Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
September 3, 2003
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
Recent
Stories
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
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
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?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
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
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
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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September
3, 2003
A Power, Yes, But
Not Super
Third
World Leader, Infrastructure & Electoral System
By JOHN STANTON
The United States was chastised recently by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) for its reckless tax cutting
program which has contributed greatly to the increased the size
of the US federal deficit. The IMF expects the US budget deficit
to exceed $550 billion over the coming years, a staggering five
percent of America's yearly economic output. According to Kenneth
Rogoff, IMF Economic Counselor, the United States is on the "biggest
external borrowing rampage in the history of the world with current
account deficits projected at five percent for as far as the
eye can see." With the USA sucking up cash from domestic
and world markets and savings accounts to feed its perpetual
war programs, little room remains for private investors to borrow
at reasonable interest rates. Productivity is set to decline
since American businesses have fired all the employees they can
and, subsequently, have outsourced millions of jobs to foreign
countries. To alleviate the coming disaster, the IMF recommends
that the US reenact the Budget Enforcement Act which would bring
back some sort of fiscal reality to the regime in Washington,
DC.
So what gives here? Since when does the
IMF lecture the USA!? For that answer, we have to back to the
year 2000.
From 2000 to 2003, a mere 36 months,
the US federal budget and state budgets, have collectively gone
from budget surplus to budget deficit. It's far too easy to blame
the mentality of the dot.com era and toss around terms like overvaluation.
That's the Wall Street version. There's more to it than that.
Since 2000, the current administration has gone out of its way
to downsize and demean government (and its employees) at every
level choosing only to promote and fully fund the military-industrial
complex and intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security
functions. In this administration's view, every other government
function, including social security, belongs in the private sector
where the administration's friends, family and assorted shady
connections can make a profit. To them, government provides a
smoke screen to move money around, to increase the take. Each
day, Americans learn that "their" government has lied
to them. Fudged unemployment figures, misleading environmental
reports, flimsy and false intelligence, and censored news are
all designed to keep the investors fat and happy and the facts
locked away from the public.
It is a clever system that Saddam Hussein
or Benito Mussolini would recognize and, arguably, could effectively
preside over. Such is the system that America's head cheerleader
in charge, George "The Lip" Bush (moniker given to
Bush, the head cheerleader for Phillips Academy, Andover, full-contact
football in the 1960's) now promotes and operates in. It's always
worth recalling that Bush II was inserted into the oval office
by the US Supreme Court in 2000 amidst documented election fraud
in the state of Florida. And it is always worth remembering that
Al Gore (starting center and captain of Saint Albans' full-contact
football team in the 1960's) won the popular vote by 600,000.
Looking backwards, it is clear that the US began its slide to
a third rate power in November of 2000 as its voting mechanisms
are easily corrupted. In 2003, voter fraud in both the electronic
and paper realms continues to bring into question the legitimacy
of some holding office and the very foundations of American democracy.
Empty Lives and Crumbling
Infrastructure
With the will of the electorate dangerously
ignored and the election stolen, the aborted election of 2000
produced an illegitimate president whose tortured thinking, mangled
language, false machismo and sideline qualities have guaranteed
that Bush and his followers will live forever in ignominy. In
Bush, millions of discontented and empty Americans-those who
could never make the team or grade and who live vicariously through
myth, cinema, sports and the military, and, not coincidently,
cheer the loudest for conflict-have their day. They are the ruthless
and conniving neo-conservatives and Chicken Hawks. They are the
pitiful people who rename French Fries to Freedom Fires. They
are the Janus-faced millions who pledge allegiance to mythical
gods and Israel ahead of the here-and-now problems besetting
the United States of America. They are the lazy Americans who
refuse to take the time to dig for the facts through tools like
the Internet depending instead on the government and big media.
They are the silent and cowardly racists who long to be vocal
about their hatred of minorities and immigrants.
Like a wrecking ball through a building,
these people, cheered on by Bush have destroyed government programs
designed to improve the quality of American life and decrease
the suffering of the poor and unemployed. They have charred the
reputation of all Americans by engaging in war for the flimsiest
of rationales and they have squandered any good will that the
USA could muster internationally by undercutting every treaty
and international governing body. The USA ranks last among industrialized
nations in the provision of non-military foreign assistance to
developing nations as a percentage of Gross National Product.
Then again, if the USA can't take care of itself, what is the
world to expect?
The American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE) will come out with another of its "infrastructure
report cards" on September 4, 2003. That report assesses
the quality of roads, bridges, school buildings, water systems,
and electrical grids. The ASCE gave the infrastructure a grade
of D+ in 2001 and suggested that $1.3 trillion was needed to
fix things up. Given the swelling federal and state deficits,
tax cuts and uncontrolled defense spending, it is unlikely that
anything more than patchwork to the nation's infrastructure can
be made. If the following teaser by ASCE is any guide, a D+ may
be the high water mark. "On September 30, the federal Transportation
Equity Act of the 21st Century (TEA-21) will expire, leaving
our nation without a coordinated directive for preserving and
improving our roads, bridges and transit systems. Also up for
federal reauthorization are the Safe Drinking Water Act and the
Clean Water Act. Are we headed for more catastrophes like the
recent blackouts that crippled parts of the Northeast and Midwest,
or are we making progress on raising the grade of America's infrastructure
above a D+?"
