Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 20, 2003
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
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!
Recent
Stories
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
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
August
11, 2003
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland Security for Whom?
Mickey
Z.
Bush's Progress
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Meet the New Bitch, Same
as the Old
Elaine
Cassel
Indicting DNA
Dr. Mohammad
Omar Farooq
Civil Liberties and Uncivil Super-Patriotism
Uri
Avnery
Who Will Save Abu Mazen?
Website
of the Day
RIAA Subpoena Clearinghouse
August
9 / 10, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
California's Glorious Recall!
Saul
Landau
Bush and King Henry
Gary
Leupp
On Terrorism, Methodism, "Wahhabism"
and the Censored 9/11 Report
Paul de
Rooij
The Parade of the Body Bags
Michael
Egan
History and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Rob Eshelman
A Home of Our Own
Daoud
Kuttab
Life as an ID Card
Philip
Agee
Terror and Civil Society: Instruments of US Policy in Cuba
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Marc Racicot: Bush's Main Man
Walt Brasch
Schwarzenegger, "Hollyweird"
and the Rigtheous Right
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush, Bribery and Berlusconi
Josh Frank
Mean, Mean Howard Dean
Elaine
Cassel
Will the Death Penalty Ever Die?
Sean Carter
Total Recall
Poets'
Basement
Hamod, Engel, Albert
August
8, 2003
John
Chuckman
What the US Says Goes
Roberto
Barreto
Defend the Vieques 12!
Bruce Gagnon
Iraq War Emboldens Bush Space Plans
Elaine
Cassel
The Reign of John Ashcroft
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
Website
of the Day
Zero Boy
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
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
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
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
20, 2003
The UN Bombing
Act
of Terrorism or Guerrilla Warfare?
By KURT NIMMO
Is it a surprise unknown persons have bombed the
United Nations building in Baghdad? No, the bombing was inevitable,
considering the United Nation's role in the occupation of Iraq.
It is surprising, however, that the bombers were able to so easily
drive a cement truck filled with explosives into the lobby of
the hotel converted into an office building.
Considering the UN imposed various resolutions
on Iraq after Bush the Elder's brutal invasion (specifically,
resolutions 661 and 687) -- which eventually resulted in 600,000
children under the age of five dying of entirely preventable
diarrhea, pneumonia, and respiratory and malnutrition-related
diseases -- is it any wonder more than a few Iraqis are motivated
to kill UN employees?
Moreover, the UN building in Baghdad
also housed the World Bank. Back in May, the World Bank sent
"a senior Bank official" along with Sergio Vieira de
Mello (who died in the bombing), UN Special Representative in
Iraq, "to assess reconstruction and development needs on
the ground," according to the World Bank's website. The
IMF and the World Bank "stand ready to play their normal
role in Iraq's re-development at the appropriate time,"
the said the IMF and World Bank in a press statement after their
Spring Meetings, held April 12-13 in Washington, D.C.
So, what is the "normal role"
played by the World Bank and IMF?
Imposing poverty, that's what.
"Structural adjustment programs
are a set of economic policies required by the World Bank and
the IMF as a condition of loans these institutions make to developing
countries," explains CorpWatch. "These programs often
include austerity measures such as high interest rates and reduced
access to credit, which result in slower economic growth as well
as increased poverty and unemployment. Other adjustment policies
include cuts in government spending on health care and education,
increases in the cost of food, health care and other basic necessities,
mandates to open markets to foreign trade
and investment, and privatization of state-run enterprises...
structural adjustment has exacerbated poverty in most countries
where it has been applied, contributing to the suffering of millions
and causing widespread environmental degradation. And since the
1980s, adjustment has helped create a net outflow of wealth from
the developing world, which has paid out five times as much capital
to the industrialized countries of the North as it has received."
In other words, the IMF and World Bank
are rackets designed by immoral bankers and loan sharks to rape
the Third World.
The United Nations is essentially a handmaiden
of the IMF, World Bank, and the United States. So, from the point
of view of many Iraqis, the lightly protected UN complex in Baghdad
was an appropriate target, as were the main northern oil export
pipeline into Turkey and warehouses scattered around Baghdad.
Undoubtedly, the idea is to make Iraq so dangerous, violent,
and unprofitable that the parasites on Wall Street and in Washington
will think twice about implementing and supporting an occupation
engineered to steal its oil and "privatize" its ravaged
economy.
The murder of a Kellogg, Brown and Root
(a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton) employee north of Tikrit
on August 5 served as a warning of things to come for these corporate
looters and profiteers.
Increasingly, Iraqis involved in the
resistance are targeting "civilians," who are in fact
working for military contractors and organized theft operations
such as the World Bank. The Kellog, Brown, and Root employee
killed by an anti-tank mine was working on something call Material
Command Logcap III. According to a CNBC business snapshot, Logcap
III's purpose is to "deliver Combat Support and Combat Service
Support (CS/CSS)" to the US Army. In other words, this anonymous
employee was providing support to the occupation forces and was
undoubtedly regarded as a legitimate military target by Iraqi
guerilla forces. No doubt these same guerilla forces, if they
are indeed responsible for the United Nations compound bombing,
also considered Sergio Vieira de Mello a legitimate military
target. Not only US soldiers are targets in Iraq, but so are
the corporate enablers of the occupation.
