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Today's
Stories
October
1, 2003
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
Recent
Stories
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
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
Click Here
for More Stories.
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October
1, 2003
Soldiers in a Cage
Shooting
a Tiger
By SHYAM OBEROI
"The owner was furious, but he was
only an Indian and could do nothing...Among the Europeans opinion
was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men
said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie...And
afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it
put me legally in the right."
George Orwell
On September 20th an unidentified American soldier
shot dead the rare Bengal tiger in the Bagdad zoo. In an interview
with AFP, the zoo's curator, Adel Salman Musa, said it happened
like this:
"One of the soldiers, who the Iraqi
police said had drunk a lot, went into the cage against the advice
of his colleagues and tried to feed the animal."
It was at this point, according to Lieutenant
George Krivo, "the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq,"
that "the tiger then engaged the soldier's arm."[1]
Three days later, soldiers from the 82nd
Airborne Division, attacked a farm in al-Jisr in the middle of
the night, killing three farmers and wounding three others, including
two children. The surviving members of the family sleeping in
the farmhouse told The Guardian that the soldiers "opened
up a devastating barrage of gunfire lasting for at least an hour."
Eventually the shooting stopped, the
soldiers pulled back and then they called in the air strike.
At least seven missiles were fired but only one hit the house,
tearing through the ceiling of an unoccupied storeroom.
In Bagdad, military spokesman Nicole
Thompson later stated that the soldiers had only fired after
being fired upon by "unknown forces."[2]
* * *
One of the more remarkable transformations
in American public life over the past twenty five years is how
the military has evolved from a corrupt, bloated, inefficient
bureaucracy--those thousand dollar toilet seats--to the institution
that Americans claim to have more faith in that any other. In
the most recent Harris poll, 62% of respondents said they had
a "great deal of confidence" in the Military; more
than the White House (40%); more than Organized Religion (19%);
more than the Press (15%).[3] Unsurprising when one considers
that for the past twenty five years the military has been able
to repeatedly display its overwhelming force in a series of quick,
painless, relatively bloodless campaigns: Granada, Kosovo, Iraq
(part I), Afghanistan. Has not, in other words, had to prove
itself in anything like a seemingly indefinite occupation in
which it was under almost-constant attack.
So while it may be too soon to know whether
or not the occupation of Iraq will crumble into "quagmire,"
this is certain: the last time the American public got to see
its soldiers in this kind of action, they were fighting a similarly
shadowy guerilla war, in a similarly far-away place, for similarly
inscrutable reasons, with similarly disproportionate force.
* * *
My generation is too young to remember
Vietnam, yet its memory continues to linger in popular imagination,
in cultural totems: Kent State; the Tet Offensive; Jane Fonda;
the smell of napalm in the morning. We remember, or think we
remember, former soldiers, like John Kerry, protesting the war
by throwing away their medals. We remember, or think we remember,
young woman greeting the return of other soldiers, less contrite:
spitting in their faces, scratching at their eyes, calling them
"baby killers."
* * *
In a similar Harris poll, conducted in
1966, confidence in the Military was at 61%. By 1971 it had dropped
to 27%.
* * *
We've been told, more than once, that
the United States has the greatest military force in the whole
glorious history of the entire world since the dawn of creation.
But I believe that a distinction has to be made between this
military's technological superiority (unquestionable) and the
character of its troops. This is a distinction that few seem
willing to raise, let along honestly discuss. These days, any
one even tempted to criticize the military finds himself compelled
to offer the usual caveats: that one is cognizant of the enormous
pressures that the soldier in the field faces; that one understand
how easy it is to decry the policy of "shoot first and ask
questions later" when one is sitting in a place thousands
of miles away where no one is shooting. True enough. Yet it is
curious how seldom this kind of sympathetic consideration is
extended to, say, politicians, or spies, or aid workers, or engineers,
or just about anyone else in, around, or involved with Iraq.
Commentators of all political stripes, both mainstream and backwater,
show no such deference towards other groups in which they are
similarly inexperienced: the Administration, the French, the
Provisional Authority, the UN, the CIA, Haliburton. But on the
issue of the military's conduct in Iraq, even the war's harshest
critics are conspicuously silent. Are, if anything, mostly sympathetic:
"Stretched Thin, Lied to & Mistreated," as a recent
cover of The Nation would have it. Perhaps this consideration
is due to the fact that, unlike the politician, the soldier must
daily make split-second decisions which can cost him his life.
Perhaps it comes from an unmentionable sense that he is doing
a job that few would want and most would do their best to avoid.
But if, as in Vietnam, this occupation continues to drag on,
if more and more civilians are killed, and in ways that seem
increasingly reckless, increasingly wanton, this question will
have to be asked: do the dangers of occupation and the perfidy
of politicians absolve the soldier in the field from all responsibility?
Does it mean that, no matter the situation, his self-preservation
automatically trumps any sort of reasonable expectation of restraint,
or common sense?
* * *
From 1922 to 1927 George Orwell got to
experience at first-hand the kind of moral displacement caused
by Empire. "I was young," he later admitted in his
classic essay 'Shooting an Elephant,' "and ill-educated
and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that
is imposed on every Englishman in the East." During those
five years, Orwell served as a police officer in the place that
used to be known as Burma. What most perplexed him was that while
he was secretly sympathetic to the Burmese, and antipathetic
to all the trapping of British sahib culture, as a member of
the ruling class he was automatically despised by the natives,
so much so that he ended up despising them in turn. This tension,
he discovered, made him act in ways he couldn't recognize, or
understand. "All I knew was that I was stuck between my
hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited
little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part
of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny...with
another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would
be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts." "Feelings
like these," he concluded, "are the normal by-products
of imperialism."
* * *
We know, now, that this is a war of volition:
there are no weapons; there was no "imminent threat";
there never has been any credible link between Saddam Hussein
and al-Qa'ida. "Against the advice of his colleagues,"
the soldier has gone into the cage. The tiger attacks.
Shyam Oberoi lives
in New York.
[1] AFP, "U.S. Soldier Kills Tiger
at Baghdad Zoo," Sept. 21, 2003.
[2] Rory McCarthy, "Iraq: the reality
and rhetoric," The Guardian, Sept. 27, 2003.
[3] See http://www.harrisinteractive.com/
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
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