www.fgks.org   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events

 

What You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber?
Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's
Night

In his special report Alexander Cockburn interviews former Wiesel colleague and Holocaust survivor Eli Pfefferkorn. What Raul Hilberg, the Holocaust's greatest historian, really thinks about Wiesel's "Night". Also in this special issue: Is Hugo Chavez Hitler or Father Christmas? Larry Lack tells the full story of Venezuela's hand-outs to Uncle Sam's Shivering Poor. Plus, Jeffrey St Clair profiles the Endangered Visigoth and traces the rise and possible fall of Rick Pombo, destroyer of nature. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

Get CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year

Today's Stories

March 10, 2006

Aura Bogado
An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos

March 9, 2006

John Walsh
Neocon Daniel Pipes Advocates Civil War in Iraq as Strategic Policy

Annie Zirin
Leftwing Generals: the Dark Side of Liberal Imperialism

Brian McKenna
We All Live in Poletown Now: GM and the Corporate Uses of Eminent Domain

Chris Floyd
Scar Tissue: How the Bushes Brought Bedlam to Iraq

Rachard Itani
"Over There": Iraq as Soap Opera

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Action Thing

Wylie Harris
Immigration and Jeffersonian Democracy: Free Borders Make Good Neighbors

Alexander Cockburn
Ex-State Department Security Officer Charges Pre-9/11 Cover-Up

Website of the Day
About Pace: Expelling Anti-War Students

 

March 8, 2006

Patrick Bond
The Loans of Mass Destruction: Wolfowitz's Anti-Corruption Hoax at the World Bank

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Elusive Victories in Haiti

Pat Williams
Buyer's Remorse: Bush, the View from the Purple States

Lance Selfa
The Democrats and Dubai: the Politics of Distraction

Mokhiber / Weissman
Have You Ever Been Convicted of a Felony?

Walter Brasch
Compromising Civil Liberties

Vijay Prashad
For Them Indian Mangoes: Anatomy of an Agreement

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie: a Call to Action

 

March 7, 2006

Werther
Half a Trillion Dollars: It's an Awful Lot of Money to Make Us Less Safe and Less Free

John Blair
Dr. Strangelove is Our President: Global Peace Through Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
The Impeachment Groundswell and Bush's Last Hope: the Democrats

Mike Whitney
No Immunity: Israel's Policy of Targeted Assassination

Warren Guykema
Who is Afraid of Rachel Corrie?

Sen. Russell Feingold
Misleading Testimony About NSA Domestic Spying

Robert Jensen
Why I am a Christian (Sort Of)

Norman Solomon
Digitalized Hype: a Dazzling Smokescreen?

Bernie Dwyer
Hopeful Signs Across Latin America: an Interview with Noam Chomsky

Website of the Day
Golem Song


March 6, 2006

Ralph Nader
Bush and Katrina: "Situational Information?"

Dave Zirin
Why Did Pat Tillman Die? an Investigation Reopens

Vanessa Redgrave
Censorship of the Worst Kind: the Second Death of Rachel Corrie

Walter A. Davis
Theater, Ideology and the Censorship of "My Name is Rachel Corrie"

Joshua Frank
Down By Law: the Mysterious Case of David Cobb

Nate Mezmer
A Second Look at "Crash": More Myths About Blacks and Racist Cops

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Bleak Jobs Future

Website of the Day
Crossroads: Race, Class and Art


March 4 / 5, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
The Dubai Ports Purchase: National Insecurity, Imported or Homegrown?

Jennifer Van Bergen
Bush's NSA Spying Program Violates the Law

Steven Higgs
Dying for Their Work: Westinghouse Workers and the Highest Level of PCBs Ever Recorded

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Generals, the Legislators and the Gulfstream VIP Transports

Ron Jacobs
Stealing Back Adam's Rib

Rev. William E. Alberts
Remember Damadola

Colin Asher
Goodbye, Dubai: the Teamsters and the Ports

Fred Gardner
Denney's Law

"Pariah"
Scapegoats and Shunning: Sexual Fascism in Progressive America

John Scagliotti
Brokeback Mountain: Pain is Not Enough

Seth Sandronsky
When the White House Walks Away: Bush, Arnold and the Flood Risk in the Central Valley

Joan Roelofs
A Challenge to Rebuild the World

Arjun Makhijani
The US / India Nuclear Pact: a Bad and Dangerous Deal

Ardeshr Ommani
Destroying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Diana Barahona
An Open Letter to Freedom House: Release Info on Your Federal Grants

Ben Tripp
Bonzo, Wherefore Art Thou?

St. Clair / Socialist Worker Staff
Playlist: What We're Listening To

Poets' Basement
Engel, Davies, Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Return of Pearl Jam

March 3, 2006

Laura Carlsen
Mexico: the Power of Corruption and the Corruption of Power

John V. Whitbeck
Two States or One?

