Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's Stories
June 26 / 27, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
June 25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush
Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did
Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diane Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June 19
/ 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation on
Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
Col. Dan
Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June 18,
2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player &
Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
| Weekend
Edition
June 26 / 27, 2004
New Head
of Al-Qaeda Cell on Arabian Peninsula May Have Been Trained by US Contractor
Another
Case of Blowback
By
WAYNE MADSEN
Saleh
Mohammed al Oufi, the new head of "Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula,"
the group that kidnapped and beheaded American Lockheed Martin helicopter
technician Paul Johnson, may have received training from a U.S. military
contractor while he was being trained as a Saudi public security non
commissioned officer and prison guard. Al Oufi took over as the Al Qaeda
Saudi branch leader after Saudi security forces reportedly gunned down
his predecessor Abdulaziz al Muqrin. In 1983, Computer Sciences Corporation
(CSC), which now owns Dyncorp -- another major U.S. private military
contractor that is training members of the Iraqi army and police --
was awarded a contract by Saudi Arabia to develop the multi-hundred
million dollar Saudi Ministry of the Interior System (SAMIS), one of
the largest information systems in the world and one that is used by
one of the most secretive public security services in the world. SAMIS
was also the largest contract CSC had ever received to that point.
During
the time el Oufi was rising to the rank of sergeant in the Public Security
Service, a part of the Saudi Interior Ministry, he may have received
training on the sophisticated CSC computer system that, with its 1000
computer terminals throughout the country, was used to monitor convicts
and ex-convicts, those under arrest and jailed for crimes, foreigners,
religious pilgrims, and religious "miscreants" (a title used
by the Saudis for Shia Muslims, Jews, Christians, and other "infidels.")
The system contains the names and addresses of every foreigner in the
country legally, something that would be the mother lode of information
for any terrorist or would-be terrorist. Al Oufi's possible knowledge
of the system from his time as a Public Security official would give
Al Qaeda an unprecedented advantage in its terrorist activities against
Westerners, particularly Americans, in Saudi Arabia.
CSC
has touted its work for the Saudi Royal Family in a number of its press
releases over the years. Based largely on its work in Saudi Arabia,
the company was awarded a similar contract in 1991 to rebuild the Kuwaiti
Ministry of Interior computer system after was destroyed by invading
Iraqi troops in 1990.
SAMIS
automated the functions of all the component divisions of the Interior
Ministry, including the departments of civil status (identification
cards), public security (including prisons), border guards, civil defense,
passports, general investigations, special security, and the governates.
Al
Oufi was eventually promoted to the rank of sergeant in 1989. During
Al Oufi's tenure within the Public Security Department, CSC began an
upgrade of the SAMIS system -- a project called SAMIS II. After being
dismissed from the Saudi Public Security Department in 1995, Al Oufi
went to fight with Islamic rebels in Chechnia. He was badly wounded
in the breakaway Russian republic and returned to Saudi Arabia for medical
treatment. Subsequently, Al Oufi met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan
prior to the 911 attacks on the United States. He fled Afghanistan and
returned to Saudi Arabia after the Taliban regime was ousted by American
forces.
El
Oufi is thought by many Middle East observers to have continuing contacts
within the Saudi security services who may have aided and abetted in
terrorist assassinations, assassination attempts, and kidnappings and
executions, including Johnson's. An Islamist web site claimed that the
terrorists who kidnapped Johnson were given Saudi security uniforms
and vehicles by Saudi public security personnel.
And
in a rather tragic irony, Lockheed Martin, the employer of the executed
contractor Paul Johnson, is buying Titan, Inc., one of the contractor
companies named by U.S. military investigators in the prison abuse scandal
at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It was the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in
Iraq that the Saudi Al Qaeda group cited for its beheading of Johnson.
Now Johnson's employer will be taking over the very contract that U.S.
Army investigators claim helped facilitate the torture of prisoners
at Abu Ghraib.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative
journalist and columnist. He served in the National Security
Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and wrote the introduction
to Forbidden
Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's
Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II." His
forthcoming book is titled: "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black
Ops, and Brass Plates."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Weekend Edition June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede
Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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