|
|
|
* "Put a bra and panties on this guy's head" * His "Do This" List for Abu Ghraib * Driving Jose Padilla Insane
|
home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq
Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! HOW RUMSFELD MICROMANAGED TORTURE! * Real-time grilling of Lindh by satellite
* "Put a bra and panties on this guy's head"
* His "Do This" List for Abu Ghraib
* Driving Jose Padilla InsaneRead Andrew Cockburn's devastating report in Our New CounterPunch Newsletter. PLUS: Robert Bryce on Frank Gaffney, Halliburton and Iran. Still available: WHAT DID ISRAEL KNOW IN ADVANCE OF THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS? At last, the answers. Read Christopher Ketcham's exclusive expose in CounterPunch special double-issue February newsletter. Plus, Cockburn and St. Clair on how this story was suppressed and ultimately found its home in CounterPunch. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch 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 Linebaugh in LA; Cockburn in San Francisco
|
Today's Stories March 2, 2007 Roger Morris
March 1, 2007 Laura Carlsen Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Christopher
Brauchli Najum Mustaq Brent Bowden Tina Richards Ethan Nadelman Mike Stark Wadner Pierre
/ Jeb Sprague Mike Whitney Website of
the Day
February 28, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Tao Ruspoli China Hand Marjorie Cohn Sarah Olson Susan Van Haitsma Nicole Colson Harvey Wasserman William S. Lind Nicola Nasser Website of the Day
February 27, 2007 Tariq Ali Tom Barry Uri Avnery Antonia Juhasz / Raed Jarrar Jeff Nygaard Hugh O'Shaughnessy Mitchell Kaidy Carl Finamore Anne McElroy
Dachel Ramzy Baroud Andrew Rouse Website of the Day
February 26, 2007 Franklin Lamb Bill Quigley Greg Moses Col. Dan Smith Ralph Nader Paul Buchheit Jeff Leys Dave Zirin Mike Whitney Michael Dickinson Website of the Day
February 24 / 25, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair R. T. Naylor Gary Leupp Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Jeffrey Blankfort Chris Sands Gary Freeman Larry Portis P. Sainath Lee Sustar Kevin Wehr Ken Couesbouc Soffiyah Elijah Kathlyn Stone Dave Lindorff Jason Kunin Kevin Zeese Remi Kanazi Missy Beattie Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
February 23, 2007 Franklin Spinney Jonathan Cook Patrick Cockburn Kathy Kelly Chris Dols Evelyn Pringle Stephen Pearcy Dan Brook Yifat Susskind Website of
the Day
February 22, 2007 Robert Fantina Tariq Ali Michael Shank John Ross Christopher Brauchli Cindy Litman Niranjan Ramakrishnan Kevin Zeese Aseem Shrivastava Reza Fiyouzat Illinois Students Against the
War Website of
the Day
February 21, 2007 Maass / St.
Clair Sharon Smith Greg Moses Margaret Kimberly Ralph Nader Nicola Nasser Mike Whitney Tao Ruspoli Byeong Jeongpil Corporate Crime
Reporter Josh Mahan Website of
the Day
February 20, 2007 Sgt. Martin
Smith Werther Corporate Crime Reporter Carl G. Estabrook China Hand Joshua Frank Megan Boler John Feffer Daryll E. Ray Alan Gregory Website of the Day
February 19, 2007 Paul Craig
Roberts Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs Michael F.
Brown Robert Jensen Roger Burbach Monica Benderman Sonja Karkar John Walsh Talli Nauman Website of the Day
Feburary 17 / 18, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Tao Ruspoli Gary Leupp Jeffrey St.
Clair Roger Morris Uri Avnery James Brooks Sen. Russell
Feingold Linn Washington, Jr. Michele Brand Fred Gardner Mitchel Cohen Mike Ferner David Swanson P. Sainath Mike Stark Missy Beattie Jonathan Franklin Website of the Weekend
Marc Levy Andrew Cockburn Glen Ford Greg Moses Ron Jacobs John W. Farley James Marc Leas Tim Rinne Albert Wan Website of
the Day
Patrick Cockburn Saul Landau Stephen Lendman Evelyn Pringle Michael Simmons Kevin Zeese Dave Lindorff Pete Shanks Peter Rost Lenni Brenner
/ Gilad Atzmon Website of the Day
February 14, 2007 Tao Ruspoli Dick J. Reavis Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Paul Craig
Roberts John Ross Michael F.
