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Today's
Stories
December 11, 2003
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
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
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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December
11, 2003
Lots of Shooting,
But No Battle
The
Parable of Samarra
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
Front-page stories announced the greatest battle
since the end of combat in Iraq with fifty-four insurgents killed
and not an American soldier lost. We were given breathtaking
details about two separate, coordinated attacks, the firing of
rocket-propelled grenades at American vehicles, and the fact
that many of the attackers wore Fedayeen militia uniforms associated
with Saddam Hussein. Early reports even claimed eleven insurgents
were captured.
In addition to headlines, we had sources
like CNN pouring on the infotainment-interviews and instant wisdom.
I noticed on the Internet that the redoubtable Wolf Blitzer exchanged
schoolboy fantasies with a CIA dropout in search of his fifteen
minutes. Never mind whether the attack happened, America learned
that it would represent new tactics by insurgents, massing large
forces against an armored American column. Oh, that does sound
ominous and impressive.
Gradually, enough bits of information,
including a story that it was actually an attempted heist of
new Iraqi banknotes being delivered, raised serious questions
over the battle. The idea of a heist made a little more sense
than insurgents in uniform since Iraq under U.S. occupation is
a country full of angry, unemployed people with streets too dangerous
to walk at night.
There were so many doubts, the kinds
of clues and irregularities that make a good detective avoid
accepting first appearances. Not a single American killed by
two large forces firing at them? And you had to wonder what desperate
man would come close enough to a 60-ton Abrams tank to be seen
firing a rocket-grenade capable of nothing more than scratching
its paint? And how about those guys, before and after the attack,
running around occupied Iraq in uniform? Where were the captives?
On the same day the Washington Post and
other major American publications featured the dazzlingly fuzzy
tale, a few sources like al Jazeera quoted the local hospital
as having received the bodies of eight civilians, including a
woman and a child, plus sixty more wounded by American fire.
American tanks and other armored vehicles, said witnesses, had
sprayed heavy fire recklessly over an urban area, including a
pharmaceutical plant where at least one worker was killed
We now have enough information to be
sure there was no battle. Yes, there was plenty of shooting and
destruction, but not a single dead insurgent has been produced
by American authorities who worked tirelessly to get pictures
of the blood-soaked corpses of Saddam Hussein's sons quickly
beamed around the world. Not a single militia uniform has been
produced, nor any of the dozens of weapons necessarily left behind
by dead insurgents dragged away by comrades.
The reports of residents, reports from
the hospital, and the blunt, published observations of at least
one American soldier tell us there was only a big shoot-up by
Americans, blasting away at anything that moved, shattering buildings
and the people huddled inside and leaving the street littered
with tank-crushed cars. Who knows, perhaps a landmine or gunshot
somewhere triggered it all, and trigger-happy soldiers, angry
about being in what they regard as a hellhole, let loose enough
firepower to level a city block.
It could be that American authorities
actually believe there was a battle, with the dead and wounded
having been dragged away by survivors. There is an irresistible
tendency for people to create acceptable fantasies around the
work they do, even when that work is killing.
I think it unlikely a retraction is coming.
With a number of senior military men quoted by name that first
day on non-existent details, a retraction would be impossibly
embarrassing. Has there been any retraction of the fantasy about
nuclear and other deadly weapons that sent American armies hurtling
into Iraq? Bush just stopped talking about weapons and started
talking about democracy. Good stuff, democracy, and it's hard
to argue even with tongue-twisted platitudes praising its merits.
America's press will soon forget the
Battle of Samarra, as it soon forgets everything from which most
of the easily-squeezed juice has been consumed. I very much doubt
Iraqis will forget it, certainly not the relatives, friends,
and neighbors of those killed and mutilated by fear-crazed Americans
rolling through their streets with terrible weapons at the ready.
Perhaps the New York Times will do some
digging, following its usual practice of joining the mob in its
first bloody howls, and only later, when ardor has cooled, doing
an investigation that keeps the paper technically accurate for
the record. It's a way of enjoying the best of both worlds, although
generally the conclusions of its follow-up investigations are
left ambiguous enough not to embarrass the establishment the
paper serves.
The war's main goal - smashing Iraq and
resurrecting it as a liberal democratic state - is also a fantasy,
although one on a vastly greater scale. There is no historical
authority whatever to support even the plausibility of this idea.
I recently heard an American academic
pontificating on the subject as though it were something one
could study and be expert in, but it is not. Much like the numerous
American experts in terror who make substantial livings giving
scare-lectures to corporate leaders on expense accounts or Pentagon
working lunches, this man is an expert in a subject at which
it is virtually impossible to be expert.
Terrorism is not a science, it is an
opportunistic approach to hurting a militarily superior enemy,
although it is clearly possible to put a lot of cumbersome words
around the topic. The pseudo-science of smashing closed societies
and rebuilding them as democracies is loaded with the same kind
of coined, self-serving words that fill ephemeral, anecdotal
books on psychology, management, and healthy living. The subjects
are close kin to the junk science that clogs the arteries of
America's courts.
In the isolated, paranoid, and money-drenched
atmosphere of Washington, junk science is serious stuff. Bush,
in making his foolish decision to invade Iraq, may be seen ultimately
as the victim of well-paid quacks.
Perhaps the only cases in history with
superficial resemblance to what is intended for Iraq are those
of Germany and Japan after World War II, but, in truth, there
are almost no parallels here.
Germany and Japan had suffered war with
millions of casualties. In the massive, late bombing of Japan,
before America resorted to atomic weapons, there were no primary
or secondary targets left standing. What has been inflicted on
Iraq is nothing quite so terrible. Japan or Germany was as close
as you can get to being a tabula rasa.
The successful conversions of Germany
and Japan to liberal democracy occurred in the extraordinary
context of the Cold War. The people of Germany and Japan were
faced with the stark choice of joining one camp or the other.
The correct choice, despite many qualms about America, was pretty
clear with Stalin's terrifying face glowering over the Soviet
Union. Today, the United States is not viewed by the world as
the alternative to a tyrannical, frightening Soviet Union; it
is viewed as an arrogant, privileged land that does pretty much
as it pleases.
The case is even stronger than that because
America today is so intimately associated with Israel. Even though
Arab states are resigned to Israel's existence, they can hardly
be expected to embrace occupation and constant abuse. Moreover,
parallels in the circumstances of occupied Palestinians to those
of occupied Iraqis are unpleasantly close and appear to grow
more so each day.
Germany and Japan were both advanced
countries, undoubtedly on the cusp of developing their own democratic
institutions, Germany having already gained some experience between
the world wars. Police states simply do not survive over the
long term in advanced countries. Democracy comes precisely out
of the overwhelming force of middle-class interests that flood
an advanced economy.
It is almost universally true that poorly-developed
countries are not democracies. There are few enough institutions
of any kind in such countries, and certainly none to sustain
democracy. There is no balance of interests where there is a
small privileged group and a great mass of poverty and ignorance.
Purchased courts, purchased police, and laws written to favor
the powerful are the rule. This kind of imbalance is felt even
in the United States. In a poor country, its influence is decisive.
Where such countries are officially designated as democracies,
we typically find rigged elections.
Germany and Japan were both old nations
with strong identities. Iraq is an artificial construct of British
imperialism dating only to the last century. It is composed of
groups having little in common, having been held together only
by the brute force of a dictator. Each of these groups is also
subject to many external influences, a reflection of the arbitrary
and recently-set boundaries in the region.
There is also difficulty with the notion
that you can have popular democracy in a place like contemporary
Iraq and yet have a country friendly to American interests, especially
as those interests are reflected in the activities of an uncompromising,
combative, nuclear-armed Israel. Bush has achieved nothing in
pushing Israel towards peace, so why expect favorable decisions
from an Islamic population voting freely?
In other places in the Middle East, like
Egypt, America supports a combination of winked-at authoritarian
government and substantial bribe-paying. Why does America support
this if there are realistic alternatives? That was the situation
that existed in Iraq until the Gulf War. The populace of Egypt,
so far as we can understand in the absence of genuine measures
of public opinion, is not one that would freely elect a government
friendly to a number of American interests. The same is almost
certainly true of Iraq.
Is the U.S. likely to leave behind in
Iraq either a highly unstable government, one whose quick collapse
would bring civil war between the major groups, or a democratically-elected
government, stable but hostile to American interests? These and
so many other questions only show how little Bush thought before
he reached for a gun.
We are unlikely to learn the truth from
officials about the Battle of Samarra, and so it is with the
entire reckless adventure of invading Iraq. American troops are
going to be in Iraq for a long time, and there is no reason to
expect they are going to make any more friends for America than
the boys doing the shooting in Samarra.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
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