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Coming in September From AK Press Featuring Essays by: Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More Today's Stories August 12, 2003 Ray McGovern Relax, It Was All a Pack of Lies   Recent Stories 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.     Subscribe Online Search CounterPunch

August 12, 2003 Papers of Mass Destruction Relax, It Was All a Pack of Lies By RAY McGOVERN Former CIA Analyst War is scary enough; so it is comforting to be able to allay the unwarranted fears of friends. My friend Thomas has been plagued for months by nightmares in which al-Qaeda terrorists brandish weapons of mass destruction--the kind described in such rich detail by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Feb. 5 at the UN. Thomas' trauma is traced to what he insists is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from "the facts" and from a simple process of elimination: Major premise: Weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq earlier this year. Minor premise: None are there now. Conclusion: They must be in the hands of terrorists. My friend scoffs at the suggestion that Saddam Hussein may have sent such weapons to Syria for safekeeping or that he abruptly decided to destroy them just when he needed them most. (Thomas is credulous, but not stupid.) He keeps reminding me of the CIA's warning last fall that if Iraq were attacked, Saddam Hussein might give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists like al-Qaeda to retaliate against the US, as "his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." "No way," my friend insists, "No way can we escape the supreme irony that attacking Iraq has brought about the very thing it was supposed to prevent." But wait, Thomas. Double-check your major premise. Four and half months of futile searching have demonstrated that there were not/are not any "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. We knew going in that the vast majority had been destroyed in the nineties. It is now clear that State Department intelligence analysts were right in insisting last fall that there was "no reliable evidence" that they were "reconstituted" (to borrow the term favored by Vice President Dick Cheney). And the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein was somehow in cahoots with al-Qaeda have been thoroughly discredited--most recently by the report of the joint congressional committee on 9/11. Truth Therapy It is gratifying to watch truth therapy take effect on friends with symptoms of over-credulousness. But it does strike me as bizarre that the healing can come only after they have assimilated the "good news" that we and our elected representatives were conned. I normally start with the clearest example--the administration's deliberate use of the cockamamie story about Iraq trying to obtain uranium from Niger for a "nuclear weapons program" defunct since 1991. I tell them that, at the behest of Cheney's office, former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger in February 2002 to investigate that story and found it implausible on its face. There were just too many reasons why it simply made no sense. Then I point out that, besides its substantive flaws, the story was based on forged documents. As I led Thomas through all this, the furrow burrowed still deeper into his brow. So I tried a lighter touch. He nodded yes when I asked if he remembered my favorite Yul Brunner line from The King and I--"It's a false lie!" This, I told him, is an apt label for the Iraq-Niger canard, adding: There is nothing at all funny, though, about this particular "false lie," since it inflated the "mushroom cloud" that frightened Congress into ceding its war making power to the president last October. If you want to know how several of our lawmakers feel about that, download the letters that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has written to the White House expressing outrage at having been tricked into voting for war. Thomas: "But that kind of behavior goes to the heart of our constitutional process. One branch of government deceiving another? I thought the current talk about impeachment was a little premature, but now..." Not premature, just quixotic with the president's party in control of Congress. But, as John Dean has pointed out, Bush has already been "impeached"--the legal term for witnesses who make inconsistent statements. Had Thomas not noted how the president no longer speaks of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction but now says we will find a weapons-of-mass-destruction "program?" He used that term again at his press conference on July 30, and added, "It's going to take time for us to gather and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally the miles of documents that we have uncovered." Papers of mass destruction? None of Thomas' sons or daughters are sweating it out in Iraq, so he and his family can now sleep soundly with the consoling thought that we were lied to. There is no such consolation, though, for the families of hundreds of Americans troops and thousands of Iraqis killed or wounded on a false major premise. Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Analysts for Sanity. He is co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington, DC. He can be reached at: rmcgovern@slschool.org Weekend Edition Features for 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   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /