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Today's
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February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
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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for More Stories.
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February
13, 2004
Our Imperial Leader
Has Spoken
Can
We Doubt Him? Let Me Count the Ways
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
Just after Wolfowitz's bizarre and crass pronouncement
that growing numbers of deaths of occupation troops and Iraqis
are evidence that "US efforts are succeeding" in that
chaotic country, there were other surreal utterances by his commander-in-chief
concerning struggles, success, leadership and all those good
things. It is always a matter for deep suspicion when the name
of Winston Churchill is mentioned by a politician because you
know that the person who dredges it up has his back to the wall
and is desperately seeking justification for some particularly
sleazy activity. In Britain the ploy is rarely used because the
public laugh at it, but it seems the desire to be linked with
Churchill is still an obsession in the Oval Office.
Bush leapt at the chance to talk about
Churchill at a Library of Congress exhibition of the great man's
memorabilia last week but instead of sticking to historical fact,
which would have been appropriate and dignified, he couldn't
resist bringing Churchill up-to-date with the topsy-turvy tawdry
world of Bush. "In some ways, our current struggles or challenges
are similar to those Churchill knew . . .We are the heirs of
the tradition of liberty, defenders of the freedom, the conscience
and the dignity of every person . . . I see the spirit of Churchill
in Prime Minister Tony Blair."
Pass the sick bag, Alice.
The "current struggles or challenges"
(why the 'or'?) in no way resemble those faced by Churchill's
Britain. It is absurd to try to draw parallels between the war
on Iraq and the war against the Axis Powers of fascism (a real
Axis, unlike the silly axis of evil nonsense) that Churchill
waged so fiercely with the total backing of his friend Roosevelt.
The Bush 'war on terror' can in no way be compared with any war
declared in recorded history, for nobody has ever started a war
without having an objective to be attained. Many conflicts took
a long time -- but the 'war on terror' can never be won, because
terrorism can never be eradicated. There will be no Yorktown,
no Waterloo, no D-Day in the Bush Crusade.
For Bush to exclaim, in his peculiar
whining cadences, that "I see the spirit of Churchill in
Prime Minister Tony Blair" has probably reduced the British
prime minister's domestic approval rating by a couple of points,
as well as causing much amusement in Britain, but one wonders
if Bush realises how far his own utterances are from anything
Churchill ever said.
One main point at issue for the moment
is the Bush administration posture about weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq. The evidence appears to show that they did not exist
save in the febrile minds of the zealots. Yet in May last year
Bush declared that "You remember when Colin Powell stood
up in front of the world and he said Iraq has got laboratories,
mobile labs to build chemical weapons? They're illegal. They're
against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered
two . . . And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for
those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices
or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."
Of course one can imagine Winston Churchill
making a speech that might be a trifle cavalier with the truth.
It was he, after all, who invented the term 'terminological inexactitude'
to define a lie. But in the case of Bush's statement there was
no shade of grey, because Bush assured the world that banned
weapons were discovered in Iraq, and there was no equivocation
about his pronouncement. Let me emphasise that the president
of the United States of America said to you and me and the whole
world, with his hand on his heart, that "We found them",
meaning that his investigators had discovered weapons of mass
destruction. So why, then, has he agreed on an inquiry? His intelligence
organisations told him, he says, that there were weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. Then he announced that weapons had been
discovered. So what's all the fuss about? Surely, if the president
of the United States believes something to be true, there is
no need for him to have an inquiry into whether it is true or
not?
Perhaps we should pay more attention
to Britney Spears. After all, she is the expert on political
and international affairs who has advised the American people
that "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president
in every decision that he makes and we should just support that."
She supports marriage, too. But perhaps not the marriage of truth
with power that is incumbent on 'her president', because that
particular hitching seems to have suffered a fatal divorce. Fatal
for truth, that is, because his power to try to deceive the world
remains undiluted.
When Bush announced on 27 January that
Saddam Hussein had refused to allow UN inspectors into Iraq,
many of us imagined he had simply misspoken. The shoulders were
shrugged. After all, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer,
and if he doesn't have a prepared speech in front of him or been
briefed down to the wire on matters likely to be raised by the
press, he can get himself into tangles. What he said was "And
then we went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming
resolution, 1441, unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam,
"You must disclose and destroy your weapons programs,"
which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He
chose defiance--it was his choice to make--and he did not let
us in." .
No matter the problems Bush seems to
have with conveying his thoughts in answer to unscripted questions
it is difficult to see how "he did not let us in" could
be interpreted as meaning "he did let us in". In fact
Iraq not only accepted entry of UN inspectors but was prepared
to allow them to be accompanied by US intelligence officials
to examine the alleged sites of weapons of mass destruction.
Here is the Guardian (UK) of 23 December 2002 on the offer :
"We have told the world we are not producing these kind
of weapons, but it seems that the world is drugged, absent or
in a weak position," President Saddam Hussein said. At a
press conference in Baghdad yesterday, General Amir al-Saadi
[see below], scientific adviser to the president, issued a challenge
to the US and British intelligence to offer up hard evidence
that Iraq has any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. "We
do not even have any objections if the CIA sent somebody with
the inspectors to show them the suspected sites," General
Sadi said.