Chris Floyd
The Monolith Crumbles: Reality and Revisionism About Iran

Mohamed Hakki
Wolfowitz at the World Bank: Cronyism and Corruption

Pratyush Chandra
Bush in India: Dinner with George and Manmohan

John Scagliotti
Why are There No Real Gays in "Brokeback Mountain"?

Website of the Day
Support the IRC!

 

March 2, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economic News is Spun

Dave Lindorff
Troops to Bush: Get Us Out of Here!

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Democracy: the Hamas Factor

Saul Landau
Halfway Down the Road to Hell

Joe Allen
The Murder of George Jackson: an Interview with His Lawyer, Stephen Bingham

Steve Shore
Berlusconi on Capitol Hill: "I Am Italy!"

Denise Boggs
Roadless and Clueless: Wilderness Logging Greenwashed by Enviro Groups

Norman Finkelstein
The Attacks on Beyond Chutzpah

Website of the Day
ScreenHead

 

March 1, 2006

Mairead Corrigan Maguire
The Human Right to a Nuclear Free World

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The India That Can No Longer Say No

Faheem Hussain
Bush in Pakistan

Antony Loewenstein
Spinning Us to War with Iran: an Aussie Perspective

Elizabeth Schulte
The Charge to Overturn Roe Has Begun

Mike Whitney
Sudan: Beware Bolton's Sudden Humanitarianism

John Ryan
Canada and the American Empire

Michael Donnelly
Brokeback Mountain: a No Love Story

Tom Reeves
Haitian Election Aftermath

Website of the Day
Mardi Gras Index: Reuilding of New Orleans Stalled

 

February 28, 2006

Sen. Russ Feingold
Renewing the Patriot Act: a Sham Process and a Rotten Deal

Ralph Nader
The Dark Age of the Auto Industry

Joshua Frank
The Palazzo Feinstein: the Mansion the War Bought?

Aziz Haniffa
Why India Should Choose Iran, Not the US: an Interview with Dr. Ajun
Makhijani

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Human Rights Leader Barred from Entering the US

Norman Solomon
Mahatma Bush

Mike Ferner
Seven Arrested at White House Antiwar Protest

Sharon Smith
Racism Thrives

Website of the Day
Creek Running North

 

February 27, 2006

Buncombe / Cockburn
And Now Come the Death Squads

Paul Craig Roberts
Twilight of the Hegemony

Ingmar Lee
Bush Mired in India's Nuclear Fallout: the Smiling Buddha Blast

Ron Jacobs
Death Squads, Shrine Bombs, Civil War: Iraq Going According to the Plan?

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Bunker Days

Pat Wolff
Sleeper Cells in South Dakota? The State of Mandatory Motherhood

Lila Rajiva
Double Standards on Foreign Owners: Amdocs vs. DP World

Website of the Day
Get Ya Hustle On!

 

February 25 / 26, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
Quail in War and Peace

Lila Rajiva
Chertoff Strikes Again

Lee Sustar
Target: Iran

Jennifer Van Bergen / Madis Senner
The Case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir

Justin E.H. Smith
David Horowitz's Odd Gripe

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Hides Behind Supply-Side Economics to Reward His Cronies

Jason Leopold
Cheney Exposed?: New Emails in Plame Case Point to Veep's Role

Gilad Atzmon
In Support of My Mayor

Zahid Shariff
What's Going On in Pakistan?

Fred Gardner
Investigating Dr. Denney

Dick J. Reavis
What the UAE / Seaports Deal Teaches Us

David Stocker
Snow Job: the Privatization of US Ports

John Bomar
Losing on Every Front

Mike Marqusee
The Marchers Were Right

Pratyush Chandra
Bush's Passage to India

Ben Tripp
Rewriting History

Dr. Susan Block
Life, Death and Cartoons

Poets' Basement
Landau, Guthrie, LaMorticella, Engel and Mazza

Website of the Weekend
Toward Freedom

 

February 24, 2006

Alan Maass
War Crimes and Hunting Misdemeanors

William S. Lind
The Coming Fall of Pakistan

Dave Lindorff
Useless Democrats: a Whig's Worth of Difference?

Pierre Tristam
Iraq's Cambodian Jungle

Meg Bannerji
Bush's Port Deal: Who's the Dummy?

Robert Jensen
The Failures of Our First Amendment Successes

Mark Engler
How Costly is Too Costly?: Finding the Budgetary Tipping Point for Iraq

Jennifer Loewenstein
Watching the Dissolution of Palestine

Website of the Day
Katrina and the Failure of Black Leadership

 

February 23, 2006

Chet Richards
Rumsfeld's New Model Military: Creating Stability or Insurgency?

Jonathan Feldman
Dubaigate Deconstructed

Joshua Frank
The Democrats' Pull Out Method: Another Election Year Stunt?

Ron Jacobs
Volunteers of America: the Politics of the Weather Underground

Amira Hass
Separate and Unequal: Forbidden to Go Home Together

Samah Sabawi
Hamas and the Missing Video: Editorial Delusions at the Globe and Mail

Norman Solomon
The Unreal Death of Journalism

Christopher Reed
Japan's Neo-Militarists

Website of the Day
Is the Pentagon Making an Anthrax Bomb in Utah?