Once again, the corporate media has shifted
into speculative overdrive: is it possible this was the handiwork
of al-Qaeda? "There was no immediate claim of responsibility
for the attack," reports the Bush Ministry of Propaganda
(read: Fox News). "But its careful orchestration and very
public, Western-world target immediately evoked past strikes
by Usama bin Laden's terrorist network."
It's as if the entire history of "terrorism"
-- the title given to all national liberation movements directed
against US hegemony -- has disappeared since 9/11. Predictably,
Fox trots out the same old shopworn "experts" to pin
the blame on al-Qaeda. According to one such expert, Dia'a Rashwan,
an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political
and Strategic Studies, the UN bombing fits "the ideology
of Al Qaeda... They consider the U.N. one of the international
actors who helped the Americans to occupy Palestine and, later,
Iraq."
Of course, the US does not "occupy"
Palestine, Israel does, admittedly with much assistance -- both
financial and military -- from the United States. It's true al-Qaeda's
"ideology" (or, rather, the pronouncements of its apparent
titular head, bin Laden) is directed against US imperialism,
but this ideology is not significantly different from that of
other national liberation movements over the last fifty years,
especially those in the Middle East. Fox and its experts assume
we suffer from both amnesia and stupidity. In fact, unfortunately,
many of us do.
At the time of the bombing, Dubya was
on a golf course in Waco, Texas. "The terrorists that struck
today again showed their contempt for the innocent," said
Bush later. "They showed their fear of progress and their
hatred of peace. They're the enemies of the Iraqi people. They're
the enemies of every nation that seeks to help the Iraqi people...
The civilized world will not be intimidated and these terrorists
will not determine the future of Iraq they are testing our will,
it will not be shaken."
It's ironic, if not criminally insane,
of Bush to so disingenuously express his concern for "innocent"
Iraqis when he is responsible for slaughtering nearly eight thousand
of them (according to the Iraq Body Count Project).
Bremer and Bush may consider the growing
Iraqi resistance as consisting of little more than "terrorists,"
but the fact of the matter is Iraq did not invade the United
States or Britain -- or, for that matter, it did not attack Poland,
Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Denmark, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and
Albania, countries that have sent or will send "stabilization"
forces to Iraq -- nor did Iraq ask for the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, Halliburton, Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp., Parsons
Group, Stevedoring Services of America, and other corporate leeches
to elbow their way into Iraq against the will of the Iraq people
and line up to make a killing (literally) off oil, water, roads,
trains, phones, ports, drugs, and anything else they can get
their avaricious paws on.
So, who are the terrorists here -- average
Iraqis fighting a war of national liberation or the stockholders
of Halliburton and Bechtel?
"Entirely absent from this ["reconstruction"]
debate are the Iraqi people, who might -- who knows? -- want
to hold on to a few of their assets," writes Naomi Klein
of the Nation. "Iraq will be owed massive reparations after
the bombing stops, but without any real democratic process, what
is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or rehabilitation.
It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatization
without representation."
Mass theft backed up the world's most
homicidal war machine.
The IMF and World Bank have done likewise
for decades in Latin America. But Iraq is not Argentina or Uruguay
-- in Iraq there are hundreds of thousands of weapons in the
hands of ordinary people, many of them with years of experience
in Saddam's military. In Latin America, US-trained thugs and
death squads have made sure there is no serious opposition to
what the swindlers on Wall Street and in Washington have done
and continue to do. That's not the case in Iraq.
Bush had his chance to hire the Ba'athists
to do what they have done since the early 60s -- terrorize and
keep the Iraqi people in check -- but thanks to the neocon aversion
of anything even remotely Arab or Muslim, that opportunity has
vanished. The Bushites have "de-nazified" their way
into a completely untenable situation.
"We're still, needless to say, much
closer to the beginning than the end," said Rumsfeld of
the situation in Iraq back in March. Needless to say, that situation
is far worse now. It gets worse every day. It will be worse next
week and even worse next month.
Like Vietnam, the "beginning"
will stretch out forever, consuming an undetermined number of
human lives and billions of dollars. There will be no "light
at the end of the tunnel," as General Westmoreland would
have liked to have it. In the months ahead, as the psychopathic
Bushites attempt to redouble their efforts to eliminate the "bitter
enders" and "Saddam remnants" in Iraq, support
for an immediate and unconditional end of the occupation will
grow in the United States. The Bushites know this and that's
why they devised and rushed through the Patriot Act. Patriot
II waits in the wings.
In fact, since nearly the whole of the
federal government and Congress is "Bush territory,"
the only political solution to the murderous insanity currently
on tap in Iraq will likely come from the people, as it did during
the Vietnam War.
Civil disobedience and direct may be
required -- again. But this time around the stakes will be much
higher. In fact, considering the severity of the mental illness
afflicting the Bushites, it may be cataclysmic.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent online
gallery Ordinary Vistas. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn
and St. Clair's forthcoming volume, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for 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
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