Today's Stories

April 24, 2008

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

April 4, 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Night I Heard King Had Been Shot

Greg Moses
Missing King

Ron Jacobs
Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Alan Farago
Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine

Alison Weir
Funding Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel

David Rosen
Rape as an Instrument of Total War

Robert Weissman
The Unrealized Dream

Jacob Hornberger
Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It?

Jackie Corr
Hillary and Obama Head for Butte

Carl Finamore
Taking On United Airlines

Laray Polk
We Are All Dith Pran

Susie Day
Advice for the War-Torn

Website of the Day
Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait

April 3, 2008

Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession

Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression

Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained: The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia

Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America

Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy

David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood

Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice

Website of the Day
The True Face of Da Vinci?

April 2, 2008

Diane Farsetta
Indian Point on the Potomac

Harry Browne
Bertie Ahern Laid Low by Secretary

Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer

George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves

Col. Dan Smith
The Militarization of America

Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism

Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland

Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left

Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell

April 1, 2008

Jeff Leys
Fracturing the Peace to End the War

Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg

Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense Budget

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia

Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels

Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani

John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader

Michael J. Smith
Woolly Mamet

Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?

Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments

Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity

Website of the Day
Support Briana!

March 31, 2008

Mike Whitney
Dead on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street

Mats Svensson
Walls, Tunnels and Daily Humiliations

Paul Rockwell
Hillary's Lies About Outsourcing

Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr Calls for Ceasefire

Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown

Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia

Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short

Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later

Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans

Betsy Roberts / Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup

Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones

Website of the Day
Five Years Too Many

March 29 / 30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
When They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman and Rev. Hagee

William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics

Robert Fantina
Iraq Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton

John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's Oil

Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home

Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context

Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making

Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train

Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers

Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump and Consumers Sour

Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!

Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War

Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American

Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales"

David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un

Website of the Weekend
Hidden Iraq

March 28, 2008

Saul Landau
Growing Dread About Iraq

Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy

Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods

Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from Guantánamo

Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service

Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!

Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception

March 27, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Basra Erupts

Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates

Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"

Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?

William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq

John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?

Robert Weissman
How Things Work

Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen

Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table

David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers

John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction

Website of the Day
Going Out for an English

March 26, 2008

Stan Cox
The Germs Next Door

Sharon Smith
Greed Pays: Welfare on Wall Street

Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans

Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market

William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra

Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel

Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire

Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late

Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues

Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media

Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs

Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs

Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread

March 25, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Crazy Rev. Wright

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright

Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts

Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders

Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast

Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?

Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War

David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?

Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken

Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet

David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet

Website of the Day
Memorializing Iraq

March 24, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Blonde Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012

Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession

Uri Avnery
Two Americas

Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison

Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela

Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal

Christopher Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country

Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama

Stacey Warde
Tax Burden

Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?

Website of the Day
Live from the Longest Walk

March 22 / 23, 2008

Ralph Nader
Bush Blisters the Truth on Iraq

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?

James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives

Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics of Trade

Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit

Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials

Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial

John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul

Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics

David Michael Green
Happy Anniversary, America!

Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran

Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell

Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Raid on Brazil

James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras

Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer

Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History

Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week

Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Merci, McCain!

March 21, 2008

Marleen Martin
Land Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on Crime"

Peter Montague
Run Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not

Saul Landau
Monroe's Deadly Doctrine

Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset

Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?

Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?

Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations

Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing

Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?

Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?

Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions

March 20, 2008

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
The Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks

Mike Whitney
Winding Up Bear

John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?

Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire

Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America

Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech

Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API

Stella Dallas /
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right

Website of the Day
The Angry Monk

March 19, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
A War of Lies

Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno

Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq

Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai

Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?

Christopher Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait

Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright

Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities

Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills

Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble

Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich

Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation

Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due

Website of the Day
Glimpses of Nature

March 18, 2008

David Price
The Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge

Paul Craig Roberts
The Collapse of American Power

Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth

Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought

Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward

James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe

Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem

David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?

Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran

Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans

Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left

Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?

March 17, 2008

Pam Martens
The Fed's Wall Street Dilemma

Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment

Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution

Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit

Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court Since 9/11

Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma

Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America

Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf

Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace

P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!

Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn

Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer

Website of the Day
No Cowboys

March 15 / 16, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
How to Destroy a Country in Five Years

Mike Whitney
Bearly Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief

Ralph Nader
Of Laws and Men

Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid

Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer

Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed

Tom Wright /
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice

Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began

Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas

Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?

Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China

John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict

Uzma Aslam Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?

Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon

David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal

Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer

David Michael Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven

Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power

David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin

Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet

Website of the Day
Deviant Art

March 14, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Watching the Dollar Die

Don Santina
Vichy Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons

Tim Rinne
StratCom Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska

Robert Fantina
In Torture We Trust

Saul Landau
Letter to the Presidents-in-Waitings

David Macaray
Common Myths About Labor Unions

Franklin Lamb
Is the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon

Michael Neumann
The One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics

March 13, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Republicans and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America

Mike Whitney
Meltdown Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze

Assaf Kfoury
"One-State or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives

Andy Worthington
Afghan Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story

Adam Federman
From Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road

March 12, 2008

Dave Lindorff
Bringing Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US

R.F. Blader
The Spitzer Backlash

Yonatan Mendel
How to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or "Palestine"

Jonathan Cook
One State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism

Bill and Kathy Christison
Fallon and Gates -- At Least One Cheer

James J. Brittain
Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders

Ron Jacobs
"All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"

March 11, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
How to End the Subprime Crisis

Ed O'Loughlin
How Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal

Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering Commitment' to Inequality

Kathy Christison
One State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine

China Hand
PRC Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran

John Joslin
Thank You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette

Mike Averko
Serb Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide

Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin Newsom's Kneejerk Plan

Thierry Paquot
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The President's Executioner

The High Crimes of John Yoo

By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN

The title of this article --The President's Executioner --is a play on words. It refers to professor John Yoo, who teaches law at Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley. But this man --mild-mannered by all appearances --is not what he seems.

He is the man who was, more often than nearly any other, behind the White House decisions to violate the international laws of war. He was the one who told the White House how to get away with committing war crimes. While he may have been a henchman for others who instructed him to make the arguments he did, he repeatedly refused to reverse himself, both while he worked in the Department of Justice and after he left that office and returned to academia.

But it was also during this time period, as we now know, that the Department of Justice became “politicized.” Instead of executing the laws as it should have been doing, the Justice Department became an instrument of President Bush, executing his wishes. And John Yoo executed White House wishes to twist the law into something it was not and was not meant to be.

Yoo, however, did more than execute orders. The so-called “Torture Memos,” in the writing of which Yoo was an active and primary participant, opened the door to such abuse of the laws that some detainees were actually murdered. For all practical purposes, they were executed, without a trial or guilty verdict.

Thus, the President's Executioner.

Yoo & the Unlimited Executive

Professor Yoo teaches the following courses: International Civil Litigation, International Law, Constitutional Law, Foreign Relations Law, Civil Procedure, International Trade, Separation of Powers Law. These courses cover big issues. They relate not to person-to-person issues, to one family's inheritance, a personal injury lawsuit, or a burglary. Most of the courses Professor Yoo teaches relate to how our country is run and who has the power to do what, internally and internationally.

But it would be a mistake to rely on Yoo's advice in these areas, for he would be interpreting laws he has broken and advised others to break.

The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Department of Justice is the office that issues legal opinions for the President and other departments (including the Department of Defense) in the executive branch. OLC opinions are relied on by these offices to guide them in carrying out their jobs. They are rarely rescinded, having almost the precedental effect of judicial decisions.

Yoo was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the OLC. While there he participated in authoring several documents, all of which became mainstays of the administration's policies at particular points and most or all of which the OLC later rescinded. The memos all manifest one characteristic: they all suggest that the President, as President and Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to violate any laws or treaties he sees fit in order to protect the country.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who became Deputy Attorney General after Yoo left and who was the one who made the difficult (and unpopular) decision to rescind Yoo's opinions (and who later resigned because of it), writes in his book “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration” that Yoo's “interrogation opinions” contained an “unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis,” and that “[n]owhere was this more evident than in the opinions discussion of the President's commander-in-chief powers.” (p. 148)