 

February 22, 2006

Robert Pollin
Reaganomics Revisited: Beyond the Glow of Nostalgia

Phil Doe
How to Pay for War and Cut Taxes for the Rich: Sell Off the Public Lands

Pirouz Azadi
Looking Middle Eastern? You are a Prime Suspect

Saul Landau
Memo to the Dems: Doesn Anyone Give a Damn?

Brian McKinlay
Howard's End?: Trouble Down Under

Sam Smith
Real Holocaust Denial

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Could You Please Pass the Port?

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's Media Contracts: the Wages of Spin

Website of the Day
Port of No Return: Bin Laden, the Taliban and the UAE

 

February 21, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
Would Someone Please Interfere in Our Elections?

Franklin Spinney
Arab Democracy American-Style: Or How to Lose a 4th Generation War

Dave Lindorff
Chasing Cheney in the Ambulance

Alevtina Rea
Ethics, Morals and Empire

Bruce K. Gagnon
The Dems' Latest Stall Strategy: "Strategic Redeployment"

Dave Zirin
Whiteblindness: the Winter Olympics, Bryant Gumbel and Racism at ESPN

Bill Quigley
Six Months After Katrina: Who Was Left Behind Then? Who is Being Left Behind Now?

Website of the Day
Soldiers and Students

 

February 20, 2006

Jennifer Van Bergen
The Perversions of the Bush Administration: Sexual Humiliation and Mother Murder in the War on Terror

Rachard Itani
The Bigoted Wombat: John Howard Does Abu Ghraib

Gideon Levy
A Chilling Heartlessness

Joshua Frank
Cindy Sheehan's Message to the Democrats

Newton Garver
The Challenges and Opportunities Confronting Evo Morales

Pratyush Chandra
What the US Ambassador Taught Nepalis

Seth Sandronsky
Bubblicious: the US Real Estate Market

Cockburn / St. Clair
The FBI and the Myth of Fingerprints

Website of the Day
Chickenhawks Hall of Shame

 

February 18 / 19, 2006

Werther
A Half-Dozen Questions About 9/11 They Don't Want You to Ask

Uzma Aslam Khan
Live from Lahore: Watching with Glee

Joe DeRaymond
A Case of Injustice in Pennsylvania: the Prosecution of Dennis Counterman

Edward F. Mooney
Is Liberalism a Failing Religion? The Case of the Danish Cartoons

Paul Craig Roberts
From Conservatives to Brownshirts

Elaine Cassel
The Sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui: an Issue of Competency

P. Sainath
Soaring Suicides in Vidharbha

Thomas P. Healy
An Interview with Ann Wright

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections: Right Result; Wrong Procedure

Fred Gardner
Health Savings Accounts: a Boon for the Bosses

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Katrina's New Underclass

Brian Tokar
WTO vs. Europe: Less (and More) Than It Seems

Chan Chee Khoon
Privatizing the World Bank?

Andrew Freedman
Chicago's Panopticon

St. Clair / Walker
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Anderson, Engel and Guthrie

Website of the Weekend
Depictionary

 

February 17, 2006

Floyd Rudmin
Secret War Plans and the Malady of American Militarism

Gervasio Rodríguez
FBI Home Invasions in Puerto Rico

Gary Leupp
The Mad is No Longer Out of the Question: Stopping the War on Iran Before It Starts

Ramzy Baroud
Weathering the Globalization Storm

Amira Hass
Apartheid Gates: IDF Establishes "Israeli Only" Crossings

Matthew Koehler
Forest Abuse on the Kootenai: an Intervention in Montana

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Deadeye Dick: Who Dares Call Him Chickenhawk Now?

Debbie Nathan
ABC's Primetime "Teen Sex Slaves" Scam

Website of the Day
Black Mesa Defense

 

Febrauary 16, 2006

Lila Rajiva
Torture Pictures That Didn't Make the Exhibition

Norman Solomon
Dick Cheney's Fox Trot

Ron Jacobs
An Interview with Antiwar Faster Mike Ferner

Paul Craig Roberts
Their Own Economic Reality

Website of the Day
This Ain't No Video Game


February 15, 2006

Brian Conacnnon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections: Chaos, Supression and Fraud

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Shoot Their Own, Too

Saree Makdisi
Israeli Ultimatums

Joshua Frank
The Rhetorical Gore

Amira Hass
Down the Expulsion Highway

CounterPunch Wire
Winter of Discontent: a 34-Day Fast Against the War

Robert Bryce
The United States of Enron

Website of the Day
Osama's Game: an Interview with Michael Scheuer

February 14, 2006

John Sugg
Those Cartoons and the Neo Con: Daniel Pipes and the Danish Editor

Don Santina
DiFi and the Royal Democrats: the Curious Withdrawal of Cindy Sheehan

William A. Cook
Shaming Sharon

Ray McGovern
Who Will Blow the Whistle About Iran?

John Ross
Bush's Mexican Poodle

Website of the Day
Willie Nelson Records CPer Ned Sublette's "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly"


February 13, 2006

Lila Rajiva
Axis of Child Abusers: UK Troops Beat Up Barefoot Iraqi Teens

Christopher Brauchli
Whistleblowers and Witch Hunters: the Bush Inquisition

Dave Lindorff
Deadeye Dick: If Stupidity Were Impeachable, Cheney Would Be History

Ron Jacobs
Black Liberation

Mike Whitney
Riding High with Hugo Chavez

Michael Neumann
Respectful Cultures and Disrespectful Cartoons

Website of the Day
Virtual Resistance

 

February 11 / 12, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
How Not to Spot a Terrorist

Ralph Nader
Bringing Democracy to the Federal Reserve

Paul Craig Roberts
Nuking the Economy

Pat Williams
John Boehner's Dirty Little Secret: Flying Lobbyist Air at $4,000 a Junket

Fred Gardner
Dr. Mikuriya's Appeal: a Last Minute Twist

Saul Landau
From Munich to Hamas

John Chuckman
Cartoons and Bombs: Was Rice Right for Once?

Roger Burbach
Evo Morales: the Early Days

Seth Sandronsky
Economy on Ice

Website of the Weekend
Just Say Know

 

February 10, 2006

Carl G. Estabrook
A US War Plan for Khuzestan?

Sen. Russell Feingold
A Raw Deal on the Patriot Act

Roxanne Dunbar----Ortiz
How Did Evo Morales Come to Power?

Saree Makdisi
The Tempest Over the Hamas Charter

Website of the Day
The New York Art Scene: 1974----1984

 

 

February 9, 2006

Dave Lindorff
Bush and Yamashita: War Crimes and Commanders-in-Chief

Mike Marqusee
The Human Majority was Right About Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
How Conservatives Went Crazy: the Rightwing Press

Peter Phillips
Inside the Global Dominance Group: 200 Insiders Against the World

William S. Lind
Rumsfeld the Maximalist: the Long War

Christine Tomlinson Innocent Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's Eavesdropping Program

Will Youmans
Church of England Votes to Divest from Israel

Robert Robideau
An American Indian's View of the Cartoons

Richard Neville
The Cartoons That Shook the World: All This from the Danes, the Least Funny People on Earth

Peter Rost
The New Robber Barons

Website of the Day
Eyes Wide Open

 

February 8, 2006

Ron Jacobs
The Once and Future Sly Stone: Soundtrack to a Riot

Stan Cox
Making and Unmaking History with General Myers

Sen. Russ Feingold
Why Bush's Wiretapping Program is Illegal and Unconstitutional

Robert Jensen
Horowitz's Academic Hit List: Take a Class from One of the CounterPunch 16

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Bush Should Have Wiretapped FEMA and Chertoff

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Alberto Gonzales Channels Mark Twain

Don Monkerud
Covenant Marriage on the Rocks

David Swanson
Inequality and War

C.L. Cook
Nuking Ontario

Christopher Fons
Chill Out Jihadis: They're Just Cartoons!

Jeffrey Ballinger
The Other Side of Nike and Social Responsibility

Website of the Day
Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas

 

February 7, 2006

Edward Lucie-Smith
An Urgent Plea to Save a Small Estonian Museum from Neo-Nazis

Robert Fisk
The Fury: Now Lebanon is Burning

Paul Craig Roberts
Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man"

Neve Gordon
Why Hamas Won

Joshua Frank
The Hillary and George Show: Partners in War

Peter Montague
The Problem with Mercury: a History of Regulatory Capitulation

Jackie Corr
The Last Best Choice: Public Power and Montana

Jeffrey St. Clair
Rumsfeld's Enforcer: the Secret World of Stephen Cambone

Website of the Day
Negroes with Guns

 

February 6, 2006

Christopher Brauchli
Spilling Blood: Two Sentences

Robert Fisk
Don't Be Fooled: This Isn't About Islam vs. Secularism

John Chuckman
What Did Stephen Harper Actually Win?

Jenna Orkin
Judge Slams EPA for Lying About 9/11's Toxic Air

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Will Save America: My Epiphany

 

February 4 / 5, 2006

Alexander Cockburn
"Lights Out in Tehran": McCain Starts Bombing Run

Mike Ferner
Pentagon Database Leaves No Kid Alone

James Petras
Evo Morales's Cabinet: a Bizarre Beginning in Bolivia

Alan Maass
Scare of the Union: Dems Collaborate with Bush on Surveillance

Fred Gardner
Annals of Law Enforcement: a Look Inside the San Francisco DA's Office

Ralph Nader
Bush's Energy Escapades

Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Speaking in Tongues

Saul Landau
Freedom 2006: Buying Sex on the Net or Those Older Freedoms?

