Coming
in September
From AK Press
Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Today's
Stories
August 13, 2003
Linville and Ruder
Tyson Strike Draws the Line
Gary Leupp
Condi's Speech: From Birgmingham
to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Recent
Stories
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
August
11, 2003
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland Security for Whom?
Mickey
Z.
Bush's Progress
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Meet the New Bitch, Same
as the Old
Elaine
Cassel
Indicting DNA
Dr. Mohammad
Omar Farooq
Civil Liberties and Uncivil Super-Patriotism
Uri
Avnery
Who Will Save Abu Mazen?
Website
of the Day
RIAA Subpoena Clearinghouse
August
9 / 10, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!
Saul
Landau
Bush and King Henry
Gary
Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
and the Censored 9/11 Report
Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
August
8, 2003
John
Chuckman
What the US Says Goes
Roberto
Barreto
Defend the Vieques 12!
Bruce Gagnon
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans
Elaine
Cassel
The Reign of John Ashcroft
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
Website
of the Day
Zero Boy
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
14, 2003
Divisions Over the Road to Tehran
Who's Next? Iran or al-Qaeda?
By JIM LOBE
After the occupation of Iraq, the administration
of U.S. President George W. Bush appears to be torn between moving
from Baghdad on to Tehran, or refocusing on al-Qaeda as the main
target in the "war on terrorism."
According to a series of leaks by U.S.
officials, Iran has offered to hand over, if not directly to
Washington then to friendly allies, three senior al Qaeda leaders
and might provide another three top terrorist suspects that Washington
believes are being held by Tehran. But its price--for the U.S.
military to permanently shut down the operations of an Iraq-based
Iranian rebel group that is on the State Department's official
terrorism list--might be too high for some hard-liners, centered
in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, who
led the charge for war in Iraq. Members of this group see the
rebels, the Mujahedin el Khalq (MEK), or People's Mujahedin,
as potentially helpful to their ambitions to achieve "regime
change" in Iran, charter member of Bush's "axis of
evil" and a nation that is believed to have accelerated
its nuclear weapons program in recent months.
The question of what to do about the
reported Iranian offer is one of the issues being discussed by
Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin
Powell, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice during
Bush's summer vacation at his Crawford, Texas ranch.
Al Qaeda Leaders in
Custody
Iran has confirmed that it is holding
three al Qaeda leaders, including Seif al-Adel, considered the
network's number three and chief of military operations who has
a $25 million bounty on his head; its spokesman, Suleiman Abu
Gheith; and Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's third oldest son.
In addition, Washington believes Tehran
also has custody of three other much-sought-after targets: Abu
Hafs, a senior al Qaeda operative known as "the Mauritanian;"
Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has been depicted by the administration
as a key link between al Qaeda and former Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein; and possibly Mohammed al Masri, an al Qaeda associate
active in East Africa, according to a recent report by a special
investigative team of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain. "If
Washington could get its hands on even half these guys, it would
be the biggest advance since the fall of Afghanistan in the fight
against al Qaeda," according to one administration official
who declined to be identified. "If we could get them all,
that would be a huge breakthrough."
According to Iranian Foreign Ministry
spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi in a statement on August 11th, Iran
plans to try any al Qaeda members it cannot extradite, and while
it has so far said it will not hand over any al Qaeda members
to the United States, it would extradite some of those it has
arrested to unspecified "friendly countries." The Iranian
Foreign Ministry has not made any public statements with respect
to a deal with the U.S.
State Department Battles
Pentagon, Again
The State Department has been pushing
the administration to engage Iran more directly in pursuit of
the best deal possible and was reportedly authorized to hold
one meeting with the Iranians two weeks ago. Washington and Tehran
broke off bilateral relations during the U.S. embassy hostage
crisis in 1980, but quiet meetings were held over the past year,
until they were broken off in mid-May after administration hard-liners
charged that a series of terrorist attacks carried out against
U.S. and other foreign targets in Saudi Arabia May 12th were
organized from Iranian territory, presumably with the approval
of elements of its government.
But the same hard-liners reportedly oppose
a deal with Tehran, which they depict not only as a sponsor of
terrorism determined to acquire nuclear weapons, but also an
exhausted dictatorship teetering on the verge of collapse that
could be easily overthrown in a popular insurrection, with covert
U.S. help or even military intervention. The hawks are backed
by the Likud government in Israel, which has been urging Washington
to go after Iran since even before the war in Iraq. As soon as
Iraq is dealt with, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the New
York Post last November, he "will push for Iran to be at
the top of the 'to do' list."
Pentagon hard-liners, who exert the greatest
control over the occupation authority in Iraq, last month authorized
the re-birth of the arm of Saddam Hussein's intelligence service--the
Mukhabarat--that worked on Iran, according to the Pentagon-backed
Iraqi National Congress (INC), which is helping in the effort.
That was the same unit that worked closely with the MEK under
Saddam Hussein.
The MEK, which began in the late 1960s
as a left-wing Islamist movement against the Shah but broke violently
with the leaders of the Islamic Republic after the 1978-79 revolution,
was given its own bases, tanks, and other heavy weapons by the
Iraqi leader during the Iran-Iraq War, all of which it retained
during his regime to use in raids against Iran, but also to help
Hussein put down unrest, particularly after the 1991 Gulf War.
U.S. forces bombed the group's bases in the initial phases of
the Iraq campaign earlier this year, but negotiated a cease-fire
and eventually a surrender as Washington expanded its control
over Iraq. Yet the group has been permitted to retain most of
its weapons, remain together, and, despite its listing by the
State Department as a terrorist group and Tehran's demands that
it be completely dismantled, continue radio broadcasting into
Iran.
Although the MEK, which displays many
of the characteristics of a cult in its hero-worship of its "first
couple," Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, appears to have intelligence
assets inside Iran--the group was the first to alert Washington
to the existence of a previously unknown nuclear facility earlier
this year--most Iran specialists believe it has no popular following
there whatsoever, and is mostly despised due to its alliance
with Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. "It's hard to see
how they could ever be seen as a political asset to the United
States in Iran," one administration official who favors
a deal said. "The (MEK) is precisely the kind of common
enemy against which both the reformists and the conservatives--and
even the students--are likely to rally against."
A deal would also re-confirm to an increasingly
skeptical Islamic world that al Qaeda was indeed the primary
target of Bush's war on terror and not simply a pretext for a
major intervention in the Middle East and the Gulf to ensure
U.S. and Israeli domination of the entire region, say analysts
here. "Our priority should be al Qaeda, and if we can engage
the Iranians tactically to get some high-ranking al Qaeda operatives,
we should," Flynt Leverett, the top Mideast expert on the
National Security Council under both Clinton and Bush until his
departure earlier this year, told the New York Times on August
2nd. The same analysts argue that disbanding the MEK would help
demonstrate that Washington is not applying a double standard
to different terrorist groups, depending on their usefulness.
But the Pentagon reportedly remains resistant
to stronger action against the group. "There is no question
that we have not disbanded them, and there is an ongoing debate
about them between the office of the Secretary of Defense and
the State Department," Vince Cannistraro, a former counter-terrorism
director in the Central Intelligence Agency, told USA Today in
early August.
It appears that some officials believe
the MEK could yet serve some purpose.
Jim Lobe
is a political analyst with Foreign
Policy in Focus. He also writes regularly for Inter Press
Service. He can be reached at:
jlobe@starpower.net
Weekend
Edition Features for August 9 / 10, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!
Saul
Landau
Bush and King Henry
Gary
Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
and the Censored 9/11 Report
Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
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