Yoo's opinion went much further than necessary, Goldsmith thought. Yoo wrote:

“Any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of battlefield detainees would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the Commander-in-Chief authority in the President.” Goldsmith states: “This extreme conclusion has no foundation in prior OLC opinions, or in judicial decisions, or in any other source of law.” (pp. 148-9) Yoo's pronouncement about presidential powers, furthermore, “was all the more inappropriate because it rested on cursory and one-sided legal arguments that failed to consider Congress's competing wartime constitutional authorities, or the many Supreme Court decisions potentially in tension with the conclusion.” (p. 149)

Of course, the “interrogation opinion” was not Yoo's only one, as we now know.

The Yoo Memos

Yoo's memos were written in the wake of 9/11. On September 18, 2001, Congress issued the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which authorized President Bush to:

use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Only fourteen days after 9/11 and a week after Congress issued the AUMF, Yoo submitted his first memo: “Memorandum Opinion for the Deputy Counsel to the President” titled “The President's Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them.” This memo claimed:

The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations. The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

On November 13, 2001, the White House issued a Presidential Military Order (PMO) on detentions, which Yoo co-authored with Vice President Cheney's legal counsel, David Addington. The PMO purported to authorize the Secretary of Defense to detain terrorist suspects indefinitely and created military commissions to try those he decided to try. It established procedural baselines for commissions which (along with later-issued DOD procedures) were later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

A little over a month later, on December 28, 2001, Yoo submitted another memorandum, this time co-authored with fellow Deputy Assistant Attorney General Patrick F. Philbin, to William J. Haynes II, General Counsel to the Department of Defense, titled “Possible Habeas Jurisdiction Over Aliens Held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” While expressing some uncertainly, the memo argues that “the great weight of legal authority indicates that a federal district court could not properly exercise habeas jurisdiction over an alien detained” at Guantanamo. (The administration maintained this argument all the way up to the Supreme Court, which ruled against it in Rasul v. Bush.)

Then, on January 9, 2002, Yoo submitted a memorandum titled “Application of Treaties and Laws to al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees” and co-authored with Special Counsel Robert J. Delahunty, that purported to address “the effect of international treaties and federal laws on the treatment of individuals detained by the U.S. Armed Forces during the conflict in Afghanistan.”

This memo argued that the President was not bound by international laws in the war on terror. The memo stated that “any customary international law of armed conflict in no way binds, as a legal matter, the President or the US Armed Forces concerning the detention or trial of members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.” The memo purported to deny the protections of international laws to detainees and to exempt from liability those who denied such protections. The memo thus approved and promoted violations by the U.S. of long-standing international laws and treaties.

Finally, Yoo authored a memo that was dated August 1, 2002, titled “Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. ss. 2340-2340A” (the statutes that implement the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT)). According to Goldsmith, “This opinion was addressed to Alberto Gonzales from my predecessor, Jay Bybee, but according to press reports and John Yoo's public comments, it was drafted by Yoo himself.” (Terror Presidency, p. 142)

Among other criteria, it stated that “[p]hysical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Goldsmith states: “The opinion formed part of the legal basis for what President Bush later confirmed were 'alternative' interrogation procedures used at secret locations on Abu Zubaydah, a top al Qaeda operative; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks; and other 'key architects of the September 11th' and other terrorist attacks.” (p. 142)

Jordan Paust writes in “Beyond the Law: The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses to the 'War' on Terror,”:

“The memo attempted to justify torture as well as the intentional infliction of pain more generally as interrogation tactics” and it “was completely erroneous with respect to Geneva law and war crime responsibility.” (p. 11)

Media and Legal Experts on Yoo's Memos

The January 9, 2002 memo, which discusses the application of treaties on detainees, is widely viewed as having sparked the abuse and torture of prisoners by members of the U.S. military. The Department of State (DOS) responded to Yoo that “both the most important factual assumptions on which your draft is based and its legal analysis are seriously flawed.” Two days after Yoo issued his January 9th memo, DOS legal adviser William H. Taft, IV, commented that all three of Yoo's main premises were wrong as a matter of international law and other arguments he made were “without support,” “contrary to the official position of the United States,” and “legally flawed and procedurally impossible at this stage.”