Laura Carlsen
Bad Blood on the Border: Killing Guillermo Martinez

James Brooks
Our Little Shop of Diplomatic Horrors

Mike Roselle
Hippies and Revolutionaries in Carcacas

John Holt
Black Gold, Black Death: Canada's Oil Sands Frenzy

Sarah Ferguson
Cops Suing Cops ... for Spying on Cops

William S. Lind
Beware the Ides of March

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Price of Globalization: Free Trade or Free Speech?

Seth Sandronsky
The Color of Job Cuts in the Auto Industry

Derrick O'Keefe
Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy

Michael Donnelly
Hop on the Bus

Ron Jacobs
Religion and Political Power

Elisa Salasin
RSVP to Bush

St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Stew Albert
God's Curse: Selected Poems

Poets' Basement
Guthrie, LaMorticella and Engel

Website of the Weekend
Killer Tells All!

 

February 3, 2006

Toufic Haddad
A Parliament of Prisoners

Heather Gray
Working with Coretta Scott King

Tim Wise
Racism, Neo-Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates

Conn Hallinan
Nuclear Proliferation: the Gathering Storm

Eva Golinger
Rumsfeld and Negroponte Amp Up Hositility Toward Venezuela

Daniel Ellsberg
The World Can't Wait: Invitation to a Demonstration

Dave Zirin
Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink

Robert Bryce
The Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East

Website of the Day
The Chavez Code

 

February 2, 2006

Winslow T. Wheeler
Pentagon Pork: How to Eliminate It

Stan Cox
Outsourcing the Golden Years

Rachard Itani
Danes (Finally) Apologize to Muslims (For the Wrong Reasons)

Mike Whitney
Afghanistan Five Years Later: Buildings Down, Heroin Up

Amira Hass
In the Footsteps of Arafat: an Interview with Hamas' Ismail Haniya

Norman Solomon
When Praise is Desecration: Smothering King's Legacy with Kind Words

Michael Simmons
Stew Lives!

Christopher Reed
Japan's Dirty Secret: One Million Korean Slaves

Website of the Day
State of Nature

 

February 1, 2006

Sharon Smith
The Bluff and Bluster Dems: Alito and the Faux Filibuster

Jason Leopold
Enron and the Bush Administration

Cindy Sheehan
Getting Busted at the State of the Union: What Really Happened

Joseph Grosso
Oprah and Elie Wiesel: a Match Made in "Neutrality"

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Coretta Scott King was More Than Just Dr. King's Wife

Steven Higgs
Life After Roe. v. Wade

Robert Robideau
"God Given Rights": Palestine and Native America

R. Siddharth
Tales of Power: When Gandhi Rejected a Faustian Bargain with Henry Ford

Jim Retherford
Remembering Stew Albert: the Quiet Genius

Rep. Cynthia McKinney
The Legacy of Coretta Scott King

Paul Craig Roberts
The True State of the Union

Website of the Day
Candide's Notebooks

 

 

Subscribe Online

March 10, 2006

Four Characters in Search of a Prosecutor: Miller, Boykin, Cambone and Feith

The Gitmo Documents

By LILA RAJIVA

A year of stonewalling a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the Associated Press and now the Pentagon releases documents (Friday, March 3, 2006) with the names of hundreds of detainees held at Guantanamo.

The more than five thousand pages give us a flavor of the eclectic--ragtag, might be a better word--mix of prisoners in the Cuban camp and the equally varied treatment they received. The British Guardian-- from a keen sense of fair play, one supposes--devotes a column to telling us that after all, yes, there were two young boys who actually had a good time of it-- said good time running to movies, books, and soccer games. That wipes the slate clean on Abu Ghraib, see?

It would be interesting to know more about those two .... and about the many more boys who didn't exactly get such Eagle Scout treatment, but what we'd really like to know is why we get a breathless column devoted to this reassuring anomaly but no one sees fit to give equal time to any of the three hundred other prisoners who testify to goings on a tad less pleasant.

The hitherto nameless three hundred turn into recognizable characters in these new documents. There are goat herds and shopkeepers; there is the Taliban cook carrying a radio and hand grenades, the Iraqi millionaire who worked for MI5--only they deny it--and the Afghan farmer clinging to his rifle and his frontier freedom like a Montana militiaman cornered by the Feds. There are the metals cages made from discarded shipping containers --six by six, exposed to sun and rain--in which the prisoners were caged 24/7 and let out, shackled, only to use the toilet. There were the regular and severe punishments doled out for infractions as senseless as having an extra cup in the cage. (1)

But--except for one--the most important characters in this squalid drama are a no-show in the press. And that exception--Major Geoffrey Miller--doesn't get the star billing he deserves, either.

One: Miller

It was Miller who was behind the aggressive psychological tactics used at Gitmo between 2002 and 2004--where military interrogators posing as FBI agents, gift-wrapped suspects in the Israeli flag and forced others to watch homosexual porn under strobe lights in 18 hour interrogation sessions (Feb. 23, 2006).

