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Now Available! Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY Click Here to Order the Hot New CounterPunch Book by 3-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kathy Kelly! Today's Stories May 6, 2005 P. Saineth India's Bloody Water Wars   May 5, 2005 Carles Mutaner Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?" Carl G. Estabrook Is There Any Hope for the Pope? Farrah Hassen The US's Syrian Obsession Kevin Zeese "Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta Michael Leonardi May Day with an American Soldier in Rome Bennett Ramberg The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You Ray McGovern The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit Norman Solomon Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran Nicole Colson The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights Brian Concannon, Jr. Clearing the Fences in Haiti   May 4, 2005 Colin Kalmbacher Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested John Walsh Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War Greg Moses Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation" Ali Khan Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart Chris Floyd Ring Them Bells Linda S. Heard D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics Dave Zirin The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle William S. Lind Fool's Paradise Gary Leupp Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution Website of the Day Kent State, May 4, 1970     May 3, 2005 Dave Lindorff Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice Brian Cloughley Halliburton's War Loot Ira Kurzban Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers Seth Sandronsky Towards Debtors' Prisons? Gilad Atzmon The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More Michael Donnelly Branding Eco Collapse Alex Sanchez Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush? Peter Linebaugh Magna Carta and May Day     May 2, 2005 Ron Jacobs Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement Stan Goff The Case of Hasan Akbar Karyn Strickler Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics Joshua Frank Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly Kevin Zeese Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam Vicente Navarro Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician     April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility" Gabriel Kolko Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later Jennifer Loewenstein The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood Lee Sustar City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago Saul Landau The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power T.W. Croft The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy Nikolas Kozloff Fox News v. Hugo Chavez William Blum Never-Ending Double Standards Dave Lindorff Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly Joshua Frank The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls Doug Giebel Saving Jane Fonda Steven Erlanger A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief Fred Gardner Washington State Doctor Harassed Mike Whitney Another Mad Bush Press Conference Kurt Nimmo Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine Joe DeRaymond A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania Michael Dickinson Flags Mickey Z. May Day at Yankee Stadium Justin Taylor The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy Poets Basement Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Save Barbados's Cowpastor   April 29, 2005 W. John Green Rice in Colombia: Silence on the Death Squads? Luke Brothers Greenwashing Nuclear Power: Nicholas Kristof, the John Stossel of the NYT Norman Solomon War, Aid and Public Relations M. Junaid Alam The Politics of Smears and Self-Absorption Jackie Corr The Bush Budget and Constitutionally Protected Tax Havens Hunter Greer Feeding Tubes and the SAT: Finally, a Use for Standardized Testing! Sharon Smith The New Assault on Women's Rights: Why are the Democrats Silent? Website of the Day Tony Blair's Election Rap   April 28, 2005 Omar Waraich Blair's Poodle: the Billy Bragg Interview Kevin Zeese Abu Ghraib One Year Later: Have Those Responsible Gotten Off? Dave Lindorff Bush's Torture Tort Reform Greg Moses Why I'm Not Standing with the Gringo Vigilantes Toni Solo Nicaragua on a Dollar a Day...Forever? Niranjan Ramakrishnan Republican Dole Drums; Democrats in Doldrums Werther George Will Revises the Vietnam War   April 27, 2005 John Ross Pope Ratzo and the Hucksters of Death Joshua Frank DeLay, Abramoff and Israeli Militias Ray McGovern The Bolton Affair: More Than Meets the Eye Mark Donham Government Pettiness and Wetland Destruction Dan Smith Bush's Iraq Poker: Hold, Fold, or Raise?     