Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
Recent
Stories
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
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
29, 2003
Who's Wrong Now, Mr.
Rumsfeld?
What
Victory?
By DAVID KRIEGER
What a difference a few months can make.
At the end of April 2003, just four months
ago, Donald Rumsfeld was in the Qatar headquarters of General
Tommy Franks, effusively comparing the US victory in Iraq to
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of Paris.
The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the
end of the Cold War and a reuniting of East and West, and the
people of Paris actually welcomed the Allied forces as liberators
from the Nazis in World War II. In neither case was it necessary
for American forces to remain as an occupying force; in neither
case did the US government have its eyes on the oil.
As Rumsfeld savored US military dominance
over the far inferior Iraqi forces, he triumphantly crowed, "Never
have so many been so wrong about so much." He was presumably
referring to the "many" who doubted American military
tactics in the war, not those who thought the war was immoral,
illegal and unnecessary.
It was clearly a day of jubilation for
Rumsfeld and he was enjoying trumpeting to the world that he
had been right all along.
A few days later, a triumphant George
W. Bush, dressed up like a combat pilot, was flown some thirty
miles off the California coast to the flight deck of the USS
Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Bush announced
to the assembled troops on the carrier that major combat operations
in Iraq had ended.
Bush said: "With new tactics and
precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without
directing violence against civilians." He did not mention
that approximately twice as many innocent civilians died in the
Iraq War as had died on September 11th. Nor did not mention the
Iraqi children who had lost arms and legs and parents as a result
of the war, and would carry their injuries through their lives.
The president, looking to all the world
like the military hero he was not, continued: "No device
of man can remove the tragedy from war." He did not say,
presumably because he did not think, that with wisdom the tragedy
of war might be prevented. Nor did he say that, in the case of
this war, it was initiated illegally without UN authorization
based on arguments by him and his administration to the American
people that the Iraqi regime posed the threat of imminent use
of weapons of mass destruction.
The combat pilot impersonator went on,
"Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more
to fear from war than the innocent." He might have added
that this is especially true when it is he and his colleagues,
and them alone, who decide who is guilty and who is innocent.
As the television cameras rolled on,
Bush said, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on
terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on."
Four months out his perspective on victory is questionable, and
there remains no established link between the regime of Saddam
Hussein and the 9/11 terrorists. He was also wrong to conclude
that the "battle of Iraq" was a victory or had ended.
While an action doll of Bush in military
garb is being marketed across the country, almost daily young
Americans in the occupation force are being killed in what now
appears to be an on-going war of liberation from the Americans.
Saboteurs are blowing up and setting
fire to oil pipelines, disrupting water supplies, and attacking
UN relief workers. US occupation forces appear helpless to stop
the new terrorists that have been created as a result of this
war.
The former Army Chief of Staff, General
Eric Shinseki, had argued for a far larger occupying force in
Iraq. Rumsfeld overruled him, concluding that a larger force
wasn't needed. It now appears that General Shinseki was right
and Rumsfeld was wrong.
The weapons of mass destruction that
the Bush administration alluded to in order to frighten the American
people and justify the war have not been found, despite our being
told by Cheney that he knew where they were located.
Four months after Rumsfeld crowed about
the liberation of Paris and Bush declared an end to the major
combat phase of the war, there is a deadly continuing war of
attrition against US and British troops in Iraq. America, far
from being hailed as a liberator, has created even more enemies
in the Middle East and terrorists seem to be growing in numbers
and boldness.
Paraphrasing Rumsfeld, who himself was
paraphrasing Churchill, it might be said: "Never have so
few been so wrong about so much." Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney
and Wolfowitz are the leaders of the militant and shortsighted
few. There has been no victory in Iraq, and under the circumstances
victory is not possible. We now need a public dialogue on how
best to extract ourselves from the perilous situation these men
have created before we become ensnared in an oil-driven equivalent
of the Vietnam War.
The starting point for ending this peril
is to awaken the American people by a full and open Congressional
investigation of the misrepresentations by the Bush administration
regarding Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction as a pretext
for the war. In Britain, the misrepresentations of the Blair
government are being vigorously investigated by Parliament, but
in the US an investigation of the Bush administration is being
blocked by Congressional Republicans. What is needed is an investigation
as rigorous as that being pursued in Britain.
Additionally, as an intermediate step
to transferring full administrative authority to the Iraqi people,
the United States and Coalition Forces should move immediately
to turn over authority for the administration of Iraq to the
United Nations. Such a recommendation assumes, perhaps too readily,
that the UN would be willing to accept this role and would be
able to act with sufficient independence of Washington. By entrusting
the future of Iraq to the UN, the United States would make clear
that it is not administering Iraq in order to dictate the political
future of the country or to enrich US-led corporations with ties
to the Bush administration. It would also allow for sharing the
security burden in Iraq and make possible the earlier return
of the US troops presently in Iraq.
David Krieger
is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor
of Hope in a Dark Time (Capra Press, 2003), and author of Choose
Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway
Press, 2002).
He can be contacted at: dkrieger@napf.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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