In a May 25, 2004 Newsweek article, referring to Yoo's memos, reporter Michael Isikoff stated that

“Critics say the memos' disregard for the United States' treaty obligations and international law paved the way for the Pentagon to use increasingly aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay -- including sleep deprivation, use of forced stress positions and environmental manipulation -- that eventually were applied to detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.”

(For all the so called “torture memos” and other “Interrogation Documents,”click here.)

Scott Horton -- an expert on human rights law and the law of armed conflict, a professor at Columbia University School of Law, a commentator for Harper's Magazine, and a partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler LLP in New York -- wrote that
“ following the issuance of high-level legal advice [eg., the Yoo/Delahunty and other memos] ... command authorities in Iraq no longer considered the Geneva Conventions to restrain them in their handling of detainees.”

Isikoff quoted Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, who had examined the memo. Roth “described it as a 'maliciously ideological or deceptive' document that simply ignored U.S. obligations under multiple international agreements. 'You can't pick or choose what laws you're going to follow,' said Roth. 'These political lawyers set the nation on a course that permitted the abusive interrogation techniques' that have been recently disclosed.”

Jordan J. Paust, Professor of International Law at University of Houston Law Center wrote in “Beyond the Law” about the memo:

“Yoo and Delahunty knew that their claim” about the application of the Geneva Conventions “was completely contrary to developments in the customary laws of war recognized by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, but they thought their reliance on a fifty-three-year-old text and 'historical context' was preferable...” (p. 10.)

Another eminent law professor, Stephen Gillers, at New York University School of Law noted that:

“Explicitly and by omission, then, the lawyers [Yoo and Delahunty] told the government it could treat detainees from Afghanistan as though they existed outside the rule of law.”

While the Memo purported to consider the effect of international treaties and federal law on the treatment of detainees from Afghanistan, it “ignore[d] duties imposed by the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (which the United States ratified with reservations in 1994) and the federal torture statute, which creates criminal liability for U.S. nationals who commit torture abroad under color of law.” As further explained by Scott Horton (and quoted by Gillers), the Yoo and Delahunty memo “is not only wrong, it lays the groundwork for the commission of war crimes.”

But the January 9th memo is clearly not the only one that could be construed as giving interrogators carte blanche on extreme techniques. The August1st memo specifically deals with the issue of torture and attempts to redefine it to permit interrogations that most experts agree would violate traditional prohibitions. Goldsmith notes that the definition of pain amounting to torture was “culled ... ironically, from a statute authorizing health benefits.” (p. 145) According to Yoo himself, the denial of Geneva protections and the coercive interrogation “policies were part of a common, unifying approach to the war on terrorism.” (Paust, p. 177, fn. 14, quoting Yoo, “War by Other Means.”)

Yoo's Most Recently-Revealed Memo

Last week, the Washington Post published yet another memo that Yoo had authored. This one was dated March 14, 2003 and discussed “Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States.” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Here again, Yoo argues that the President is not bound by federal laws. “Such criminal statutes, if they were misconstrued to apply to the interrogation of enemy combatants, would conflict with the Constitution's grant of the Commander in Chief power solely to the President,” writes Yoo. The laws by which Yoo says the President is not bound are those that prohibit torture, assault, maiming, stalking, and war crimes. Yoo's opinion restricts the application of treaties against torture to definitions that, once again, simply authorize torture as long as it doesn't kill the person.

Further, contrary to current understanding of international law, Yoo's memo declares that “our previous opinions make clear that customary international law is not federal law and that the President is free to override it at his discretion.” And finally, the memo suggests several defenses (military necessity and self defense) for those brought up on criminal charges for violating laws during interrogations.

According to Vincent Warren, the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights:

The 'Torture Memo' was not an abstract, academic foray. Rather, it was crafted to sidestep U.S. and international laws that make coercive interrogation and torture a crime. It was written with the knowledge that its legal conclusions were to be applied to the interrogations of hundreds of individual detainees... And it worked. It became the basis for the CIA’s use of extreme interrogation methods as well the basis for DOD interrogation policy.