April 26, 2005 Dave Lindorff Church Sex Trumps Torture and Murder Alevtina Rea Magic of the Yellow Emperor Greg Moses The Senator and the Narc Pirates of Highway 281 Joshua Frank Horowitz's Gang of Ghouls and Cowards on Ruzicka Diana Johnstone The French are At It Again     April 25, 2005 Uri Avnery The Persecution of Vanunu Alison Weir The Okrent Perversions: How the NYT Minimizes Palestinian Deaths Lee Sustar Labor Loses a Hero: the Strong Life of Dave Yettaw Leonardo Boff A Liberation Theologist on Ratsinger: a Pope of Fear and Centralized Power? Gary Leupp Bush's Bully: the Career of John Bolton             April 23 / 24, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Time's Buried Hitler Cover Gary Leupp The Anti-Japanese Demonstrations in China James Petras Elections for Democracy or Empire? Harry Browne Springsteen's "Devils and Dust" Fred Gardner The Custody Threat Ron Jacobs The Desterrados of Colombia: They are not Collateral Damage Elizabeth Schulte Why Backing Democrats is Pulling the Anti-War Mvt. to the Right Chris Floyd Oil, Guns and Banks   April 22, 2005 Saul Landau The Kinky Moralists: Missionaries Forever Kevin Zeese Dean Backs the Iraq Occupation Joshua Frank Earth Day Paradox: Enviros vs. Nature Mike Whitney God's Rottweiller: Pope Ratzinger's Pie-in-the-Sky for the Masses Michael Flynn Wolfowitz on Top of the World Lee Sustar The One-Sided Class War Website of the Day Bitter Greens   April 21, 2005 Bill Quigley The Church Picks Its Ashcroft for Pope: a Catholic Worker Response to the Rise of Ratsinger Dave Lindorff Bush's X-Files Jason Leopold Drilling and Spilling in ANWR: Worse Than the Exxon Valdez? Kathleen Christison Sharon's 92 Percent Solution: How the Misperceptions Roll On April 20, 2005   April 20, 2005 John Ross Lopez Obrador: Mexico's Would-be Mandela (Part Two) Kevin Zeese Halliburton: Poster Child of the War Profiteers Uri Avnery The 100 Days of Abu Mazen Website of the Day The House that Jack Built   April 19, 2005 Jean-Guy Allard An Exclusive CP Interview with Ricardo Alarcon on One of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists: "Is Posada Still Working for the White House?" Dave Lindorff What's Good for Canada is Good for GM: Health Care Costs and Job Flight Neve Gordon Before the Law: Israel's Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories Brian Concannon, Jr Immaculate Evasions in Haiti Murray Hudson Chemical Warfare Over Tennessee: Aerial Spraying of Deadly Pesticides Frank B. Ford Poem for Marla Ruzicka Monty Python Memo to Pope Rat Michael Dickinson Cardinal Sins Paul Craig Roberts Outsourcing the American Economy: a Greater Threat Than Terrorism Website of the Day Strindberg and Helium April 18, 2005 Linda Schade / Kevin Zeese The Carter-Baker Commission: Corporate Conflicts of Interest John Ross Mexico's Would-Be Mandela Stares into the Darkness Brian McKenna Dow Chemical Buys Silence in Michigan Mike Whitney The NYT in Fallujah Patrick Cockburn Iraqi Peace in Tatters Dave Zirin Straight Outta High School: Jermaine O'Neal, Race and Hip Hop Eli Stephens The Killing of Nicola Calipari: a Math Lesson Harry Browne War and Elections in Britain and Ireland Website of the Day A16: Photos of the World Bank Protest   April 16 / 17, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Message in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola Gave Back to Plachimada Mark Dow The Art of Jailing: Inside America's Immigration Gulag Omar Waraich Blair's Accountability Moment: Lesser-Evilism Grips Britain Robert Buzzanco How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love Vietnam and Iraq Sherry Wolf Bitches' Liberation? Whatever Happened to the Struggle for Women's Liberation? Fred Gardner The Pharmaceuticalization of Marijuana Ron Jacobs Free Speech with Permission Only: a Tale of Two Universities Mark Weisbrot CAFTA will Further Depress US Wages John Pardon The High-Tech "Competitiveness" Smokescreen Yoshie Furuhashi Debtors of the World Unite! How Dems Went to Bat for the Credit Industry Mike Roselle Cubicle of Doom: the Death of Environmentalism? Ralph Nader Scientists or Celebrities? Ramzy Baroud Gaza: the Line of Memory and Despair Jackson Thoreau Barbara Bush: We Should Have Pulled the Plug on Our Daughter Michael Dickinson "Imagine" and the Koran: Listening to Lennon in Istanbul Richard Neville Shaking the Walls of TwinWorld™ Poets' Basement Albert, Engel, Curtis, Ford and Gaffney Website of the Weekend Rebel Angel     April 15, 2005 Brian Cloughley Diplomacy, Bush Style: Boorish Bolton & Arrogant Rice Bill Glahn No Child Left a Dime Mickey Z. One Zimbabwe or Another: an Interview with Greg Elich Stephanie McMillan Fear and Art: Feds Raid Another Exhibit Josh Mahan Victoria's Dirty Secret David Russitano Will the Real Minutemen Please Stand Up? Jorge Mariscal Rodolfo Gonzales: the Passing of a Legend Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales "I am Joaquin" Tom Reeves Students Rise Again in Québec   April 14, 2005 Karyn Strickler Red States Rebellion: Montana vs. the Patriot Act Pat Williams The Flattened Economy of the Rocky Mountain West Jessica Pupovac What You Should Know About Bank One's New Daddy Joshua Frank Contradictions of the Anti-War Mvt. Jerzy Mankowski Jeffrey Sach's Millennium Plan: a View from Poland Talli Naumann Right-to-Know in Mexico Antony Loewenstein The Aussie Press Under the Empire of Murdoch Virginia Rodino Challenging the Empire: Tactics for the Anti-War Movement Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Bush's Vision of Arab Democracy vs. Two Reports Website of the Day The 13th Moon: Women Poets Read for Peace in Portland     April 13, 2005 Maria Carrión Bolton in the Western Sahara Mike Whitney Fighting Torture with Art: the Abu Ghraib Paintings of Fernando Botero Terry Jones Let Them Eat Bombs Dave Lindorff A Sickening Error Nathaniel Livingston, Jr. Ethnic Cleansing at Air America Kurt Nimmo Israeli Nuclear Blackjack with Iran Don Fitz Battling Dengue Fever with Bats and Birds: the Vietnamese Alternative to Pesticides Tom Crumpacker Democracy and the Multiparty System: The US and Cuban Experiences JG The Abuse of Haitian Kids at PS 34 Jack McCarthy Horowitz Comes to Tallahassee Kevin Zeese Is God Picking a Side in Iraq?: an Interview with Rev. Sekou Jeffrey St. Clair How Exxon Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's Environmental Champions   April 12, 2005 John Wheat Gibson The Goddess of Immigrants: Aeschylus, Thucydides and the Patriot Act Kevin Zeese The Time to Oppose a Draft is Now Alan Farago The Cancer Clusters of Cape Coral: Toxics Trump Democracy in Florida Dave Lindorff Blackout in Montgomery: Selling Social Security Destruction to White Alabamans Ron Jacobs Bob Dylan at the Crossroads Nelson P. Valdes Flashback: John Bolton's Big Lie Dave Zirin War Games and War Names Website of the Day Parents Against the Draft     April 11, 2005 Tom Barry Negroponte and the Eclipse of the CIA Saul Landau Love for the Unborn and Brain Dead: Contempt for the Rest Us Monique Dols Scapegoated at Columbia: Smearing Joseph Massad Phil Gasper Burning Professors: Resurrection of a Witchhunt Mike Whitney See No Evil: Pope TV and the New World Media Edwin Krales The Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry Paul de Rooij Undermining Civil Society: Horowitz's Corrosive Projects Website of the Day Academic Freedom at Columbia: a Petition     April 9 / 10, 2005 Jeffrey St. Clair Torture Air, Incorporated William A. Cook Janus at the State Dept.: Glossing Over Israel's Human Rights Abuses Gary Leupp My Favorite Papal Moment: a Bonfire in Peru Alan Maass Pope-a-Dope: John Paul 2, Death of a Reactionary Laura Carlsen Democracy Sinking in Mexico Joe DeRaymond Death and Displacement in Colombia Nikolas Kozloff Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again) Dave Lindorff The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar Greg Moses Growling at Hallliburton Fred Gardner Southern Station Session Justin Smith The US Prison System: a Hesitant Defense of the Not-Quite-as Bad Old Days Ron Jacobs George Bush's True Religion: From Bob Jones to Jim Jones M. Junaid Alam No Intelligence Failure in Iraq; Political Failure in the US Ira Kay West Point's Bad Geography: the Conqueror's Warped View of the World Elizabeth Schulte From McCarthyism to COINTELPRO: the Ongoing War on the Left Jackie Corr Stranger in a Strange Land: What Bush Didn't See in Montana Christopher Brauchli From Darfur to Iraq: Crime Without Punishment Leslie A. Fiedler On Saul Bellow: "The Age of the Jewish-American Novel is Over" Ben Tripp Pocket Furniture Poets Basement Lamantia, Engel, Louise, Albert and Curtis Website of the Weekend Military Free Zones                                           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.     Subscribe Online

April 5, 2005 The Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty, If Torture Orders Were Lawful By KEVIN ZEESE Washington, DC "What you're saying is it was part of a legitimate cell extraction, you're saying it was legitimate?" Colonel Pohl asked Private Garner and then turned to the defense: "If Private Graner is to be believed, he was not violating any law, so you could not be violating any law," asked the judge, Colonel James L. Pohl. "If you don't believe you were guilty, doing what Graner told you, you can't plead guilty." In a shocker Colonel Pohl threw out the guilty plea of Private Lynndie England. Despite photographs showing her holding a leash around an Iraqi prisoner's neck, pointing to the genitals of prisoners and pointing to a pyramid of naked Iraqis he could not accept her