It was Miller who overrode FBI warnings that information gathered by illegal techniques would be inadmissible in court.

It was also Miller who was sent from Cuba to Iraq to "Gitmoize" interrogation. It was only after Miller's first visit to Abu Ghraib in August 2003 that the guards began siccing the dogs on prisoners, torturing them sexually, and attacking their religious beliefs. (2)

Here's Jack Reed (D-RI) on the timeline:

"General Miller came to Iraq in August...He also recommended the establishment of a theater joint interrogation and detention center...That's August, and then October we start seeing a series of abusive behaviors, which the accused [the military police and their commander, Janis Karpinski] suggest were a result of encouragement or direction from these intelligence people in this theater joint interrogation and detention center." (3)

Even after the Abu Ghraib report broke and we were told piously by Mr. Rumsfeld that the system would be fixed ASAP, it was Miller who was sent back again to take care of things.

Doesn't the man merit at least one fawning newspaper column for his original contributions to moral suasion? Or for his well-documented animus against Muslims?

Take Muslim prison chaplain, Capt. James "Yousef" Yee. In 2002 Miller accused Yee of espionage and detained him for 76 days in shackles and solitary confinement for the most part. When no evidence of guilt turned up, the charges were first reduced to mishandling classified information and lying to investigators, and then dropped completely, but instead of apologizing, Miller rapped Yee on tangential charges of adultery and possession of pornography--charges meant only to humiliate him and his family. They were also finally overturned. (4)

Who would put such a spiteful bigot in charge of interrogating Muslim prisoners?

Two: Boykin

The same folks, apparently, who picked General William "Jerry" Boykin to be Deputy Under Secretary for Defense in October 2003, precisely around the time the Abu Ghraib abuses were taking place.

What does Boykin, a militant evangelical Christian think of Muslims?

Let's see:

In dress uniform and polished jump boots, he told a religious group in Oregon in June that same year that radical Islamists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

Recounting a Special Ops mission against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, he informed another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

In 2002, he stated, "We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," and at least once said of President Bush: "He's in the White House because God put him there." (5)

Add to this a resume studded with every rash Special Ops mission in recent memory--from the hunt for Columbian drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, to the bungled Iran hostage rescue, and you get the picture of a man who likes death- or-glory escapades. Especially ones signed off on by Jehovah and aimed at Muslims.

In fact, a Crusader--and not a very competent one.

Is there any proof that Boykin had anything to do with Abu Ghraib?

Plenty.

Boykin played a key role in the counter-insurgency campaign that escalated from 2003 on and is known to have reviewed Israeli tactics used in the assault on the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin in 2002. Any resemblance between American actions in Iraq and Israeli actions in Palestine is, of course, completely coincidental and not even remotely related to the question of why we might have a broad policy of detaining Muslims and subjecting them to futuristic forms of torture

Boykin was also one of the key planners of the new Special Forces group--Task Force 121- intended to wipe out the Iraqi resistance through targeted assassinations similar to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam.

Nice prep work for the man who also just happens to be the person responsible for briefing Undersecretary for Defense Stephen Cambone on what Miller was upto at Abu Ghraib. (6) Boykin is Cambone's top aide.

Three: Cambone

Which brings us to Cambone. What did he know?

Nothing much, according to his testimony at the Senate Hearings.

On issue after issue, the man saw no evil and heard no evil:

"Until the pictures began appearing in the Press, sir, I had not sense of that scope or scale." [about the torture photos which the Army began investigating in January, five months before the story broke]

And about the extent to which the CIA was involved in interrogations:

"I didn't make a connection in the sense there was a significant issue here....Furthermore, I still don't know that there is a significant issue here.."

Cambone also claimed not to have seen Red Cross reports or repeated complaints to Bremer and Rice in 2003. Nor was he briefed by General Miller on his August visit to Iraq.

The mantra is always the same--"I am not aware," "as best I know," "that's about the extent of my knowledge." (7)

And since we presume a minimum of intelligence in our defense officials, we can't even chalk this up to imbecility.

Then why the stone-walling?

Simple. Military Intelligence and the CIA (both operating extensively through creme de la creme special forces units and out of control private contractors) are at the heart of the torture policy.... which is itself at the heart of the entire counter-terrorist strategy.... which is in turn the lynch pin of the war on terror. Counter terrorism today--from what we know of such units as Rumsfeld's P2OG (Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group)--is modeled after the Gladio-type forces that ran the so-called "Strategy of Tension in Europe" in the aftermath of the Cold War and were used extensively to stage covert provocations and false-flag operations meant to discredit socialism.

So, trace Abu Ghraib back to MI and the CIA and Cambone knows you trace right it back to the people running the new Strategy of Tension....against the Muslim world. The people who have reframed real (and staged) terrorist acts as part of an endless World War IV --- while, not incidentally, standing to profit substantially from the reframing. You trace it back to defense contractors. You trace it back to the black heart of the Defense-Intelligence octopus.

And where does Cambone fit in the octopus?

As Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD-I), the civilian boss directly in charge of the entire system of information gathering, he's part of the brain. A big part. The position was created by Rumsfeld as recently as 2003 for the sole purpose of wrenching control of intelligence away from independent outfits (the DIA, the NSA, each armed service's intelligence unit) and housing it in the Pentagon under one roof.

Moreover, Cambone, a ballistics missile and space weapons fanatic, had no background in intelligence and was hated by those who did. He was Rumsfeld's point man on RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs)--the Don's controversial transformation of the military. He was picked to steam roll any opposition by military men--and there was plenty of opposition. (8)

As part of the RMA, raw (unanalyzed) intelligence is made available to the military--supposedly with rules governing its use....but who really believes that rules like that don't quickly fold when needed? The intelligence is gathered through "persistent surveillance" and uses such new technologies as Space-Based Radar. Turns out "persistent surveillance" is suspiciously similar to what goes on under Rumsfeld's little false-flag franchise, P20G. Indeed, in April 2003, Rumsfeld placed Cambone in charge of the counter-terrorism initiative coded "Grey Fox." Here are Cambone's own words with my emphasis in italics:

"For the war fighter, it [Space-Based Radar] could support predictive battlespace awareness and could be equally predictive for the intelligence analyst. In other words, by finding the anomalous event, what you do is you get out ahead of activities. Your refresh rate, if you will, is such that you're not looking at history, you're looking at current events, and once you start looking at current events, as opposed to the history, your ability to start drawing those trend lines and anticipate how the subject of your inquiry is going to act and respond increases dramatically." (9)

Preemptive intelligence, like preemptive war. Pick up people who might commit terrorist acts, not those who actually have. A perfect recipe for show trials and random street sweeps like the ones that gave us Abu Ghraib. And completely contradictory to the practice or theory of professional intelligence analysts. But, of course, Cambone, a graduate of the neo-conservative hotbed Claremont College, is not an analyst but an ideologue.

An ideologue, who as USD-I gets his clammy hands on 85% of the intelligence budget versus the mere 12% under the director of central intelligence. Frankly, Cambone would had to have been consulted just for the money needed to insert private contractors and military intelligence into interrogation.

Yet, at the Senate Hearings this all powerful czar swore up and down he knew nothing--nada, zip, zero, zilch--about Miller, about the Red Cross, about MI, about the dogs, about the pictures.....

And a hypnotized media has never called him on that outrageous performance.

Four: Feith

Nor has there been a solitary twitter about the role of the enigmatic Douglas Feith, though he deserves it as much as Cambone. Until he left in early 2005, Feith was Cambone's opposite number at Defense as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD-P), a post Cambone himself held earlier.

If Cambone had the means to tamper with intelligence-gathering and interrogation, Feith had the motive.

A vocal advocate of regime change in the Middle East long before 9-11, a hard-line Zionist hawk and member of ZOA (Zionist Organization of America), Feith's publicly expressed views are incendiary. He has stated that Oslo should be repudiated and the West Bank and Gaza reoccupied even if "the price in blood would be high" as "a necessary form of detoxification." (10)

And his actions in government match. In 1982, he was investigated over allegations that he had handed over secret documents to the Israeli embassy and left the National Security Council under a cloud. Later, he was hired back by Richard Perle. On leaving the Pentagon in 1986, he promptly started a law firm in Israel. His partner at the time, Marc Zell, is a spokesman for the Jewish settlers' movement on the occupied West Bank. Yes--those settlers. (11) The ones several parasangs to the right of Ariel Sharon. Naturally--that would have nothing whatsoever to do with any opinions Feith might hold on Arabs, Iraq, or the proper way to chat with a manacled Muslim.

In 2001, with the US economy in recession and financial crisis looming in the markets and neo-conservatives ensconced in power, friends began helping friends: Wolfowitz as Deputy Secretary of State brought Feith in at DOD, while Feith brought Perle to the Defense Policy Board and hired another favorite ideological hit man, Michael Ledeen, who also has a documented history of siphoning classified information to Israeli intelligence and selling sensitive military technology to China. Ledeen was hired by Feith at OSP to handle material requiring high-level security clearance. (12)

And what does this cozy arrangement have to do with Abu Ghraib? Well--for a start, it blows a hole in the theory that rounding up a few Semitic goat-herds and housewives has anything to do with national security--at least in the common meaning of that term, to wit., refraining from selling out the interests of the nation-state to which one belongs by accident of birth, choice, or lack of initiative. Because it's quite clear from the action-packed resumes of the crew of transnational wheelers and dealers above, that national--or even international- security is the last thing on their minds.