Brown Dave Lindorff J.L. Chestunut,
Jr. Don Fitz Michael Donnelly Dr. Susan Block Website of
the Day
February 13, 2007 Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Marjorie Cohn Col. Dan Smith Col. Douglas
MacGreagor Thomas Power Nicola Nasser David Swanson Columbia Coalition
Against the War Website of the Day
February 12, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts John Walsh Dr. John Carroll,
MD Greg Moses Nicole Colson Dave Lindorff Ray McGovern Doug Giebel David Swanson Website of the Day
February
10 /11, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Gabriel Kolko Patrick Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Kevin Alexander Gray M. Shahid Alam Greg Moses Paul Craig
Roberts George Ciccariello-Maher Kevin Zeese Turner / Kim George Duke Walter Brasch Shepherd Bliss Missy Beattie Peter Harley Pat Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Day
Conn Hallinan Gary Leupp Lee Sustar Nikolas Kozloff Newton Garver Yitzhak Laor Dave Lindorff David Swanson Website of the Day
February 8, 2007 John V. Walsh Marjorie Cohn Trish Schuh Ron Jacobs Laura Carlsen Ramzy Baroud Brenda Norrell Bryan Farrell Judith Scherr Website of
the Day
February 7, 2007 Daniel Wolff Tao Ruspoli Tony Swindell Sharon Smith Ken Couesbouc Jeff Cohen Col. Dan Smith Tom Kerr Joshua Frank Adam Elkus Stephen Fleischman Website of
the Day
February 6, 2007 Diana Johnstone Gregory Wilpert Norman Solomon Dave Lindorff William Blum Mike Ferner CP News Service Evelyn Pringle Christopher Brauchli Alan Cabal Website of the Day
Dave Zirin Uri Avnery Ron Jacobs Paul Craig Roberts Newton Garver Bruce Anderson Saul Landau Ralph Nader James T. Phillips Mike Whitney Kenneth Rexroth Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Tao Ruspoli Jeffrey St.
Clair Patrick Cockburn P. Sainath Sen. Russell Feingold Diane Christian Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Timothy J. Freeman Conn Hallinan John Ross Greg Moses Missy Beattie Joshua Frank Evelyn Pringle Stephen Fleischman Muhammad Idrees Ahmad Poets' Basement Website of the Day
Chris Kutalik R. Gibson /
E. W. Ross Pam Martens John Feffer Daryll E. Ray Ronald Bruce
St. John Mitchel Cohen Website of
the Day
Diane Farsetta Marjorie Cohn Mark Scaramella Ranni Amiri Christopher Ketcham Winston Warfield Corporate Crime Reporter Thomas P. Healy Website of the Dau
January 31, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Jean Bricmont Tao Ruspoli James T. Phillips William Johnson Tim Wilkinson Evelyn Pringle Joshua Frank Ramzy Baroud Mickey Z. Website of the Day
Subscribe Online
|
March 1, 2007 A Loud Boom from the Land of BonesCheney's Bagram GhostsBy ROGER MORRIS "I heard a loud boom," Vice President Dick Cheney remembered of the suicide bomb at Bagram air base outside Kabul where he stopped over this week. Said to be aimed at Cheney himself, the attack left him untouched while killing twenty-one Afghan workers and two Americans-still more casualties in Afghanistan's thirty-year, million-and-a-half-dead civil war. In that setting, one hopes Cheney heard symbolically more than a "boom." Bagram thunders with relevant ghosts, many of them American. In the fourth century B.C. it was a fort in one of the first of so many ill-fated attempts to subdue the Afghans. Even Alexander's campaign-hardened Macedonians were shocked when the local insurgents left battlefield dead to devouring wild dogs. For ancient Afghans it was religious practice, but for invaders a telling mark of a people capable at once of tender poetry and chivalrous hospitality along with the most ferocious, indomitable resistance to conquest. Bagram was a mocking ruin as Britain came and went in the nineteenth century to parry imperial Russia in the Great Game. The English killed, tortured, bribed, and subverted the Afghans, and in the end, like Alexander's legions, left their bones to bleach at Gandamak and on the stony plain of Maiwand west of Kandahar. They left, too, the Durand Line dividing Afghanistan from the subcontinent. Cut for colonial convenience through the heart of Pashtun tribal lands, the fateful boundary with its separatist ambitions and fears still makes Pakistan the furtive nemesis of Afghan stability, and the inconsolable frontier now a sanctuary for the resurgent Taliban. Cold War brought Bagram back to life in the mid-1950s as an air base of the old Afghan royal regime. Having begged in vain for U.S. help-Washington at the time thought the Hindu Kush of no strategic value and preferred as clients the crisp military dictators in Pakistan-the Afghans turned to Russia to modernize their antique armed forces. As Bagram hummed with Soviet advisors and MIGs, America took up the competition, albeit on the cheap. Over a quarter century U.S. aid to Afghanistan would be only a fraction of Moscow's. All the while, the Great Game continued. Whatever the visible policy, the CIA relentlessly used Afghanistan to spy on Soviet Central Asia, feeding perennial Russian fears and the inevitable counter intrigues. Intent on each other, both superpower rivals dispensed their foreign aid wares-and a corrupt Kabul oligarchy took them-heedless of the impact. As aid spawned an educated class without jobs, as the army grew better armed but no better paid, as grinding poverty only worsened, the turmoil built that would plunge Afghanistan into unimaginable disaster, and haunt the world into the next century. Bagram was always emblematic. The neutrality of its officers allowed strongman Mohammad Daoud to overthrow