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New Special "Serving Two Flags" Edition of CounterPunch

Inside the Neo-Cons: Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith and the Internal Security Problem at the Pentagon by Stephen Green; O'Neill, Oil and Bush by Alexander Cockburn; My Corporation Tis of Thee: The Stryker, The General and the Lobbyist by Jeffrey St. Clair; A Southern Africa Sojourn by Lawrence Reichard; The Kiev Con: Exposing David Duke's Illusory Doctorate; CounterPunch Online is read by 70,000 visitors each day, but we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a (tax deductible) donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

February 23, 2004

Gary Leupp
A Misguided Attack, The Passion, Rabbit Lerner and the Gospels

February 20 / 22, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry: He's Peaking Already!

Derek Seidman
Chasing Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!

Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem

Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops

Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq

John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People

Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary

Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq

Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and Hypocrisy

Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back

Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala

Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle

Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights Act?

David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons

Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget

David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This

Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics

Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert

Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique

 

February 19, 2004

Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw

Ray McGovern
Iraq Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd Get Away With It?

Tariq Ali
How Far Will Bush Go in Iraq?

Ralph Nader
Whither the Nation?

Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?

Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble

Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT

Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"

Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale

Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope

 

February 18, 2004

William Wilgus
Bush: AWOL and Dereliction of Duty

William Blum
Mush-Minded Liberals

Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome

Greg Weiher
Why is Kerry Getting a Pass?

Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber

Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"

 

February 17, 2004

Mike Ferner
The Countryside Murders in Iraq

Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation as Psychopath

Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate: a Victory for Free Speech

Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"

Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The Nation

Ximena Ortiz
A Bush Doctrine, of Sorts

Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?

Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"

Steve Perry
Kerry 1, Drudge 0


February 16, 2004

James Johnston
Huddling with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World

Sara Eltantawi
To Wear the Hijab or Not

Bruce Anderson
Kevin Cooper and the Midnight Needle

Elaine Cassel
Feds on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas

Rahul Mahajan
Bush, Is the Tide Finally Turning?

Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death

Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean

Larry David
My War

Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing

Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made


February 14/15, 2004

Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the March of Empires

Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic

William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics

Stan Goff
Beloved Haiti

Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election

Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me

Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot

Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant

Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left

Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism

William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map

Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa

Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson

Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation

Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest

Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues That Matter?


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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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February 23, 2004

"Heads Should Roll"

Richard Perle, Executioner

By KURT NIMMO

Native Americans had an expression for it.

Forked tongue.

Now we call them liars, backstabbers, dissimulators. People who say one thing and do another. Cheats, double-dealers, hypocrites. Dirty tricks and skullduggery.

For as Mark Twain once quiped, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes."

"I think, of course, heads should roll," yawped the Prince of Dissimulation, Richard Perle. "When you discover that you have an organization that doesn't get it right time after time, you change the organization, including the people."

Richard is talking about the CIA, of course, and the bad intelligence on those Iraqi WMD. It's all George Tenet's fault.

"The CIA has an almost perfect record of getting it wrong in relation to the (Persian) Gulf going back to the Shah of Iran," said Perle. "I'd start with the head head."

Somebody dust off the guillotine. Richard is in the mood for blood. Cast the head head on a tumbrel and drive him through the streets of Washington to the guillotine and off with his head!

Richard Perle is our Charles-Louis Sanson, the official executioner of the French Revolution. Execution, lies, and deceitfulness are easy for the Prince of Darkness.

But wait a minute. Something's wrong here.

As I recall the CIA was dissing Perle and Cheney and the Neocon Gang that Can't Shoot Straight for their spurious intelligence, most of it coming from Feith's Operation of Special Plans.

Cheney and Scooter paid numerous visits to the CIA and put the thumbscrews to them. "They were the browbeaters," a former defense intelligence told the Washington Post. "In interagency meetings, Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt."

Wolfie treated reality with contempt because it didn't jive with his game plan, that is the US and Israeli strategy to rule supreme in the Middle East, steal all the oil, and dictate to the Arabs.

Instead of hard evidence, Perle and gang relied on the preposterous fantasies of so-called Iraqi dissidents and the nutcake Laurie Mylroie, adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the preeminent hatchery of ding-a-ling neocon theory.

"In what amounts to the discovery of a unified field theory of terrorism, Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself. She is, in short, a crackpot," writes Peter Bergen.

In the Bush White House and Pentagon, crackpots run roughshod.

