular
one while it's still young.
Here in capsule form is a sample
of some of the acts carried out in recent years by American military
forces, their contract employees, and the CIA against detainees
in one or another edifice of the sprawling global prison complex
maintained by the United States in occupied Iraq, occupied Afghanistan,
occupied Cuba, and various other secret prisons occupied by the
CIA around the world. It may be torture to read but the point
needs to be made. Lest we forget.
Standing or kneeling or forced into contorted, painful positions
for many hours ... in leg shackles and handcuffs with eyes, ears
and mouth covered, exposed to extremes of heat or cold ... stripped
naked, led around with a dog leash ... deprived of sleep, kicked
to keep them awake for days on end, subjecting them to a 24-hour
bombardment of bright lights or blaring noise ... guards staging
races of detainees in short leg shackles, violently punishing
them if they fall ... withholding painkillers and other medications
from the injured ... sensory deprivation, with all human contact
cut off ... made to lie naked on a sheet of ice ... fake blood
smeared on Muslim men when they are about to pray, telling them
that it's menstrual blood.
The Iraqi general "was
put headfirst into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord
and knocked down before the soldiers sat and stood on him. The
cause of death was determined to be suffocation."
Chained to the ceiling, shackled
so tightly that the blood flow stops ... shackled to the floor
in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without
food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves; a detainee
found with a pile of hair next to him; he had apparently been
literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night ... wrapping
a prisoner in an Israeli flag ... use of unmuzzled, growling
dogs to frighten, in at least one instance actually biting and
severely injuring a detainee ... burn marks on their backs ...
detainee left at an Iraqi hospital, comatose, with massive head
trauma, burns on the bottoms of his feet caused by electrocution,
bruises on his arms ... more than a hundred detainees have died
during interrogations ...
The death of two captives in
Afghanistan: one from "blunt force injuries to lower extremities
complicating coronary artery disease"; an autopsy showed
that his legs were so damaged that amputation would have been
necessary; the other captive suffered from a blood clot in the
lung that was exacerbated by a "blunt force injury"
...
Kicks to the groin and legs,
shoving or slamming detainees into walls and tables, forcing
water in their mouths until they could not breathe ... He had
his hands handcuffed behind him and was suspended by his wrists
-- "His arms were so badly stretched I was surprised they
didn't pop out of their sockets." ... forced to masturbate
while being photographed and videotaped ... seven naked Iraqis
piled on top of each other in a pyramid ... detainee punched
in the chest so hard he almost went into cardiac arrest ... forcing
naked male detainees to wear women's underwear.
The report by General Taguba
found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous
instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses"
at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including breaking chemical lights
and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees, threatening male
detainees with rape, sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light
and perhaps a broom stick, raping female prisoners ...
Eighteen days naked and alone
in a cell, often with his hands and feet bound together, frequently
beaten ... "He locked his arm under mine and holding the
back of my head he beat my head against the doors of the cells"
... his hands and feet were pushed through the metal bars of
the cell door and then tied together.
Six weeks after his release,
he says he has lost the will to live. He is too ashamed to be
seen by his friends and family and has not seen or spoken to
his fiancée. The wedding is off. "I was a man before,
but my manhood was taken away. Since this happened to me, I consider
myself dead. My life feels over."
Iraqi prisoners were forced to crawl through broken glass and
wear women's sanitary products ... two drunken interrogators
took a female Iraqi prisoner from her cell in the middle of the
night and stripped her naked to the waist ... an Iraqi woman
in her 70s was harnessed and ridden like a donkey ... detainees
were pressed to denounce Islam, or force-fed pork and liquor
...
Jamadi died an hour after his
arrival at Abu Ghraib in early November 2003; he had been beaten
while in CIA custody and then hung by his wrists, with his arms
crossed across his back. US Army guards at the prison then packed
his body in ice and posed with the corpse in mocking photographs.
"They forced us to walk
like dogs on our hands and knees ... and we had to bark like
a dog, and if we didn't do that they started hitting us hard
on our face and chest with no mercy." ... "Do you believe
in anything?" the soldier asked. "I said to him, 'I
believe in Allah.' So he said, 'But I believe in torture and
I will torture you'."
Taken out and tied to a post,
rubber bullets were fired at them; made to kneel in the sun until
they collapsed ... "They tied my hands to my feet behind
my back. My left hand to my right foot and my right hand to my
left foot. I was lying face down and they were beating me like
this" ... inmates kept in wire cages with concrete floors
and no protection from the elements.
"They actually said: 'You
have no rights here'. After a while, we stopped asking for human
rights -- we wanted animal rights" ... crosses shaved into
their scalp or body hair ... dislocated his arms, beat his leg
with a bat, crushed his nose, and put an unloaded gun in his
mouth and pulled the trigger ... Six Kuwaiti prisoners said they
were severely beaten, given electric shocks and sodomized by
US forces in Afghanistan ...
The Afghan detainee had been
captured in Pakistan along with a group of other Afghans. His
connection to al Qaeda or the value of his intelligence was never
established before he died. "He was probably associated
with people who were associated with al Qaeda," one US government
official said. ... numerous suicide attempts ...
And here's George W. in 2004:
"The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.
The world is better off because he sits in a prison cell. Because
we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist."
Brian Whitman, spokesman for
the US Department of Defense, 2005: "The United States treats
all detainees in their custody with dignity and respect."
It should be noted that the
CIA has been treating (real and alleged) opponents of American
imperialism with similar dignity and respect ever since the Agency's
founding. Police and prisons within the United States have been
torturing for even longer.
Now for the good news: The
Bush administration, trying to shore up support for its military-trial
procedures, has cabled US embassies with instructions that evidence
obtained through torture will not be allowed. But evidence obtained
through treatment considered "cruel, inhuman, and degrading"
is to be allowed.
George Bernard Shaw used three concepts to describe the positions
of individuals in Nazi Germany: intelligence, decency, and Naziism.
He argued that if a person was intelligent, and a Nazi, he was
not decent. If he was decent and a Nazi, he was not intelligent.
And if he was decent and intelligent, he was not a Nazi.
I suggest the reader make the obvious substitution: "Bush
supporter" in place of "Nazi".
That oh-so-precious
world where words have no meaning
In December, 1989, two days
after bombing and invading the defenseless people of Panama,
killing as many as a few thousand, President George H.W. Bush
declared that his "heart goes out to the families of those
who have died in Panama". When a reporter asked him: "Was
it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To
get [Panamanian leader Manuel] Noriega?", Bush replied:
"Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer,
yes, it has been worth it."
A year later, preparing for
his next crime against humanity, the invasion of Iraq, Bush,
Sr. said: "People say to me: 'How many lives? How many lives
can you expend?' Each one is precious."
At the end of 2006, with Bush's
son now president, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel, commenting
about American deaths reaching 3,000 in Iraq, said Bush "believes
that every life is precious and grieves for each one that is
lost."
In February 2008, with American
deaths about to reach 4,000, and Iraqi deaths as many as a million
or more, George W. Bush asserted: "When we lift our hearts
to God, we're all equal in his sight. We're all equally precious.
... In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion. ... When we answer
God's call to love a neighbor as ourselves, we enter into a deeper
friendship with our fellow man."
Inspired by such noble -- dare
I say precious -- talk from their leaders, the American
military machine likes to hire like-minded warriors. Here is
Erik Prince, founder of the military contractor Blackwater, whose
employees in Iraq kill people like others flick away a mosquito,
in testimony before Congress: "Every life, whether American
or Iraqi, is precious."
William
Blum is the author
of Killing
Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,
Rogue
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc
Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
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