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Today's
Stories
December 1, 2003
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
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
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
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.
|
December
1, 2003
Bush's Cherry-picked
Reporters
Wagging
the Media
By WAYNE MADSEN
The consequence of the Bush White House's cutting
a secret deal with cherry picked reporters in the White House
press pool was predictable. By cutting out editors and bureau
chiefs from the reporting process, one of the first news reports
about President Bush's secret trip to Baghdad, by Mike Allen
of The Washington Post, one of the few reporters invited to fly
on board Air Force One and with the strict provision he could
not tell his editor or bureau chief in Washington, muddied the
waters for people anxious for details about the trip. Allen's
report, titled, "Flight to Baghdad: Untold Story,"
stated, "A little after 5 am Baghdad time, about 10 hours
after takeoff from Andrews, the cabin lights were turned off
and all the shades were down. Twenty minutes later, we touched
down in Baghdad." The story was run in the Friday, November
29 print edition of the Post, on the Post's web site, and by
the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post wire service. Soon, the
5 am arrival time was being carried in print editions and on
the web around the world and the United States in such papers
as the Buffalo News, Tacoma News Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Sydney
Morning Herald, Melbourne Age, and The Telegraph of Calcutta.
The "Untold Story" that the plane landed at 5:20 am
and not pm, as now seems to be the case, was the first record
of events hundreds of thousands of Americans and those abroad
would initially read.
Preliminary details from Air Force concerning
the trip were spotty at best, with no mention made on Thanksgiving
Day about various takeoff and landing times. All we knew was
that Bush quickly snuck in and out of Baghdad for a meal with
the troops without being detected by Iraqi insurgents armed with
portable surface-to-air missiles. Allen's report was the first
to give any details about the itinerary but he gave the false
impression that Air Force One touched down in Baghdad at o'dark
thirty in the morning, an hour and a half before sunrise in the
Iraqi capital. Allen later told CNN that none of the on-board
pool reporters were able to file their stories until Air Force
One got above 10,000 feet. In the same interview, he stated that
the reporters were not permitted to file until Air Force One
had cleared "airspace." If he meant Iraqi airspace,
it is doubtful that the aircraft would have been flying in Iraqi
airspace at 10,000 feet and then ascended over Syria or Turkey.
More inconsistencies in a story so full of holes it could pass
for a piece of Swiss cheese.
In an age of instantaneous news from
the Internet and cable TV, the public and the media are more
reliant on first hand accounts of events. The fact that the Post's
editors were cut out from the secret trip to Baghdad practically
guaranteed that an erroneous 5:20 am Baghdad time account would
have crept into the Post's early morning edition. A number of
people who read the Post print edition Friday morning were also
given the impression that there was an early morning landing
and that Bush was serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops in
the morning. And they would stay confused. Outrageously, by Sunday,
November 30, the Post still had not corrected its error.
The only correction it published in its
Sunday, November 30 edition was the following less-than-critical
one: "The headline "Carving the Bird" was inadvertently
omitted from the crossword puzzle in the Nov. 23 Magazine."
But the bird carving that the Post first indicated took place
in the wee hours of the morning at the Bob Hope Dining Facility
at Baghdad airport went uncorrected.
Phil Taubman, the New York Time's Washington
bureau chief, expressed the distaste for this kind of White House
stealth reporting when he told the Post's media critic, Howard
Kurtz, that when the White House "decided to do a stealth
trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable."
Indeed, including corrupted information in initial filings.
That kind of reporting is a far cry from
what Bush told his hand selected press agents on board Air Force
One during the trip back from Baghdad, "You're a credit
to your nation, a credit to your profession."
Then there is the very odd time line
for the visit that CNN, which was not included on the press pool
manifest, filed on Wednesday, November 26, the day before the
actual landing in Baghdad. The time line, retrieved from Nexis,
with a load date of November 28, contains the departure times
from Waco, Texas and Andrews Air Force Base. Fair enough. That
could have been filed on the 26th, although it would have been
rather late, 11:06 pm EST. But the CNN report also contains the
landing time in Baghdad (5:31 pm Baghdad time) and the departure
time (8:00 pm Baghdad time). Was the White House visit so carefully
scripted, the arrival and departure times in Baghdad were known
a day in advance? Was it another typo on the date? Did the White
House advance planners provide the time line to CNN? A day before
when the actual arrival and departure times would not have been
easily known? Maybe. But the following cannot be explained so
easily. In the CNN report filed on November 26, the president
is quoted telling the reporters on Thursday night, November 27,
after takeoff from Baghdad, "I was fully prepared to turn
this baby around and come home," he says. "Three hours
out, I checked with our Secret Service and checked with the people
on the ground. They assured me that we still had a tight hold
on the information." Incredible, CNN was told the day before
what the President would tell reporters the next day? More inconsistencies.
Or possibly, clairvoyants are once again employed by the White
House staff.
Fox News, the only TV news crew permitted
to fly with Bush, initially reported on Thanksgiving Day that
Air Force One flew across the Atlantic and Europe during total
darkness and in total radio silence. Of course, that also gave
the impression that the plane must have left Washington much
earlier than later reported in order to give it the cover of
darkness over the normally busy daytime air corridors of Europe.
It was later reported that a British Airways pilot radioed Air
Force One and asked whether he was, in fact, seeing the presidential
plane whizzing by. We were told that Air Force One responded
to the pilot by claiming it was a much smaller Gulfstream 5 executive
jet, to which the British pilot replied, "Oh." Of course,
by radioing the British plane, which now appears to have been
a phantom, the Air Force One broke the radio silence originally
reported by Fox News. But Fox reports and you'll have to decide.
According to a Reuters report from Crawford,
Texas, British Airways later denied any such encounter with one
of its planes, stating that if it occurred, company regulations
required a report be filed. No such report was filed.
A 5:30 pm landing in Baghdad would have
put Air Force One over very crowded air corridors in Europe at
the height of the evening business "rush hour" into
such busy airports as Heathrow, Frankfurt and Charles DeGaulle.
But we were told by the White House that only a British Airways
pilot saw the plane, either during total darkness or during daylight
hours, maybe over the Atlantic or maybe not. No one has come
forward to report the encounter as required by British Airway's
own regulations. On the other hand, no Lufthansa, Air France,
Aeroflot, Sabena, Olympia, or Turkish Airlines pilots saw the
plane with its military escort. Perhaps only the airlines of
the "coalition of the willing" countries were trustworthy
enough to spot the plane. Now it appears that no other pilot
saw Air Force One en route to Iraq.
Agence France Presse also reported from
Crawford that hours after Air Force One landed in Texas, a local
tourist shop was selling pins depicting the encounter between
Air Force One and a British Airways plane. Ironically, the image
of Air Force One, according to the French wire service, is shown
flying into the sunset, something that only happened if it flew
west, not east. Unless it was flying into sunrise. Did Allen
make a typo in his report of a morning landing? Not if the crack
souvenir makers in Crawford are to be believed.
The American public was also told that
Air Force One made a difficult "cork screw" landing
in Baghdad. The Post's Allen later reported that the plane "touched
down in swift abrupt landing." He later reported the plane
made "a dramatic corkscrew landing." The Dallas Morning
News Matt Stiles reported, "The plane made an abrupt descent
into Baghdad International Airport." An abrupt descent is
not the same as a complicated corkscrew landing. More inconsistencies.
We all saw the press being co-opted by
providing "embedded" reporters with military units
during the invasion of Iraq. And we were treated to a real life
Hollywood-style rendition of "Saving Private Lynch,"
the Special Forces "rescue" of Jessica Lynch from an
Iraqi hospital where she was taken after she was injured in a
vehicle accident. Lynch later told ABC News that she felt "used"
by the administration and refuted earlier U.S. military reports
that she was tortured. The Central Command's press center in
Qatar was designed by a Hollywood set designer giving the false
impression that the interior of a warehouse was a desert command
tent on the battlefront. It would appear that the Bush White
House is a real life version of the movie, "Wag the Dog."
According to a Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer, before
Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln, he was authorized to
have locked up in the brig any sailor deemed "unstable"
during the duration of the presidential visit. Were the troops
Bush served dinner to on Thanksgiving Day similarly vetted?
Bush's emcee for the Baghdad stopover,
L. Paul Bremer, who had been saying for months that the security
situation in Baghdad was improving, was criticized by his predecessor
as Iraqi pro-consul, retired General Jay Garner. The general
told the BBC it was a mistake for Bremer to disband the Iraqi
army and he indicated that his warnings about future destabilization
in Iraq caused problems for him with the highest levels in the
administration, meaning either Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.
More proof of Bush's smoke and mirrors tactics.
After all the Bush administration's tall
tales about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, his links to
Al Qaeda, Iraq's desire to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger,
Britain's "dodgy dossier," the "suicides"
of Dr. David Kelly and State Department intelligence analyst
John Kokal, Jessica Lynch's dramatic "rescue," "Mission
Accomplished" carrier landings, Valerie Plame Wilson's "non-importance"
to the CIA's covert operations, Cuba's biological weapons, Syria's
support for Iraqi insurgents, the threat of Iran's nuclear arsenal,
North Korea's "non-threatening" nuclear arsenal, Saudi
Arabia's support in the war on terrorism, Pakistan's assistance
in stamping out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the "coalition
of the willing," everyone, including Mike Allen, his and
other newspaper editors and bureau chiefs, broadcast news anchors,
can be forgiven if they are confused about what they are being
fed by the White House on a daily basis.
The most germane quote is from Morpheus
in The Matrix:
"You take the blue pill--the story
ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to
believe. You take the red pill--you stay in Wonderland and I
show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. "
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's
Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 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
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