Oh, and Saddam was behind the anthrax letters, too. Even though the anthrax mailed to two leading Senate Democrats, in October 2001, is biologically identical to bacteria secretly manufactured at the Fort Detrick, Maryland, warfare facility.

So mesmerizing are neocon lies that a large number of Americans believe Saddam is Osama and this amalgamative personality is responsible for the horrors of 9/11.

Remember Perle's claim one of Saddam's henchmen, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, met with alleged 9/11 "mastermind" Mohamed Atta in Prague? Neocon helpmate and right-wing crank William Safire reported this stinker. For some reason the New York Times allowed Perle the Fabulist to publish an op-ed piece claiming this screwy conspiracy theory as fact.

Of course, soon thereafter, the Old Gray Lady looked completely foolish and printed a reversal. It's not the first time the Times has been flimflamed by reactionary nutbars.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote that the evidence for the meeting was slim to none. Even the Czechs backed away from Perle's fairy tale.

Safire went into bongo mode and screamed "gullible commentators" were duped by perfidious Europeans, probably all of them cowardly French pantywaists.

Perle says the CIA gave Dubya bogus intelligence, when in fact the CIA was telling the Bushites their OSP intelligence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda was gibberish.

"There isn't a factual basis for such assertions," declared a CIA official after Powell trotted out his dog-and-pony show at the United Nations. During his performance, Powell waved around a vial of anthrax for effect. As it turns out, that anthrax was counterfeit -- the same way Bush's whole case against Saddam is counterfeit, a huge and cynical sham contrived by Perle and the Straussian mob.

But it was David Kay, CIA weapons inspector, who really blew Dub's boat out of the water. "I don't think [Saddam's WMD] existed... I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he told Reuters January 24.

Throw Kay in the tumbrel with the head head, off with all their heads!

Instead, it should be Perle and the neocons confronting the guillotine of public censure for their premeditated lies and calculated dishonesty resulting in the murder of more than 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.

Last July Richard the Maligner admitted he has no idea where Saddam stashed his WMD, although since the neocons have said they are in Syria, an outrageous claim minus evidence.

"We don't know where to look for them and we never did know where to look for them," Perle acquiesced.

Recall Donnie "Bunker Buster" Rumsfeld declaring he knew where Saddam's WMD were and he would grab them. Rumsfeld, of course, knew nothing -- it was all a pack of monstrous and murderous lies.

According to Perle, it may take 200 years or more to find Saddam's illusive WMD, so we best keep the indefatigable Straussian neocons on the case.

Remember: Bush said the war on terror will last generations, eight or more generations if we are to believe the Prince of Darkness.

Naturally, after Iraq's oil is gone, there will be no need to look for WMD, just as there is no reason to look for WMD in the Sahara Desert. WMD are only a threat in countries chock-full of natural resources. Or in countries selling missile technology to oil-rich countries that are thorns in Israel's side, viz. North Korea.

In the meantime, however, while there's still a few billion barrels of oil under the ground in Iraq, the WMD nobody can find remain a threat. I mean, you never know, a bouquet of nukes may turn up (in five minutes or 199 years) concealed beneath a palm grove or squirrled away in Syria.

"It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard," said Perle and the neocon gaggle in a rare moment of honesty on January 26, 1998, in a letter to Clinton, well before Dubya was enthroned.

Clinton believed the neocons nutcakes, so he ignored them. Clinton was hardly averse to telling lies, but compared to the neocons he's a rank amateur.

Perle may attempt to slough off his numerous lies on the CIA. But eventually it will turn around and bite him and his boss squarely in the ass.

Recall the CIA's expertise in fixing elections and instigating coups. Or at least making things uncomfortable for people they don't like.

But this may not be necessary due to neocon flubbing and the pathological inability to not tell big whopper lies. It now appears the media considers them fair game as Bush meanders toward the election.

However, the more desperate the neocons become, the more dangerous and wigged out they are.

No way are they going down in November, not after four years of hard work on the Greater Israel and Big Oil scheme, a plan more than a decade in the making.

Look forward to an October surprise.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html . Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire, is now available from Dandelion Books.

He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com

 

Weekend Edition Features for February 20 / 22, 2004

Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry: He's Peaking Already!

Derek Seidman
Chasing Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!

Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem

Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops

Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq

John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People

Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary

Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq

Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and Hypocrisy

Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back

Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala

Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle

Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights Act?

David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons

Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget

David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This

Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics

Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert

Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique

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