Warrens adds that

“Yoo’s legal opinions as well as the others issued by the Office of Legal Counsel were the keystone of the torture program, and were the necessary precondition for the torture program’s creation and implementation.”

Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild, analyzing Yoo's actions in light of the relevant case law, writes that Yoo was an “integral part of a criminal conspiracy to violate U.S. laws” in which “it was reasonably foreseeable that the advice [Yoo] gave would result in great physical or mental harm or death to many detainees.”

Cohn echoes Scott Horton, who writes that

Yoo's “analysis was false, a point acknowledged ultimately by the [Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice] itself” and points out that “a solid basis exists under the standard articulated by the United States under which John Yoo may be charged and brought to trial” for the false legal advice he gave.

Crimes

Yoo's efforts to deny rights to detainees is, alone, a breach of basic requirements of the 1907 Hague Convention, which states that “it is especially forbidden ... [t]o declare abolished, suspended, or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party.” (Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907, Art. 23)

Breaches of the Hague or Geneva Conventions may constitute war crimes, by definition, under the 1996 War Crimes Act.

“War crimes” are not just crimes under some vague view of unenforceable international law subject to dispute by civilized nations. Nor are they just crimes under widely accepted international laws;they are also crimes under U.S. federal domestic law.

Professor Yoo not only laid the groundwork for the commission of war crimes by others, but his “legal advice” was itself a promotion of crime.

His memos provided advice on how to break the law and avoid prosecution. His continued endorsement of the views expressed in his memo could be construed as continued promotion of unlawful activities, which could subject him to criminal prosecution. (Paust, p. 20.)

Beyond the issue of Yoo's direct liability for aiding and abetting crimes is the question whether the Yoo/Delahunty memo has misled other departments or branches of the government. In a November 7, 2005, blog entry, Horton pointedly asked:

“Has the Department of Justice been corrupted by its 'torture memoranda'?” Given subsequent revelations of Justice Department improper “politicization” and firings of U.S. attorneys, the effect of Yoo's memos seems highly relevant.

Professor Paust, who calls the Yoo/Delahunty memo “manifestly erroneous,” “unprofessional, and subversive,” states:

“What is particularly disturbing is the attempt to mislead and abuse the judiciary to further the denial of required rights and protections.” Paust points to at least one instance where a court has been misled. (Paust, pp. 19-20.) Paust says that the “criminal memoranda and behavior of various German lawyers in the German Ministry of Justice, high-level executive positions outside the Ministry, and the courts in the 1903s and 1940s that were addressed in informing detail in “The Justice Case” ... reflect the concern regarding government lawyer attempts to use courts to further a denial of required rights and protections under the laws of war. Consequences for the German legal system were disastrous ... and consequences for a number of lawyers included criminal convictions for, among other crimes, aiding and abetting violations of the laws of war.” (pp. 19-20)

Horton, in a response to a statement issued by Christoperh Edley, Jr., dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, where Yoo teaches, states the legal standard in The Justice Case, also known as U.S. v. Altstoetter:

First, the case dealt with persons under detention in wartime (not POWs, in fact most of the cases in question addressed persons not entitled to POW or comparable protections). Second, it had to be reasonably foreseeable that the advice dispensed would result in serious physical or mental harm or death to a number of the persons under detention. Third, the advice given was erroneous.

Horton sums up:

“Each of these criteria is satisfied with respect to Yoo’s advice under the torture memoranda” and adds that “what [Yoo] did raises not merely ethics issues, but actual criminal culpability.”

Horton's conclusion bears marking:

Yoo is protected by the political umbrella of the Bush Administration for the moment, which is to say, he is protected by his actual fellow conspirators, including those who continue to run the Department of Justice. That protection will expire soon enough, and it is highly unlikely that the Government which follows in its wake will be prepared to act quite so strenuously as this one in Yoo’s behalf.

Jennifer Van Bergen, a journalist with a law degree, is the author of THE TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE BUSH PLAN FOR AMERICA (Common Courage Press, 2004) and Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious (Michael Weise Productions, 2007). She can be reached at jvbxyz@earthlink.net.