Feith has also been up to more institutionalized shenanigans:

First, he was active in the controversial Defense Policy Board, whose former head Richard Perle resigned when conflicts of interest between his board duties and his business affairs came to light. Then, he was also boss at the Office of Special Plans, which "stove-piped" un-vetted or raw intelligence on Iraq directly (outside the normal channels, that is) to the White House. The objective was to buttress the administration's flimsy case for war. Which means that Feith was grasping for any wisp of straw when it came to intelligence. And so, had every incentive to get it for us whole-sale where he could most easily--on the Iraqi street. (13)

And an important point. OSP, set up by Wolfowitz, had direct responsibility for detainee operations in Iraq. By dismissing the advice of Middle Eastern experts at the State Department on post-war planning, it contributed hugely to the failure of prison policy. OSP also oversaw reconstruction contracts--with all their outrageous bid-rigging and profiteering. And it did all of this through an institutional end-run around government.

Yet, at the Senate Hearings, Cambone swore up and down that Feith was in the dark about Abu Ghraib and the Taguba report, although when the report actually came out, here's what Daniel Dunn, the top computer security officer in Feith's office had to say in an urgent email memo to Pentagon staff:

"Information contained in this report is classified; do not go to FOX News to read or obtain a copy." (14)

Sounds like at least one person knew that Feith had something to fear.

And Feith himself quietly resigned last year, some say, because of yet another scandal--the Larry Franklin case. Franklin, convicted of espionage this year, worked for Feith at OSP in 2002 and 2003 and was sent abroad on sensitive missions--involving Iran-Contra figures-- aimed at pushing through the Iraq WMD hustle. Franklin pleaded guilty in January to passing information to Israel about U.S. policy towards Iran through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S. (15)

So there you have it.

Take two rancid Christian zealots and a half-pint of frothing Zionist fanaticism. Add to it a well-curdled neo-conservative ideologue and stir until bubbling in a Middle Eastern cauldron. Top with a generous helping of psycho-sexual sadism. And voila, Torture Imperial. Serves several thousands at a time.

Miller, Boykin, Cambone, and Feith.

Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld also, of course. Possibly, Rice and President Bush.

But for now, these four will do.

Lila Rajiva is a free-lance journalist and author of "The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American media," (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached at: lrajiva@hotmail.com

 

Notes:

(1) "In Guantanamo Bay Documents, Prisoners Plead for Release
U.S. Makes First Public Accounting Of Detainees," Josh White and Julie Tate, Washington Post, March 5, 2006; Page A08. See also "Pentagon discloses names of Gitmo detainees," Miranda Leitsinger and Ben Fox, AP, March 4, 2006.

(2) See "The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media," Lila Rajiva, MR Press, December 2005, p. 51.

(3) Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, May 11, 2004.

(4) "How Dubious Evidence Spurred Relentless Guantánamo Spy Hunt," Tim Golden, New York Times, December 19, 2004. See also "Who Is Geoffrey Miller: Is the Man from Guantánamo the Right Man for Iraq?" Peter Ogden, Center for American Progress, May 17, 2004.

(5) "General Casts War in Religious Terms," Richard T. Cooper, Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2003.

(6) "Moving Targets: Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?" Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, December 13, 2003. See also "US Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq," Julian Borger, Guardian, 9 December 2003.

(7) Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, May 11, 2004.

(8) In "The Secret World of Stephen Cambone: Rumsfeld's Enforcer," (Counterpunch, February 7, 2006), Jeffrey St. Clair writes that a Republican staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told CounterPunch that the little-known Cambone rivals Paul Wolfowitz in power at the Pentagon. "Cambone is a truly dangerous player," said the staffer." He is Rumsfeld's guard dog, implacably loyal. While Wolfowitz positions himself to step into the top spot should Rumsfeld get axed, Cambone has dug in and gone to war against the insurgents in the Pentagon. Cambone's fingerprints are all over the occupation and the interrogation scandal. For him, there's no turning back." St. Clair contends credibly that "Cambone's real mission was to keep tabs on Feith, a notorious hothead and Cheney loyalist whom Rumsfeld distrusts."

(9) "Intelligence on demand: An interview with Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence," Glenn W. Goodman, Jr., ISR Journal, December 1, 2003.
http://www.defenselink.mil/usdi/camboneinterview.html

(10) "A Dangerous Appointment," James Zogby, Washington Watch, April 16, 2001

(11) "Loss of Feith in Douglas," Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, November 7, 2003. (Reprinted in Asia Times).

(12) "Serving Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration," Stephen Green, Counterpunch, February 28/29, 2004. Again, one has to clearly distinguish between acceptable information sharing between two very close allies and the fine point at which something crosses that boundary.

(13) "The new Pentagon papers: A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war," Karen Kwiatkowski, Salon.com, March 10, 2004.

(14) "The Israeli Torture Template: Rape, Feces and Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks,"
Wayne Madsen, Counterpunch, May 10, 2004.

(15) "Pentagon analyst indicted for leaks to Israel: a subterranean power struggle in Washington," Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web, 10 May 2005.



 

 

 

Finally Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case Against Israel
By Michael Neumann

Click Here to Order Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz

WHAT'S INSIDE
Grand Theft Pentagon:
Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror

by Jeffrey St. Clair

 

CounterPunch Speakers Bureau

Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.

The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"