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Today's
Stories
January 9, 2004
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
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
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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January
8, 2004
Saddam's Defense
Summon
Bush Sr. to the Stand
By KURT NIMMO
Is it possible French lawyer Jacques Verges will
be allowed to defend Saddam Hussein? Verges told AFP on December
19 that if called to defend Saddam, he'd march a slew of US and
European witnesses to the stand.
At the top of the list are Reagan and
Bush Senior.
"Right now the former Iraqi regime
is being blamed for certain events that took place at a time
when its members were treated as allies or friends by countries
that had embassies in Baghdad and ambassadors not all of whom
were blind (to Iraqi crimes)," said Verges.
"Today, this indignation appears
to me contrived."
"When we reprove the use of certain
weapons (we need to know) who sold these weapons," he said
about Iraq's past purchase of arms from France, Britain, the
United States, and Russia.
"When we disapprove of the war against
Iran (we need to know) who encouraged it."
It was primarily Reagan and Bush who
"encouraged" Iraq's merciless war against Iran. That's
obvious, although many Americans -- the same Americans who cannot
tell the difference between Saddam and Osama -- are clueless.
Calling Reagan to the stand, however,
is out of the question -- he's got Alzheimer's. He wouldn't know
Saddam from Edwin  Meese at this point. He might
even kick the bucket before a trial gets under way.
That leaves the main architect of Reagan's
Operation Coddle Saddam, Bush Senior. Old Skull and Bones Bush
is healthy and of sound mind, so to speak.
Call him to the stand.
On the first day of the trial, Jacques
Verges may want to show the Rumsfeld video, the one where Rummy
shakes hands with Saddam. Creepy, admittedly, but a good piece
of theatrics to get the point across -- all of these guys were
in bed with Saddam.
Rummy was in Baghdad on December 20,
1983 as a "special envoy" sent by Reagan to "thaw"
relations between the United States and Iraq.
Saddam was using chemical weapons on
the Iranians at the time, but that really wasn't an issue. Rummy
tried to say later he slapped Saddam's hand for using chemical
weapons, but a declassified cable recording of the meeting reveals
Rumsfeld didn't even mention it.
Is it possible Reagan knew about Saddam's
human rights violations, or was he taking a nap at the time,
as he was wont to do back in the day?
As the evidence indicates, Bush Senior
knew for certain. So did a lot of other people in the Reagan
administration.
In 1981 US Secretary of State Alexander
Haig told the Senate foreign relations committee that Saddam
was worried about "Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern
region," a concern that conspicuously followed the Soviet
Union's refusal to deliver arms so long as Iraq continued its
military offensive against Iran.
In other words, the Reaganites saw Saddam's
falling out with the Soviets as an opportunity not to be missed,
regardless of all the tortured political prisoners wasting away
in Saddam's gulags or buried in mass graves. Bush Junior would
later feign outrage over these atrocities as he pedaled his illegal
and immoral war against the people of Iraq.
As the New York Times reported more than
a year ago, the United States gave Iraq important battle-planning
assistance during the Iran-Iraq war as part of a secret program
under Reagan, even though US intelligence agencies had a good
idea the Iraqis would use chemical weapons. More than 60 "specialists"
from the Pentagon's DIA provided Saddam with detailed information
on Iranian military deployments, tactical planning for battles,
plans for air strikes, and bomb-damage assessments.
In 1984, according to Bob Woodward, the
CIA began to secretly supply Iraq with intelligence that was
used to "calibrate" mustard gas attacks on Iranian
troops.
The following year Reagan established
full diplomatic relations with Iraq.
In 1985 the Reagan administration encouraged
American corporations licensed by the US Department of Commerce
to export a whole lot of nasty biological and chemical materials
to Iraq -- anthrax, botulinum toxin, and other toxigenic and
pathogenic substances -- according to a 1994 Senate report.
"The American company that provided
the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American
Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made
seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic
agents," writes William Blum.
Other US companies doing business with
the Butcher of Baghdad include Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Honeywell,
Alcolac International, and Bechtel Group, to name but a few.
In total about $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech
equipment was exported to Iraq from 1985 to 1990.
Bechtel is one of Junior's favored corporations,
slotted to "rebuild" Iraq -- in other words, make a
pile of money replacing what Dubya's daddy, Clinton, and Junior
have destroyed over the last twelve or so years: power generation
facilities, electrical grids, municipal water systems, sewage
systems, etc.
"The United States spent virtually
an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever
he wanted," says Representative Samuel Gejdenson, Democrat
of Connecticut and chairman of a House subcommittee investigating
the exports to Iraq. "The Administration has never acknowledged
that it took this course of action, nor has it explained why
it did so. In reviewing documents and press accounts, and interviewing
knowledgeable sources, it becomes clear that United States export-control
policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the
State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the
regime of Saddam Hussein."
"By the end of 1983, US$ 402 million
in agriculture department loan guarantees for Iraq were approved,"
explains Norm Dixon. "In 1984, this increased to $503 million
and reached $1.1 billion in 1988. Between 1983 and 1990, [US
Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corporation] loan guarantees
freed up more than $5 billion. Some $2 billion in bad loans,
plus interest, ended up having to be covered by US taxpayers."
Bush was at the center of these export credits and bad loans
floated by the typically oblivious US taxpayer.
"A similar taxpayer-funded, though
smaller scale, scam operated under the auspices of the federal
Export-Import Bank," Dixon continues. "In 1984, vice-president
George Bush senior personally intervened to ensure that the bank
guaranteed loans to Iraq of $500 million to build an oil pipeline.
Export-Import Bank loan guarantees grew from $35 million in 1985
to $267 million by 1990."
Just in case there's any doubt that Reagan
and Bush Senior allowed the sale of deadly biological and chemical
agents to Iraq, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and
Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration, reported
in 1994 that "microorganisms exported by the United States
were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and
removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."
The exports continued to at least November
28, 1989, well into Bush Senior's administration.
One of the first things Dubya's daddy
did upon assuming office was sweep Saddam's horrendous human
rights record under the carpet. Bush refused to join the UN in
condemning the forced relocation of around half a million Kurds
and Syrians in 1989. This violated the 1948 Genocide Convention
-- but then Bush, Reagan, and Clinton rarely mentioned human
rights unless they were giving speeches or excoriating official
enemies.
All of this preferential treatment went
out the window the day Saddam made the boneheaded mistake of
invading Kuwait.
Reagan and Bush had lavished so many
biological and chemical weapons on Iraq that in 1990 the deadly
stuff became a threat to the United States, or rather the US
military.
"That American troops could be killed
or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq," Murray
Waas wrote in the Village Voice, "is the most serious consequence
of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without
the advice and consent of the American public."
"I hate Saddam Hussein," Bush
Senior told CNN's Paula Zahn in September 2002. "I don't
hate a lot of people. I don't hate easily, but I think he's,
as I say, his word is no good and he's a brute. He's used poison
gas on his own people."
It is, all told, a remarkable conversion,
one perfectly synchronized with Saddam's descent from useful
client to demonized renegade and international outlaw.
Back in 1992 Douglas Frantz and Murray
Waas of the Los Angeles Times wrote a story headlined, "Bush
secret effort helped Iraq build its war machine." Frantz
and Waas apparently got their hands on some classified documents
that revealed "a long-secret pattern of personal efforts
by [George Bush senior] -- both as president and vice president
-- to support and placate" Saddam Hussein.
Jacques Verges would also do well to
call James Akins, the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
In 1963 the CIA was ramping up its coup
against Iraqi Prime Minister Abudul Karim Qassim and Akins was
in Baghdad. "I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked
them," Akins told Said K. Aburish, author of a book about
the CIA-coordinated coup that eventually led to the dictatorship
of Saddam Hussein (A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab
Elite). "The CIA were definitely involved in that coup,"
Akins admitted. "We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a
way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American
one and you don't get that chance very often... Sure, some people
were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so
that didn't bother us."
In fact, a lot of them were doctors,
lawyers, teachers, and professors who formed Iraq's educated
elite. The CIA wanted them killed. It drew up lists and brought
one of its prized assets in from Cairo to help with the torture,
murder, and mayhem -- Saddam Hussein.
Another CIA spook that may be of interest
to Verges is Miles Copeland, who is tight with Bush Senior. Copeland
told the UPI's Richard Sale that the CIA had enjoyed "close
ties" with the Ba'ath Party, just as it had "close
ties" with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel
Abd Nassar.
Sale quotes a former State Department
official as saying that Saddam became part of the CIA plot to
kill Qassim. Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author (Unholy
Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War), says that Saddam's
CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for the CIA and Egyptian
intelligence. US officials separately confirmed Darwish's account,
according to Sale.
Unfortunately, none of these details
will be revealed in open court or will they make corporate press
headlines -- or for that matter find their way to page E16).
Last month the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) issued a press release
before former Gen. Wesley Clark testified against Slobodan Milosevic.
The normally simultaneous broadcast of
testimony, said the ICTY in a press release, would "be delayed
for a period of 48 hours to enable the US government to review
the transcript and make representations as to whether evidence
given in open session should be redacted in order to protect
the national interests of the US."
Geneva-based reporter Andreas Zumach
may break the news about how US corporations illegally helped
Iraq build its biological, chemical, and nuclear programs under
the watchful eyes of Reagan and Bush Senior in the German newspaper
Die Tageszeitung, but that does not mean the Bush Ministry of
Disinformation -- Fox News, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. -- are obliged
to inform the American people about it.
In fact, the names listed in Zumach's
report were mentioned in Iraq's 12,000-page report submitted
to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva and the United
Nations.
In order to redact those names, the Bushites
violated an agreement with the Security Council and blackmailed
Colombia, which at the time was presiding over the Council, grabbed
the UN's only copy, removed the corporate names and other information,
and distributed the result to the other four permanent members
of the Security Council.
In other words, the Bushites can do whatever
they want and nobody can do anything about it.
Jacques Verges will have to settle for
the notoriety of defending the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie,
jet setting terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (aka Carlos the Jackal),
Holocaust revisionist Roger Gaurady, and fall guy Slobodan Milosevic.
There's a good chance the Bushites will
not allow Jacques Verges or any other lawyer anywhere near Saddam
Hussein.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another
Day in the Empire, will soon be published by Dandelion
Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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