the venal monarchy of King Zahir in 1973. It was from Bagram five years later that a leftist commander launched his jet fighters with withering effect on Daoud's presidential palace in the 1978 communist coup neither Russia nor the U.S. expected-and Moscow soon regretted more than Washington. Into Bagram then poured Soviet advisors and materiel in the Kremlin's vain attempt to shore up a weak, divided communist rule in Kabul that remained typically Afghan, and thus fiercely independent of its patrons. The regime's reforms were now crudely anti-religious and culturally insensitive, now laudably democratic in land reform and the education of women. Change in any case ignited a reactionary Islamic revolt which the U.S., Pakistan, China, and briefly the tottering Shah of Iran quickly moved to foment with covert arms and training. Results were horrific. When a CIA- and Iranian-instigated Islamic uprising in Herat massacred hundreds of Russian aid workers and their families in March 1979-the bloodiest episode in the history of foreign aid-sorties from Bagram indiscriminately bombed monuments, homes and schools of the ancient capital even after rebels had left, killing as many as 20,000. In the face of a deliberate U.S. policy to provoke an invasion of Afghanistan-"giving to the USSR its Vietnam War," as National Security Advisor Zbigniev Brzezinski told President Jimmy Carter-we know from the post-Soviet release of Politburo minutes the Kremlin warily resisted what some knew would be a disaster. When that trap was sprung by self-deception and fear on all sides, it was Bagram that saw the elite KGB unit who killed Afghan President Hafizullah Amin in a December 1979 coup to replace his regime with a more agreeable puppet. It was Bagram's runways that took wave after wave of Soviet invasion forces whose masters expected a victorious, low-casualty show of force lasting only months. It was Bagram that saw the last Russian troops more than nine years later after some of the most savage warfare in history and twice as many casualties as the Kremlin admitted. Over a decade of carnage the base was a center of war and portent. Trained by the Americans and Pakistanis with the latest explosive devices and eventually Stinger missiles, the Mujahideen, as the Islamic radicals were known, constantly stalked Bagram. Tuesday's attack was in a tradition begun by U.S.-directed car-bombing squads sent to terrorize not only Soviet or Afghan military, but also civilians, including Kabul's intelligentsia and university professors at sites like movie theaters and cultural events. After the fall of the USSR and the Kabul communist regime, the base was a shifting prize between Mujahideen factions abandoned to the chaos of further civil war and then the bloody Pakistani-sponsored rise of the Taliban. With the U.S. occupation in 2002, Bagram was expanded as never before as a hub of the NATO war, including conversion of one of its cavernous hangers into most notorious prison in Afghanistan, eclipsing even the infamous Pul-i-Charki outside Kabul where the Mujahideen, and the communists, Daoud regime and monarchy before them, jailed and tortured thousands. Did Cheney hear any of it? In the 1970s as Afghanistan slid to calamity, he was a rising young aide to Don Rumsfeld in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. In 1978 as the communists seized power and the U.S. began its covert intervention, he was maneuvering for a Wyoming congressional seat. In 1979 as Washington provoked and Moscow invaded, he was finishing his first year in the House, positioning for the leadership he gained a decade later. In the 1980s as the Mujahideen attacked Bagram, he ardently supported the Reagan Administration's covert wars in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Iran, though he took no interest in places or issues-like his colleagues, looking the other way amid questions about the drug trade, atrocities, terrorism.. It was all there at Bagram-the consummate folly of corrupt clients, the false valor of historical ignorance, and the presumption once again to conquer the unconquerable in what the Greeks called the "land of the bones." A "loud boom" indeed. Roger Morris, who served in the State Department and on the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, resigned in protest at the invasion of Cambodia. He then worked as a legislative advisor in the U.S. Senate and a director of policy studies at the Carnegie Endowment, and writes this Rumsfeldian history from intimate firsthand knowledge as well as extensive research. A Visiting Honors professor at the University of Washington and Research Fellow of the Green Institute, where his work originally appears. He is an award-winning historian and investigative journalist, including a National Book Award Silver Medal winner, and the author of books on Nixon, Kissinger, Haig, and the Clintons. More recently, he co-authored with Sally Denton The Money and the Power, a history of Las Vegas as the paradigm of national corruption. His latest work, Shadows of the Eagle, a history of U.S. covert interventions and policy in the Middle East and South Asia over the past half-century, will be published in 2007 by Knopf.
|
CounterPunch Books The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order!  Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair           The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn           Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh                  |