guilty plea if she thought she was following lawful orders. It gets messy pleading guilty to torturing Iraqi prisoners being held at Abu Ghraib when you think you are acting consistently with the policy of the United States that seems to allow torture. Even the fall guy ­ or fall girl in this case ­ cannot plead guilty! Just a week ago the Army Inspector General closed the files on investigations of officers in regard to the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The investigations were closed without even investigating the liability of President Bush or his senior aides. But now the prosecution of Private England may undo the damage control done DoD to protect its officers and hold only a handful of scapegoats responsible. If England, who was facing up to 16 _ years when she was charged with nine counts of mistreating prisoners, is forced to go to trial to defend herself she may choose the aggressive root ­ bring in officers who approved various approaches to humiliate, degrade and threaten Iraqi prisoners to prove that she had a basis to believe she was obeying a lawful order. There is a paper trail of approval of prison abuse as well as inaction when reports of abuse were brought to the attention of officers and senior Administration officials, including: - The top general in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez's signature on an order dated September 14, 2003, authorizing the use of attack dogs; - Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the senior intelligence officer on Gen. Sanchez's staff, responsible for intelligence gathering at Abu Ghraib; who received, and failed to act on, reports of abuses in the fall of 2003. - Documents related to Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Gen. Sanchez's deputy, responsible for detention operations, who reportedly approved interrogation plans involving the use of dogs, and failed to respond to a Red Cross report about the systematic abuse of prisoners in November 2003;" - The report of General Antonio Taguba who found "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" constituting "systematic and illegal abuse of detainees;" - Reports of the American Red Cross describing hundreds of cases of torture of prisoners going back to May 2003 and the failure of top Administration officials to act on them; - Letters to President Bush and senior officials in his Administration describing abuse of Iraqi prisoners and stating: "For over a year, the undersigned organizations and others have repeatedly asked you and senior officials in your Administration to act promptly and forcefully to publicly repudiate the statements of intelligence officials and to assure that the treatment of detainees is consistent with international humanitarian law." And, those are just some of the documents we know about ­ who knows what else might come out in her defense. This is a Pandora's Box the government may not want to open. So, when the case is returned to General Metz, the convening authority, the government may decide to work out a deal rather than let more information out into the public. If so, it will be another time leaders of the Bush administration have evaded responsibility. Just this week in the Netherlands peace activists demanded that Bush be arrested or a court order issued to block his entry to the Netherlands due to "numerous, flagrant breaches of the Geneva Convention." The activists focused on the torture of prisoners and killing of civilians. The judge avoided dealing with the substance of the claim by deciding the lawsuit raised a political matter that the court could not rule on. The court was concerned that granting the request would have "far reaching consequences for relations between the Netherlands and the US." More and more reports of prisoner abuse is coming out. Just this week "Sixty Minutes" featured a whistle blower who was a translator at the Guantanemo Bay prison facility. He described abuse of prisoners in that facility as well. The drip, drip, drip of information is further undermining the position of the United States in the world and no doubt adding to the breeding of anti-Americanism. It is coming time for members of Congress to say enough is enough ­ let's get it all out in the open and hold those responsible who are responsible. When the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public leading Republican Senators, John Warner, Lindsay Graham and John McCain, promised that everyone culpable would be held accountable, no matter how senior. Hopefully they meant what they said and will restore the reputation of the United States by appointing a special prosecutor to fully investigate allegations of U.S. torture of prisoners. Kevin Zeese is a director of Democracy Rising. You can comment on this by going to his blog at DemocracyRising.US.