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Today's
Stories
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Laura Flanders
Elaine Chao: a First Daughter
for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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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April
1, 2004
Inside America's Concentration Camp
Tortured
at Guantanamo Bay
By NICOLE COLSON
Jamal al-Harith made the mistake of being in the
wrong place at the wrong time. And for that, the last two years
of his life have been one long nightmare. The 37-year-old British
Web site designer went to Pakistan in October 2001 to study Muslim
culture.
Jamal says that on his way to Turkey,
he mistakenly entered Afghanistan. Once there, he was arrested
as a suspected spy and turned over to U.S. authorities. Then
the real horror began. Jamal was transported to Camp X-Ray--and
later Camp Delta--the notorious U.S. prisons located at the U.S.
military base at Guantanamo Bay.
But after two years of detention and
virtually no contact with the outside world, the U.S. finally
admitted that Jamal wasn't one of the "most dangerous, best-trained,
vicious killers on the face of the earth," as U.S. Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once labeled the prisoners at Camp
X-Ray.
Last month, Jamal and four other British
nationals were released. Jamal's recounting of life inside the
camp became further proof that Washington's brand of "justice"
is anything but. In an interview with the Britain's Mirror newspaper,
Jamal described the horrific conditions and physical and mental
torture that inmates were forced to endure on a daily basis.
Rice and beans were the usual diet, and
the water was "filthy," he said. "In Camp X-Ray,
it was yellow and in Delta, it was black--the color of Coca-Cola.
We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage,' but they would
often turn the water off as punishment...
"The food was terrible as well,
up to 10 years out of date. They would open a hatch and shove
it through a section at a time. Recreation meant your legs were
untied, and you walked up and down a strip of gravel. In Camp
X-Ray, you only got five minutes, but in Delta you walked for
around 15 minutes."
During lengthy interrogation, inmates
would be attached--like animals--to a metal ring on the floor.
"Sometimes," Jamal said, "you would be chained
up on the floor with your hands and feet actually bound together.
One of my friends told me he was kept like that for 15 hours
once."
Inmates who resisted--in whatever form--found
themselves subject to worse torture, according to Jamal and others.
"You would be punished for anything--for having six packets
of salt in your cell rather than five, for hanging your towel
through the cage if it wasn't wet, even for having your spoon
and things lined up in the wrong order," Jamal said in his
Mirror interview.
As punishment, he says, a group of guards
dressed in full riot gear known as the "Extreme Reaction
Force" would beat uncooperative inmates--who were then paraded
in front of other prisoners' cells as a warning. "The whole
point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically,"
Jamal commented. "The beatings were not as nearly as bad
as the psychological torture. Bruises heal after a week, but
the other stuff stays with you. They would play tricks on people
by denying them things--you might be the only person on your
block who didn't get any bread."
Prisoners, according to Jamal, were told
they had no rights. "They actually said that--'you have
no rights here.' After a while, we stopped asking for human rights--we
wanted animal rights.
"In Camp X-Ray, my cage was right
next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog. He had a wooden house
with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said
to the guards, 'I want his rights,' and they replied, 'That dog
is member of the U.S. army.'"
Following Jamal and other prisoner's
allegations of abuse, the U.S. embassy in London took the disgusting
step of releasing detailed allegations about them to the British
press. Washington claimed that Jamal and the other four released
British detainees had received weapons training and been caught
with Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
If that was really the case, the U.S.
wouldn't have released them. And British authorities--despite
their kowtowing to Washington--have concluded that the men did
nothing wrong.
Following the allegations from Jamal
and other prisoners, Secretary of State Colin Powell scoffed:
"We do not abuse people in our care. Guantanamo Bay is not
a resort, but at the same time, we do not abuse individuals."
Maybe Powell can explain, then, why at the same time that Jamal
and the other British prisoners were telling their stories to
the press, a group of 23 newly released Afghan and Pakistani
prisoners were recounting similar stories of torture at the hands
of the U.S.
Aziz Khan, a 45-year-old father of 10,
said he was taken from Paktia Province more than two years ago
because he had four Kalashnikov rifles in his home. At Guantanamo,
he was sometimes kept in chains and sometimes "put in a
place like a cage for a bird." "They had very bad treatment
toward us," he told the New York Times. "Americans
are very cruel. They want to govern the world."
"The American inspectors behaved
very badly--they were mentally torturing us," Mohammed,
a 27-year-old who was among those released, told Agence France
Presse. As for the more than 600 prisoners left in cages in the
U.S. gulag? "They are all innocent people just like me,"
Mohammed said. "If I was a Taliban and al-Qaeda why did
they release me? The others still in jail are just like me."
But if the Bush administration has its
way, that's exactly where many of them will stay. That's because
Washington still refuses to grant the inmates status as prisoners
of war, which would entitle them to basic rights under the Geneva
Convention.
Instead, "All detainees are treated
humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military
necessity, in accordance with the principles of the Third Geneva
Convention of 1949," Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon
spokeswoman, told the New York Times. In other words: Washington
gets to decide which prisoners have rights--and if and when they
get to exercise them.
Ultimately, it took an international
outcry from human rights groups before the U.S. finally agreed
in late January to release the youngest of its Guantanamo. prisoners--three
children between the ages of 13 and 15. They were kept at the
prison camp for more than a year. The U.S. still has an undisclosed
number of children between the ages of 16 and 18 at the camps.
The Bush administration says it is waging
a "war on terror." But the degrading treatment of prisoners
at its Guantanamo gulag show that this is a war of terror. We
need to organize to put an end to this outrage.
"Drive-by act
of legal violence"
SEVENTY-SIX days in a military brig and
a name and career dragged through the mud. But the best "apology"
that the U.S. government can offer to Capt. James (Yousef) Yee
is "never mind." Yee is the Muslim chaplain who ministered
to prisoners at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay and who
was arrested last September on allegations of spying, mutiny,
sedition, aiding the enemy and mishandling classified information.
For more than two months, Yee was jailed
in a maximum-security Navy lockup in Jacksonville, Fla., where
he was only let outside his cell in shackles for just one hour
each day. Yet last week, the government dropped all of the criminal
charges against Yee.
They won't, of course, admit that it's
because Yee is innocent. Instead, the Army said it could not
proceed because of "national security concerns that would
arise from the release of the evidence" against him. What
garbage! If Yee was a "spy" aiding al-Qaeda terrorists,
as the government initially claimed, they would have raked him
over the coals for years to come.
Instead, as an additional slap in the
face, a military hearing found him guilty of committing adultery
and storing pornographic images on a government computer. "This
officer is the victim of an incredible drive-by act of legal
violence," Eugene Fidell, Yee's lawyer, told Reuters.
Nicole Colson
writes for the Socialist
Worker.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
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