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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.     Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

August 30, 2003 An Eye on Intelligence An Interview with Douglas Valentine By ADAM ENGEL It may be a lot of fun to wave the flag and scowl and loudly "support our troops" and, when in the comfortable center of a mob, call for tar and feathers for those who don't agree, but it's not necessarily relevant to the issue at hand. For by the time "our" troops are overseas, fighting to defend the interests of people who live off interest, the CIA has already been there, done that, softened up the "enemy," bribed or recruited their top officers, and more or less settled things. If it weren't for the damn military marching in and breaking stuff, the CIA might have a relatively clean batch of dominoes to set up and knock down (clean for us TV viewers; for the natives of the "enemy" country nothing's ever good). Douglas Valentine knows about the CIA, having studied it intensely, on paper and in personnel, for over twenty years, culminating in his seminal book, "The Phoenix Program," about the CIA's infamous Phoenix Program in Vietnam. "TDY" is based on a true story told to Valentine by a photographer named Richard Finkle. Finkle is not "TDY's" protagonist, Pete, per se, but his TDY account and Valentine's years of research and interviews with CIA personnel provided the author with the material he needed to write an action story with punch, a parable that used as its literary model Hemingway's short novel, "The Old Man and the Sea." "I wanted to write a book that told a linear story in as few words as possible," said Valentine. "When Finkle told me his story in his darkroom, I knew immediately that I could write a book about it. The Old Man and the C...IA." The CIA operates by softening up a target through stealth operations, assassinations, propaganda and recruiting its top military officers and politicians. Unlike the regular armed forces, whose sizeable $400 billion dollar budget is dispersed through payroll, hardware, technology etc., the CIA operates on a $30 Billion budget but little accountability. CIA operatives are not expected to report weekly activities or fill out mountains of paperwork, and can thus be more deviously creative with their resources. The CIA goes into a country and develops covert operations for the first couple of years. Once the country is "softened up" by assassinations, rebellions, guerrilla warfare, economic warfare etc., then the war becomes overt. That is, the military is sent in with masses of uniformed personnel and heavy equipment. "In addition to the sanctions which would devastate any country, for the last ten years the CIA and Mossad have been recruiting officers in the Iraqi military," said Valentine. Thus, when it came time to fight, officers who fled would be remunerated with top positions in the new regime. Unlike the career soldier in the regular military, who lives a life of routine, continual accountability to the chain of command, and has little but a modest pension to look forward to, a successful CIA operative has many perks and options, not to mention the black market. "Once you're a CIA agent, you're not expected to report to headquarters all the time. The CIA doesn't micro-manage. You have a lot more freedom," said Valentine. "You work for the CIA and succeed, and everything's possible. Sex, money, power, travel. You're like James Bond. The regular army guy who fought to save his life in Vietnam, what did he have to come back to? A young, ambitious CIA agent, on the other hand, could really make a life for himself." Valentine's next book, The Strength of the Wolf, will be published by Verso in the spring of 2004. Click here to read Engel's review of TDY. Adam Engel can be reached at: bartleby.samsa@verizon.net. 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   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /