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Today's
Stories
October
17, 2003
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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.
|
October
17, 2003
Piss On My Leg
Perception
Control and the Stage Management of War
By
STAN GOFF
What do Lieutenant Colonel Dominic Caraccilo and
CIA Director George Tenet now have in common?
Answer: They lied for the same bosses
for the same reasons in the same war.
Second Answer: They have both been reduced
from professionals to tools by Bush administration to cover up
hoaxes.
Caraccilo is a battalion commander with
the re-activated 173rd Airborne Brigade, the same unit with which
I did my hitch in Vietnam, that was deactivated in August 1971.
His battalion, 2nd Battalion/503rd Infantry, is stationed in
Iraqi Kurdistan's Kirkuk, near some of the richest oil fields
in the world. While they are certainly living in comparatively
austere circumstances, separated from loved ones, with many beginning
to question the justifications for this war, they have not undergone
the same kind of combat stress as soldiers around Falluja and
Tikrit.
Last week, 500 identical letters-to-the-editor
were received by hometown newspapers across the United States,
all from LTC Caraccilo's unit, but signed by dozens of his troops,
some with apparently forged signatures from troops who were unaware
of the letter at all. The letter said, among sundry descriptions
of New Eden, "After nearly five months here, the people
still come running from their homes, into the 110 degrees heat,
waving to us as our troops drive by on daily patrols of the city...
There is very little trash in the streets, many more people in
the markets and shops and children have returned to school...
This is all evidence, that the work we are doing is bettering
the lives of Kirkuk's citizens."
This letter stunt was pulled, coincidentally,
at the same time the Bush administration launched its counteroffensive
against critics of the war -- and given the progress of the war,
a  counteroffensive against reality. To
kick it off, George W. Mouth was at it again, telling National
Gaurd troops in Portsmouth, NH, that "Americans are not
the running kind."
Just when we thought -- in the wake of
the outrage at his "Bring 'em on" remark -- that he
might be chastened enough to refrain from talking backlot shit,
as if any of those preppy pricks had ever seen a backlot! But
what's interesting is that this time, it seems, the line was
crafted by the junta's weird spin staff, because Paul Wolfowitz
said exactly the same thing, in a different venue, on the same
day.
George and his cabinet ministers transformed
into Taxi Driver Travis Bickles, practicing armed confrontations
in the mirror, the post-90s politics of megalomaniacal machismo
dressed up as statecraft, like sunglasses on a pig.
The old official masculinity, enduring,
quiet, emotionally distant, and unconcerned with its coiffure
-- illusory and oppressive as it was -- now looks almost attractive
in the face of the new one -- immodest, loud, and fascistic --
and one that is played out on stages and in studios, vicariously,
by those who have the freedom to indulge l'imaginaire, that habit
of consiciousness that Sartre characterised as an escape from
social reality.
There's sure a lot they need to escape
from. And escape is exactly what this public relations counteroffensive
was all about. Escape from accountability.
That's also why George Tenet was forced
to march into Congress and eat a pile of shit after the Niger
uranium story hit the floor and splattered into sixteen embarrassingly
malodorous words. At all cost, protect the king. Now LTC Dominic
Caraccilo is telling the Stepford press -- who seem disinclined
to ask the obvious -- that he cooked up the letter scam to "share
the pride with people back home."
As part of his confession, he preempts
the felony by saying no one was forced to sign the letter (before
the question is even asked!), and consistent with the Psyops
playbook, the administration is exercising "plausible denial"
and hoping this, too, will blow over. They are counting on the
US press not to ask how curious it is that this "letter
campaign" coincided with the PR counteroffensive of their
very own National Command Authority -- the same one that has
openly declared its intention to manage public perception, even
attempting to develop a perception management agency, the Office
of Strategic Influence, then Office of Strategic Information
(OSI). This puppy died when someone from the Pentagon with a
conscience leaked that its purpose was to lie to Americans to
gain their acquiescence on Executive Branch schemes. Or did it?
Soldiers from 2/503 Airborne Infantry
have already given the lie to the official story that the Pollyanna
form letters were seen by all whose names were forwarded to the
press, but the story is the Public Affairs Office line: "The
intention was good, but the delivery system was probably not
a good way to do it." Caraccilo's intentions were honorable.
Like Tenet, Caraccilo will consign himself to history as a willing
pawn and no official action will be taken against him.
The king is safe. The Stepford press
is not asking just what in the hell the intention was, even though
a child could figure it out. The ruling class can always count
on careerism.
I should explain something about the
military for readers unfamiliar. No Lieutenant Colonel -- a person
with around 15 years in the Officer Personnel Management System,
one of the most ruthlessly unforgiving bureaucratic ladders in
existence, where someone is always waiting for you to fuck up
-- is unilaterally going to cook up and carry out something this
harebrained. He doesn't have the time under normal circumstances,
because running an infantry battalion that is deployed into a
hostile fire zone is very time-consuming, and he doesn't want
to commit career suicide five years from his eligibility to draw
a pension.
The directive to write those letters
came from higher, and at every step up the ladder, where the
career competition becomes tighter and more pitiless, the liklihood
of this particular brand of stupidity diminishes by orders of
magnitude. To my mind, that means the buck stopped past the uniforms,
at the suits, that is, worn by the National Command Authority
itself. It is a stupidity that is to massive to ascend. It can
only descend.
In other words, this kind of stupidity
could only have come from the very top, probably with the able
assistance of the PR industry.
Enter the Rendon Group.
The Rendon Group has been around through
both the Clinton and Shrub administrations. It is not the only
PR outfit feeding at the public trough for the purpose of shovelling
bullshit at the very public who signs its checks, but Rendon
is emblematic. Rendon stage managed much of the runup to the
current quagmire in Iraq, to include being largely responsible
for the organization of the new Iraqi quisling regime -- dubbed
by Rendon the "Iraqi National Congress," complete with
the changed regime head and convicted embezzler, Ahmed Chalabi.
Said one unnamed State Department official in a moment of anonymous
candor, "Were it not for Rendon, the Chalabi group wouldn't
even be on the map."
Rendon has picked up where Hill &
Knowlton, the Gulf War I perception managers, left off. You remember
H&K. On contract with the US government, they hatched the
Kuwaiti-babies-thrown-from-their-incubators-by-Iraqi-soldier
s story that mobilized massive press and public supprot for the
Bush I invasion. Of course, the story turned out to be complete
horseshit, but it proved so persistent that an HBO movie about
Gulf War I this year actually echoed it again as fact. It should
not surprise anyone that Torie Clarke, Pentagon spokesperson
during the stop-and-start blitz at the beginning of this invasion,
is a former Hill & Knowlton staffer.
Rendon Group was founded by the fomrer
Democratic Party operator, John Rendon (Anyone is still clinging
to lesser-evilism, take note.). Rendon Group worked alongside
Hill & Knowlton during Gulf War I, inside Kuwait, where they
learned quickly how to mine America's consumerist witlessness.
Rendon even boasted about it to the National Security Council,
saying, ""If any of you either participated in the
liberation of Kuwait City ... or if you watched it on television,
you would have seen hundreds of Kuwaitis waving small American
flags. Did you ever stop to wonder how the people of Kuwait City,
after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were
able to get hand-held American flags? And for that matter, the
flags of other coalition countries? Well, you now know the answer.
That was one of my jobs."
Did you ever stop to wonder...
Well, no. We don't. That's why we keep
signing checks for dull-witted gangsters pretending to be statesmen.
Some of us are even sent to die or be maimed for them. Hill &
Knowlton actually published a pack of lies dsguised as a book,
called The Rape of Kuwait, that was sent directly to troops prior
to launching Desert Storm, presumably to remove their inhibitions
and imbue them with the proper fighting spirit by dehumanizing
their new enemy.
Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner
recently published a remarkable document on line, <http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/documents/tr
uth.pdf> Truth from These Podia, that I highly recommend.
Gardiner is not a left-winger like me who sees war in the very
genetic code of imperialism. He is just a retired military guy
who studied the stories coming out in the press last year to
justify then spin the invasion. He found over 50 systematic and
intentional lies that were generated for the express purpose
of deceiving not some putative enemy, but the press and the people
of the United States and Great Britain. Gardiner is pissed off,
and he's not dropping dimes. He's dropping manhole covers.
He describes the evolution and structure
of the White House's Office of Global Communications -- an office
almost run by Rendon people -- and how they generate news stories
out of CENTCOM and elsewhere faster than the press can keep up
in order to push deadlines and competition and inhibit fact-checking,
then as the stoires come apart, sometimes in mere days or hours,
allowing the fabrications to "linger" without comment.
This tactic is combined with language control -- explaining why
"Americans are not the running kind" can show up in
two separate speeches in the same day by different members of
the administration -- redefining all opposition to US actions
as terrorists, and building false associations through repetition;
"echoing." How many times did we hear "September
11", "terrorists", and "Saddam Hussein"
in the same breath. Gardiner shows how this is a Psyops technique,
a method to "construct memory," and the "target
audience" is not the enemy, and not the "indigenous
population." It is us.
When they get caught, they reconfigure
the story with elliptical, some would say obtuse, language, then
let it linger some more. Weaons of mass destruction become a
"weapons program," a "seeking" of WMD. George
Tenet's CIA "had questions" about the British forgery...
er, dossier. Caraccilo just "wanted to share pride with
the people back home." And let the "lingering memory"
kick in as the next flurry of stories is released to bury the
newly emergent lie. Caraccilo, paradoxically, will take the heat
off of Wilson-Plame, and who can remember the Jessica Lynch fable,
the stage management of Basra, the yellow-cake uranium, the Iraqi
anthrax, the bio-weapons trailer, the Iraqis using American uniforms,
the Iraqis who used white flags to lure in their prey, the ten-year-old
soldiers, the disappearing Scuds, the Iraqi killer drones, the
Iraqi woman hanged by the Fedayeen for waving to an American,
and the whole wretched list of fabrications that came and went
-- what I referred to in my book, Full Spectrum Disorder, as
the CENTCOM lie-of-the-day. And will the Stepford press ever
admit that they were sucked in no less than 50 times, en masse,
like a herd of lemmings on perpetual replay? Nah. Career matters.
Tenet be damned. If you lie down with
pigs, you'll stink, and he willingly climbed the ladder all the
way to the big pen. But I confess I feel a bit of shame and empathy
for LTC Caraccilo, who was probably just as ingenuous as most
of the rest of us, taken in by the whole good and evil thing,
the US mytho-history, never asking how often George Washington
whipped his slaves, and who probably took pride in being a competent
professional with the parachute infantry.
He is as familiar as I am with the old
saying in the military when someone insults your intelligence
with a transparent lie. Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's
raining.
Now he has followed orders, and in doing
so abandoned his own integrity. He may not even realize it yet,
but someday he will. Sins of the past sneak up on you in the
middle of the night, sometimes long after their commission. I
know.
Maybe he'll be the one, the someone somewhere
forced to humiliate himself for this administration for the last
damn time, and decide to reclaim his integrity -- as
John Dean did in 1973 -- then America will look up and see
no rain, and look down at its dripping pantleg, and lose its
sense of humor.
Stan Goff
is the author of "Hideous
Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti"
(Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full
Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a member
of the BRING THEM
HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces
master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier. Email
for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is bthn@mfso.org.
Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
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