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Today's
Stories
December 5, 2003
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
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
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December
5, 2003
Bremer of the Tigris
Oh,
the Little Saddams We Weave
By JEREMY SCAHILL
There is a despot in Iraq, ruling with an iron
fist from the comfort of his luxury palace on the banks of the
Tigris River. He oversees a ruthless military force and a web
of repressive domestic "intelligence" thugs that have
terrorized Iraqis for decades. His name is not Saddam Hussein;
it's L. Paul Bremer.
Some like to call Bremer the governor
of Iraq, others politely refer to him as the US Administrator.
But what he really is is Saddam's successor. This week, as the
US death toll in Iraq rose, as more Iraqi (and Iranian) civilians
paid the heavy price of the occupation, Bremer had more pressing
issues to attend to. He finally got around to fixing up that
shabby old palace of his. He paid an Iraqi firm $27,000 to remove
4 larger than life busts of Saddam's head from the palace compound.
"I've been looking at these for six months," said Bremer
as the first head was being removed, "so I am delighted
to see them coming down. We're sick of them."
In case you might be thinking that the
weekend cleaning job at Bremer's riverfront mansion might not
be the best use of US taxpayer dollars or that there may be more
pressing needs in Iraq like electricity, clean water and education,
there is something you have to understand. Bremer is just complying
with the law.
"According to the rules of de-Baathification,
they have to come down," said Charles Heatly, a spokesman
for the occupation authorities. "Actually they are illegal."
Remember back in 1998, as the Clinton
administration geared up to bomb Baghdad, when we were inundated
with talk of Saddam's palaces. How Saddam lived in luxury, while
ordinary Iraqis suffered. He had swimming pools while most Iraqis
didn't have clean water. He was usurping Iraq's resources for
his own excesses. And on and on
Bremer and the military commanders he
rode into Baghdad with wasted no time in picking up from where
Saddam left off as they swiftly occupied the dozens of palaces
across Iraq. Out went Izzat Ibrahim from the marbled palace in
Tikrit, in came Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry
Division. Out went the Republican Guard; in came the marines.
Out went Saddam's administrative offices; in came Bremer's. The
US has converted a former Republican Guard resort into-drum roll
pleasea resort for US soldiers: Camp Relaxation.
But it is not just the high life in lavish
palaces that Bremer shares with his predecessor.
Iraqi television has gone from airing
the ramblings of Saddam and his deputies to airing the statements
of Bush, Bremer, Rice, Rumsfeld and a slew of US military commanders.
One American soldier working on establishing the "new"
Iraqi media said many of the Iraqi journalists are referring
to the US commanders working with them as "Little Saddams."
The US has put scores of Saddam's thugs
on the payroll of the new regime. Many of them kept their same
positions, just with a new supervisor: Uncle Sam. And one of
the most striking similarities between Saddam and Bremer is that
neither of them seems too eager to have democratic elections
in Iraq.
In recent weeks, the country's leading
Shi'ite clerics have dramatically escalated their demands for
direct elections of an interim Iraqi government to take over
from the US occupation forces. They want one person, one vote
and an end to the era of US-appointments. They want the United
Nations to organize and oversee the elections. Seems reasonable
enough. The problem is the US doesn't want elections if the "wrong"
candidates are going to win.
The forces most opposed to direct elections
in Iraq are Washington and the imported "opposition"
leaders like the CIA-backed Ahmed Chalabi. The Shi'ite religious
leaders are well aware, as many analysts have observed, that
if elections were held tomorrow, the religious parties would
win. Regardless of their motives, the clerics are calling for
democratic elections and it is the US that is putting up the
roadblocks.
Washington and its proxies on the Governing
Council say that the country is too unstable for fair elections
because of the risk of attacks on voters and candidates. They
want local caucuses of mostly appointed representatives to select
a national assembly, which would then "elect" the leadership.
As the Shi'ite leaders have pressed their
case for elections, the US has said that due to a lack of a census,
elections would be impossible. Now, The New York Times reports
that US officials have just rejected a plan for a quick census
of the country's population that would allow Iraq to hold national
elections in nine months.
Followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
told the Atlanta Journal Constitution this week that there may
be direct actions if the US prevents elections. "The time
has come for us to get our rights," said Sheik Abdel Mehdi
al-Karbalayi, al-Sistani's representative in the Shiite holy
city of Karbala. "I'm not saying there will be military
action. Maybe it will be civilian. But there will be instability."
Even the current chair of the US-appointed
Governing Council, Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, warned
last week that there would be "a real problem in the country"
if the US prevented direct elections. "It is not possible
that a people who spent decades under oppression and sacrificed
so many lives are not allowed to directly participate."
So far the only political campaigning
that has been allowed in Iraq was George W Bush's 2 1/2 hour
Thanksgiving tour of the Baghdad airport.
From his palace on the banks of the Tigris,
Paul Bremer is starting to look like Iraq's version of Katherine
Harris. As we learned in Florida in 2000, elections are not a
process; they are a question. And there is only one right answer.
When Saddam held his last referendum on his presidency late last
year, there was just one choice for Iraqi "voters":
Yes or no. The way things look now, Iraqis may not even be granted
that much of a say in their newly "liberated" country
under Bremer.
But not all is lost. At least Paul got
rid of those annoying statues of his predecessor's head.
Jeremy Scahill is
a producer and correspondent for the nationally syndicated radio
and TV program Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org
He spent most of 2002 reporting from Iraq. He can be reached
at jeremy@democracynow.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
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