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Today's
Stories
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
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
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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November
14 / 23, 2003
The Words of War
From Warmakers and Warmongers
By SAUL LANDAU
George W. Bush's malapropism (the unintentional
misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar) no
longer makes me laugh. On November 2, Iraqis fired a surface
to air missile into a US helicopter, killing 15 and wounding
21 servicemen. Other military helicopters went down in the following
days. The GI death toll by November 7 had reached 32. Bush's
"Mission Accomplished" slogan was about as funny as
his taunting of the Iraqi resistance, "bring 'em on."
Then Bush declared that we should see
growing resistance to US occupation as a sign of success. This
White House verbiage came in response to the October 27 bombing
of several Baghdad police stations and Red Cross headquarters
in which 40 people died.
"The more successful we are on the
ground," W lectured, "the more these killers will react."
Bush as a dialectical thinker?
"The more progress we make on the
ground," he repeated, "the more free the Iraqis become,
the more electricity is available, the more kids that are going
to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they
can't stand the thought of a free society."
Taking him literally, I envisioned a
brightly lit Baghdad, with air conditioners humming, computers,
TV sets and microwaves all in full use and kids happily going
to school, while underground  Islamic killers receive orders from Saddam
Hussein's guerrilla chief.
Such flights of fancy derive from the
metaphors and symbols offered by men who have newly emerged as
wordsters. The unheralded haiku poet and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld illustrates the complexity incoherence? of Administration
policy.
"My impression," Rummy mused
on the war on terrorism in an October 16 memo, "is that
we have not yet made truly bold moves."
Were bombing, invading and occupying
Afghanistan and Iraq not acts of boldness? Would boldness mean
reinstating the draft and then invading and occupying North Africa,
Syria, Iran and Indonesia?
Rummy admits that "It is not possible
to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war
on terror." So, he concludes, "an alternative might
be to try to fashion a new institution either within DoD or elsewhere."
Designing a US style French foreign legion
by hiring mercenaries?
"Today, we lack metrics to know
if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we
capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists
every day than the madrassas [Muslim religious schools] and the
radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against
us?" Is this a beautiful mind at work? "Does the US
need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation
of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into
a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort
into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against
us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."
A poetic CPA?
"How do we stop those who are financing
the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that
the harder we work, the behinder we get'? ... Should we create
a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate
course?" The Ford Foundation opens new program offices in
Kabul?
Rummy might defer to the media muses
who aid and abet the war policy without having to raise their
proverbial rifles. NY Times liberal columnist Thomas Friedman
regularly advises Administration heavies on proper methods of
occupying a country. Friedman believes it imperative "to
install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world."
Indeed, the Bushies will blow an historic opportunity if they
screw up the occupation.
"Has the president's audacity in
waging such a revolutionary war outrun his ability to articulate
what it's about and to summon Americans for the sacrifices victory
will require?" asks Friedman. "Can the president really
be a successful radical liberal on Iraq, while being such a radical
conservative everywhere else refusing to dismiss one of his own
generals [reference to William Boykin's public comments] who
insults Islam, turning a deaf ear to hints of corruption infecting
the new Baghdad government as it's showered with aid dollars,
calling on reservists and their families to bear all the burdens
of war while slashing taxes for the rich, and undertaking the
world's biggest nation-building project with few real allies?"
Friedman raises doubts about Bush's ability
to fulfill the liberal imperial mission, after serving as the
equivalent of a public relations warmonger, he who advocates
or attempts to stir up war. Unlike Bush, who stressed US and
regional security concerns arising from Saddam's alleged WMDs
and ties to Al-Qaeda, Friedman argued that Saddam's brutality
toward his own people justified armed intervention, that the
Middle East in general needs democracy and that the United States
should pursue active and armed humanitarianism any and everywhere
in the world.
But Bush used the humanitarian argument
as window dressing for war in Iraq! He focused on security: WMD
and links to Al-Qaeda until US forces failed to discover either
the fabled weapons or the terrorist links.
Friedman shares with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz and the other wordy hawks, the distinction of not having
fought in a war. They all excel in the art of exhorting others
to fight and in lecturing Iraqis and other unenlightened people
on the virtues of western democracy and law (which Bush, Blair
and the lesser partners violated by invading Iraq and about which
the liberal missionaries care not a fig). More important than
the opinionated advocates who seek others to fight their just
causes were the lies that masqueraded as news stories in the
daily media. Apart from "the Bush fan club posing as journalists
squad" at Fox, one NY Times reporter played a vital role
in buttressing the big lie.
The Times gave front page to Judith Miller's
repeated stories (before, during and after the war), which assured
the readers of America's newspaper of record that Saddam Hussein
had serious programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Times editors seemed un-phased by Miller's repeated references
to unnamed Iraqi scientists and Pentagon sources.
Indeed, the NY Times has yet to confess
its reporter's role in helping to start the war with Iraq and
then justifying the carnage. I discussed this with Alexander
Cockburn, co-editor of Counterpunch and long-time Nation columnist.
In his words Judith Miller was less of a reporter and more of
"a witting cheer-leader for war."
Instead, the Times continued to run Miller's
"we've found the weapons at last" stories before, during
and after the war, despite the facts that other journalists had
uncovered. Miller neither offered sources, places or specific
details about the supposed weapons, but she did present a sense
of certainty.
On September 8, 2002, following a Vice
President Dick Cheney offensive to promote the notion that Saddam
had nuclear weapons he might use against us, Miller wrote: "More
than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons
of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear
weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to
make an atomic bomb."
Miller cited an unnamed government source.
Then, she declared that Saddam had attempted to buy "specially
designed aluminum tubes." Unnamed experts said that these
pipes might serve as centrifuges to enrich uranium. Miller referred
to "hardliners" in the national security apparatus
who wanted action against Iraq because if we waited for definitive
proof of Saddam's nuclear program "the first sign of a smoking
gun may be a mushroom cloud."
One of Miller's key informants, Ahmad
Chalabi, an exiled Iraqi who heads the <U.S.-financed>
Iraqi National Congress and now is a key figure in Iraq's Governing
Council, had gained the confidence of Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz. Chalabi mouthed democracy in his fund-raising
appeals to the Pentagon. Neither Wolfy, his boss Rummy nor his
other supporter Cheney seemed concerned that in 1992 Jordanian
courts had convicted Chalabi of bank fraud in absentia and sentenced
him to 22 years in prison. Indeed, some US intelligence officials
saw him as beyond self-serving and less than reliable as a source.
But Judy Miller ran with him and the
NY Times ran Miller. Cockburn, writing in the August 18, 2003
Counterpunch characterized "Miller's major stories between
late 2001 and early summer, 2003," as a promotion for "disingenuous
lies. There were no secret biolabs under Saddam's palaces; no
nuclear factories across Iraq secretly working at full tilt.
A huge percentage of what Miller wrote was garbage, garbage that
powered the Bush administration's propaganda drive towards invasion."
Unlike the President's graceless words,
Miller in the Times made convincing arguments because readers
trust this establishment mainstay. Better a malapropist than
a wordsmith when it comes to leading the country into imperial
war! Or, does going to war require both kinds of demagogues?
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, has just been published
by Pluto Press. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 8 / 9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
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