The CIA's World Factbook 2003, buttresses
the arguments above indicating that "The war in March/April
2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq shifted resources to
military industries and introduced uncertainties about investment
and employment in other sectors of the economy. Long-term problems
include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly
rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable
trade deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower
economic groups."
Given the economic mismanagement of the
Bush team and the cloudy economic outlook for the USA, it comes
as no surprise that corporations have ranked China as the number
one place to do business, or that investors seek the safe havens
of countries that are investing heavily in infrastructure and
education.
US Victories in Afghanistan
and Iraq?
The vaunted military and intelligence
and federal law enforcement machinery of the USA failed miserably
on September 11, 2001. On that day while US civilian aircraft
commandeered by Saudi Arabians and Egyptians destroyed New York's
World Trade Centers and a portion of the Pentagon in Virginia,
Bush, the commander in chief, sat mumbling in a classroom in
Florida while the armed forces and federal law enforcement agencies
sat idle. While not "militarily significant", according
to the Pentagon, some 3,000 individuals of all nationalities
lost their lives in an event that was predicted and gamed out
by terrorist experts in the Pentagon and the world over. The
Bush Administration's incompetence led to a tragedy on that day
and its arrogance in the days and months that have followed have
brought more pain and suffering to all Americans and the world's
citizens.
On September 12, 2001 in what should
have become an unprecedented civil law enforcement investigation
to capture the terrorist accomplices and bring them to trial
by jury instead turned into the planning subsequent invasion
and occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases victory
was declared and then undeclared. Two years on, the Taliban have
retaken control of large sections of Afghanistan and the rebuilding
of that country promised by the USA has not occurred. In Iraq,
the situation continues to deteriorate as the US suffers casualties
each day at the hands of a growing resistance army that includes
Sunni's and Shia's united in their hatred of Americans. The US
occupying forces are now employing the nefarious secret police
operatives who served Saddam Hussein so well. In an odd twist,
the US did the same in 1945 by employing SS and Nazi operatives
who served Adolf Hitler.
What is one to make of the US military
might in these two instances? Both were conventional technological
and organizational mismatches favoring Americans. The Afghanistan
victory came against an opponent with no air force, no navy,
no unified army, no marine corps, and no coast guard. Victory
was declared against this netherworld country (at one point during
the conflict, an American Air Force General said seriously, "We
have achieved air superiority.") but to this day the war
goes on and American soldiers rarely venture out from their heavily
fortified bases.
Technically, on September 12, 2001, the
Invasion of Iraq began. No-fly zone mission packages were expanded
to aggressively pursue targets in and out of the no-fly zones.
Special operations crews were inserted behind enemy lines to
begin air control operations and to sabotage Iraq's critical
infrastructure and undercut support for Saddam Hussein. In 2003,
the US military machine rolled over Iraq in thirty days. But,
just like Afghanistan, Iraq had no air force, no navy, no unified
army, no marine corps, and no coast guard. Victory was declared
in Iraq, yet the war rages on and American soldiers die each
day at the hands of the Iraqi rebels.
So can Bush claim his war record is 2-0
in 2003, as he no doubt does? Do these "victories"
get asterisks that show a mismatch as occurred in the Battle
of Omdurman in 1898 in which the forces of the British led by
Lord Kitchener slaughtered the Sudanese Army (13,000 Sudanese
killed, 48 British killed)?
Third World Logic
of Leaders Kim Jong II and George Bush II
Perhaps nowhere is the third world nature
of Bush and his countrymen and women more evident than in the
design of nuclear weapons policy. The Bush Administration wants
to upgrade and test the next generation of nuclear weapons. Did
it have any meaningful role in the glorious victories over Afghanistan
and Iraq? The answer is, of course, no. The nuclear forces of
the United States, and for that matter most nations, are for
chest pounding for the testosterone addicted. For the US to let
loose its destructive nuclear power would be senseless if only
for the simple reason that foreign markets mean domestic livelihood.
Let one fly, say, to North Korea, and the Chinese, South Koreans
and Japanese are not going to be pleased with the fallout.
Feeling paranoid like his third world
counterpart in North Korea, Kim Jong II-and demonstrating the
same intellectual capacity--Bush has the US embarking on a nuclear
weapons upgrade and testing program. The Lip is going to build
a ballistic missile defense system, which has failed all tests
to date, to insure that no other nation can successfully deploy
its nuclear weapons against the United States. In this twisted
logic which is official "Bush Doctrine", nuclear weapons
that will never be used by the US for fear of the fallout they
would cause, or that will never be used to attack the US by other
nations possessing them for fear of massive retaliation by the
US, are going to be stopped by a ballistic missile defense system
that will never be used because not only does it not work, but
no one will ever know that because no nation state will launch
a nuclear missile at the USA.
If Americans don't believe they are in
a third world country, they had best think again.
John Stanton
is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security
and political matters. He is the author, along with Wayne Madsen,
of America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II. Contact
him at cioran123@yahoo.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 30 / Sept. 1, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
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