It could not be plainer. First of all,
Saddam Hussein stated categorically that Iraq was not producing
weapons of mass destruction ; secondly there was an offer made
to Washington to send in its own people with UN inspectors to
guide them to the sites that they claimed to have identified
in detail and with great precision. After all Rumsfeld declared
on March 30, 2003, on ABC's 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos'
that "We know where they [the weapons of mass destruction]
are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east,
west, south and north somewhat." What could be clearer than
that. So what's all the fuss about?
The fuss, of course, is because much
of the mainstream media, especially in the US, along with the
Murdoch press in the UK, were doing a Britney for a long time.
They appear to have trusted the president in every decision he
makes, and only recently seem to have realised that his conduct
may not have been exactly Churchillian in his frenzied determination
to go to war.
Norman Solomon, in Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting records that "George W. Bush told a Cincinnati
audience on October 7 (New York Times, 10/8/02): "Satellite
photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding [nuclear weapons]
facilities at sites that have been part of his nuclear program
in the past." When inspectors returned to Iraq, however,
they visited the Al Tuwaitha site and found no evidence to support
Bush's claim. "Since December 4 inspectors from [the] International
Atomic Energy Agency have scrutinized that vast complex almost
a dozen times, and reported no violations," according to
an Associated Press report (1/18/03)."
Now wouldn't it have been simpler for
CIA experts to have accompanied UN inspectors, as offered by
Iraq, to see for themselves that there was nothing at Al Tuwaitha?
They could have reported directly back to Cheney or Rice or even
George Tenet. But perhaps this would have upset plans that were
already under way.
Bush appears to be trying to expunge
the UN inspections from recorded history in order to encourage
us to forget there was an alternative to his invasion of Iraq.
There was no reaction from Washington concerning Iraq's offer
to accept US intelligence representatives alongside UN inspectors,
except a statement by the CIA that it would make no comment.
And now that people are more interested in the non-reasons for
war, the Bush administration might claim that the offer was only
a ploy by desperate Iraq to avoid invasion. But if that had been
so, the obvious riposte was to call the bluff.
Such a claim wouldn't wash, anyway, because
UN inspectors were being given all necessary cooperation by Iraqi
authorities who had every reason to cooperate with the UN or
the CIA or anyone else who wanted to have a look. After all,
Saddam Hussein himself stated categorically that "we are
not producing these kind of weapons", so he would hardly
be worried about independent inspectors proving him right. There
is little doubt he welcomed almost any move to show he had no
WMD, because possession of such weapons was the reason -- the
only international legal justification -- given by Bush for his
invasion. No weapons : no invasion. But if Saddam Hussein were
proved right, it would mean that George Bush would be proved
to have been wrong.
Saddam Hussein's chief scientific advisor
told the world before he was hustled away by occupation forces,
never to be seen again, that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
General Amir Saadi waited at his home in Baghdad for a week after
US forces reached the capital, and then gave himself up voluntarily.
The Washington Post reported that "The night before he gave
himself up, Saadi saw himself listed on BBC satellite television
as one of the men being sought by U.S. forces. In a recent interview
at her home in Baghdad, Helma Saadi [his wife] said that he told
her, "I want to surrender. I want to cooperate. It will
be just a matter of a few hours, and I'll be back." Just
hours before his April 12 surrender, Saadi gave an interview
to a German television reporter during which he said, "There
were no weapons of mass destruction, and time will bear me out."
It is the same sentiment he sent to U.N. chief weapons inspector
Hans Blix in a message that arrived at U.N. headquarters on March
19."
There is a pattern, here, and it doesn't
take much to see why it is an inconvenient one for Bush and the
zealots. The Iraqis told everyone there were no weapons, but
nobody in Washington would listen. The Iraqis wanted UN inspectors
and CIA people to visit anywhere in Iraq in their search for
WMD. Bush ignored the Iraqi offer to have CIA analysts or operatives
accompany UN inspectors, then went ahead with the invasion, claiming
that UN inspections were failing. (Now, of course, claiming absurdly
that there were no inspections atall because the Iraqis "wouldn't
let them in".) The day before ordering the invasion Bush
said "He [Saddam Hussein] continues to possess and conceal
some of most lethal weapons ever devised . . . Iraq has aided,
trained and harbored terrorists, including al-Qaida . . . Before
the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this
danger will be removed."
What it comes down to is the question
: Do you believe Saddam Hussein's statement that Iraq had no
weapons of mass destruction, or do you believe George Bush's
statement that Iraq possessed "some of the most lethal weapons
ever devised"? This is what all the fuss should be about,
but will the Bush inquiry be courageous enough to rock the boat?
Or will it, like Britney Spears, "just trust our president
in every decision that he makes"?
Brian Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, the Nation (Pakistan),
the Daily Times of Pakistan and other international publications.
His writings are collected on his website: www.briancloughley.com.
He can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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