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Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Recent
Stories
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
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!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
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
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
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
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
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August
23, 2003
Brazen Corruption
of Every American Ideal
Bring
the Troops Home, Now!
By CYNTHIA McKINNEY
(Speech to the House of the Lord Church
Brooklyn, NY August 19, 2003)
Reverend Daughtry, Congregation of The House of
the Lord, Councilman Barron-soon to be Mayor Barron-fellow warriors
for peace; family members of the US troops stationed abroad.
Thank you for inviting me to be with you this evening.
We also join with those who mourn today's
loss of life. And that's exactly why we are here tonight. We
make our stand for peace.
Tonight, the focus is not on Bush, Cheney,
Powell, or Rice. It's on our troops.
And in the most passionate spirit of
patriotism we say, Bring the Troops Home Now!
When America's Top Gun, George W. Bush
first proclaimed his War On Terrorism, one of the first things
he did was to cut the high deployment overtime pay of the young
men and women he was asking to fight on the frontlines of his
new war. Now, almost two years later, sadly, we must face the
fact that the circumstances confronting our young military men
and women have grown acutely worse.
Not only are they underpaid, but the
powerful Administration that holds their fate in the cup of its
hands, has obfuscated, dissembled, and outright lied to them
about their central mission and why they have been placed on
the four corners of our globe.
Interestingly, before our children were
shipped overseas, they were given shots. They weren't given the
option of taking or not taking these shots. They were given shots.
And those who declined are being court-martialed for not taking
those shots.
But I wonder if this Administration told
our children that its vaccine supplier is the same DynCorp corporation
whose employees are buying and selling little girls in Eastern
Europe today. DynCorp has changed its name, but it hasn't changed
its behavior and has no business supplying vaccines to the Pentagon
or to our children.
Now, one of the young women being court-martialed
said that she wanted to breastfeed her as yet unborn children
and she didn't want the vaccines to interfere. It's sad that
the Administration can't tell that young woman what the effect
of these vaccines is on her and her children, but it can jail
her for not taking them.
And if that isn't enough, our troops
in Qatar, Iraq, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere are now afflicted with
a mystery illness that might well have been caused by the anthrax
vaccine, according to Dr. Sever a co-author of a government study
that, last year, found the vaccine was the "possible or
probable cause" of pneumonia in two soldiers.
Nearly 400,000 troops received that vaccine.
One 22-year old soldier died at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota
on April 4, before she could be deployed, of what one doctor
diagnosed as pneumonia after receiving both the anthrax and smallpox
vaccinations.
And by the way, DynCorp is involved with
both the anthrax and the smallpox vaccines for the Pentagon.
Now, Rumsfeld and company can say well,
these troops had the pneumonia before they left for Iraq and
all these other places because the Administration also reneged
on its promise to give health screenings to the troops before
they deployed so we all could know what was pre-existent and
what was not. Having failed to pre-screen the troops before deployment,
what makes us think they will treat them properly afterwards?
And certainly, if past treatment of our
sick veterans is any indication, we need look no further than
the more than 160,000 Gulf War One veterans who are still sick
today. Our Vietnam veterans had to sue to get treated for Agent
Orange, our Gulf War vets are no different, having had to sue
to get treated for Gulf War Syndrome.
In addition, this Administration is big
on talk, but when it has to choose between rhetoric for our troops
and hard dollars for its corporate criminal friends, it chooses
its friends every time.
How else could Dick Cheney's Halliburton
win a no-bid contract to feed our tro ops in Afghanistan and
Iraq and yet the food make them sick in Afghanistan and they
not have enough water to drink in Iraq?
Or how is it that one quarter of those
who sleep on our streets every night are veterans of wars?
Wars that rich and powerful insiders
like Bush and Cheney and Powell and Rice get to send other folks'
kids to?
Which brings us to another point. Those
who increasingly are feeling the brunt of the decisions of this
Administration look like us here in this church. They don't
look like the Congress or the staff at the White House or for
that matter the Supreme Court that gave us this Administration.
Which is another cause for alarm. It
appears that America's poor and people of color are the cannon
fodder for Bush's New American Century. They have predicted a
generation of fighting. And Caspar Weinberger suggests that America's
people of color are more patriotic than America's young white
kids are, and that's why there are disproportionately more people
of color in our all-volunteer military.
It is utterly despicable to make that
suggestion in the face of a recession-driven economy that has
produced the highest unemployment in a generation and pushed
more people of color below the middle class. Sadly, George Bush
stands in the doorway of opportunity at America's colleges and
universities just like his predecessor in spirit, George Wallace,
did two generations before him. Dripping with the words of interposition
and nullification, the anti-affirmative action stance of this
Administration harks back to more shameful days in our country.
Too many of our young men and women joined
the military just to get a college education. Not to be on the
front lines in a war and at the back of the line when it comes
to getting ahead.
So while our mucho macho commander in
chief, from the safety of a presidential entourage and carefully
scripted stage props, tells the Iraqis to "Bring it on,"
tonight we stand with the families who say, "Bring Our Troops
Home . . . Now!
And as we uncover the deceit associated
with George Bush The Son's Gulf War, we have yet to touch the
surface of his Administration's record on 9-11.
From 2.3 trillion missing dollars at
the Pentagon, to the military strategy of occupation that accompanies
the New American Century; from erosion of our civil rights and
a return to the COINTELPRO days, to the outright theft of an
election, there is much this Administration must answer to the
American people for.
As your Congresswoman, these are the
issues that I tackled every day. As you now know, 48,000 Republicans
crossed over and voted for the Republican they had drafted to
run against me in my Democratic Primary. With your help, I can
go back to Congress and fight for you once again.
Republicans spent 40 million of our tax
dollars to impeach Bill Clinton for having sex. But that wasn't
good enough; they targeted me because I asked what did the Bush
Administration know about 9-11; and now they're targeting Gray
Davis because a few Republicans call him "stupid."
Well, if stupidity is a criterion for
a recall, then certainly criminal neglect in the 9-11 tragedy;
conspiracy to use false intelligence to justify a war; and permitting
bold corporate looting of the treasury--are certainly grounds
for impeachment.
Finally, I know that after what they
did in Florida, that many people, especially people of color,
are asking what's the use in voting when they won't count our
votes. But let me tell you. The reason we all know about Florida
is because there was an overwhelming black turnout nearing 100%
of all black registered voters. That's why they were forced to
steal it out in the open. My prescription is not despair, but
a redoubling of our efforts. Let's make the turnout in all 50
states so high that it will be impossible for them to steal it
on the basis of one state alone.
George Washington, in his farewell address,
warned us not to believe in false patriots who wrap themselves
in the flag while betraying our values. Tonight, we are the
true patriots for our country.
Tonight, we stand up against the brazen
corruption of every ideal upon which our country was founded.
The true story of our mission in Iraq
cannot be told by Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle. It is the
story told by our troops who want to come home.
I'd like to thank the families for daring
to believe that America can be better than what we have become
and for being willing to stand up to make it so.
Cynthia McKinney
is a former member of congress from Georgia.
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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