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Today's
Stories
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
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
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
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
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?
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.
|
October
18 / 19, 2003
Israel's Raid on Syria
Stage
Four in the Terror War
By
GARY LEUPP
"I made it very clear to the prime
minister, like I have consistently done, that Israel's got a
right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained
in defending the homeland."
President Bush, summarizing his conversation with Ariel Sharon
after the Israeli attack on Syria, Oct. 6
"I am happy to see the message
was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it
is the first of many such messages."
Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, in Israel, Oct. 14
"We tolerate nuclear weapons in
Israel for the same reason we tolerate them in Britain and France.
We don't regard Israel as a threat."
A high-ranking administration official, identified by the Guardian
as leading neocon John Bolton
On Sunday (October 12) the Los Angeles Times
reported that Israeli and American officials had "admitted
collaborating to deploy US-supplied Harpoon cruise missiles armed
with nuclear warheads in Israel's fleet of Dolphin-class submarines,
giving the Middle East's only nuclear power the ability to strike
at any of its Arab neighbors." Israeli officials publicly
dismissed the story, saying that it was technically
impossible to modify submarine-based missiles to carry nuclear
warheads. Whether or not such deployment is in fact possible,
the report is significant for what it tells us about current
thinking in Washington about Israel as a (nuclear) partner in
the expanding Terror War.
Terror War, Stage
I: Target al-Qaeda
It seems to me that the "War on
Terrorism" has gone through three distinct stages. The first
began immediately after 9-11, as Bush declared that war, understood
by most people to target al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in
Afghanistan. Victory was swift; the Taliban collapsed within
weeks, and a Northern Alliance-dominated regime (a continuation
of that which had been easily toppled by the Taliban five years
earlier) was installed in December. Officially, Afghanistan was
liberated, the Taliban defeated, al-Qaeda "on the run."
Almost two years later, we find that conditions haven't much
changed for most Afghans; quarreling warlords govern the country;
the security situation for women and girls has deteriorated;
the Talibs are resurgent; al-Qaeda remains active, if in unknown
numbers, along the unpoliceable border with Pakistan; Osama bin-Laden
probably remains at large; promised international reconstruction
aid is slow in coming. But one can say that the basic operational
objectives in response to the 9-11 attack were met.
Terror War, Stage
II: Target Iraq
Stage Two began with President Bush's
remarkable State of the Union address January 29, 2002. Having
declared victory in Afghanistan (but mentioning al-Qaeda only
in passing and bin-Laden not at all), Bush abruptly changed
the subject and targeted the "Axis of Evil," including
Iraq, in the burgeoning War on Terrorism. This puzzled and stunned
the world. European foreign ministers suspected Bush had misspoken,
but no; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, asked at
a Munich conference of European foreign ministers February 2
what "Axis of Evil" meant, merely replied: "Countries
must make a choice." The world really began to worry, and
the worries deepened as persons in and around the administration
sought ways to link Iraq with 9-11 in order to acquire international,
and more importantly, domestic support for war. Iraqi anthrax,
Prague meeting, Zarqawi's hospitalization in Baghdad, al-Qaeda
training in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction that could be given
to terrorists. None of it held water, as the CIA knew better
than anybody; their hesitation to doctor evidence infuriated
the Defense Department so much that the latter sidelined the
Agency in favor of their own secretive intelligence-spinning
Office of Special Plans. The State and Defense Departments were
at loggerheads, as to some extent they remain.
Terror War, Stage
III: Target Arafat
Stage Three commenced with another
Bush speech, in the Rose Garden, June 24, 2002. This was
his long-awaited statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict,
following his April comment, to reporters in the Oval Office,
"I do believe Ariel Sharon is a man of peace." That
statement was made in the context of a ferocious Israeli attack
on West Bank cities and Colin Powell's efforts to pursue a (relatively)
balanced policy towards the two sides. Powell had obviously been
sidelined by the most pro-Likud figures in the administration.
Bush reiterated his earlier stated support for a Palestinian
state (a sop, many felt, to Arab and Muslim opinion irritated
by the bombing of Afghanistan and preparations for war against
Iraq.) But he made no effort to appear even-handed, denouncing
anti-Israel "terrorism" as the principle problem in
the Middle East, and mentioning specifically Hamas, Islamic Jihad,
the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah, and Syria. Indirectly
attacking Yassir Arafat, he called for "new leadership"
in the Palestinian Authority, implying that the existing leadership
(as Sharon insisted) was pro-terrorist.
Sharon was delighted; Bush had publicly
scolded him in the past about re-occupying Palestinian cities,
but now he was basking in the glow of U.S. support. His efforts
were embraced as an honorable component of the anomalous Terror
War which many Americans tended to see (and still see) as an
"us versus them Arabs" proposition. Jerusalem Post
reporter David
Horowitz told National Public Radio that the Likud government
could have written the Rose Garden speech. But again, much of
the world was troubled. It was not surprising that the U.S. president
would condemn the above-named groups; they
had long been on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
Nor surprising, by this point, that Bush should attempt to have
Americans subliminally link those groups, most of which have
no known or likely link to al-Qaeda, with the latter organization.
He was already linking bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein, which didn't
make any sense. The surprising thing was that he would so arrogantly
dictate to the Palestinian Authority, which the U.S. had helped
establish a decade earlier, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority,
and demand that it depose Arafat as the price for future support.
The ties between the U.S. and Israel had never been closer; and
now Sharon, Man of Peace, was clearly a key U.S. ally in a marginless
war targeting the democratically-elected Palestinian leadership
right alongside Saddam, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Abu Sayyaf,
etc.
Sharon had always interpreted the 1994
Oslo "land for peace" framework to mean "peace
for land." That is, as soon as all violent resistance ends
(which Sharon knows is not going to happen), then he'll
implement the Palestinian state part of the agreement. Meanwhile
the settlements expand, the "fence" stakes out additional
Israeli territory on the West Bank, and support
for the expulsion of all Palestinians into Jordan mounts within
the Israeli and U.S.
political establishments. Bush since his speech has been
passive on the issue of Palestinian statehood, his "roadmap
to peace" leading (as most paying attention see) to a dead
end.
Within the Bush administration, the forces
most friendly to the ruling Likud Party in Israel had come to
dominate Middle East policy. These included Douglas Feith, Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy, and Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard
Perle, who working as consultants to Israel's Likud government
in 1996, authored with five others a paper entitled "A
Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm."
This document, which calls for destroying Saddam's regime, and
destabilizing Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran to secure
the Israeli "realm," appears to guide current Bush
administration thinking. In his book Winning Modern Wars, and
in his interview in the October 16 Rolling Stone,
Gen. Wesley Clark states that a senior U.S. military officer
told him in the Pentagon as early as November 2001 that the administration
planned, following the invasion of Iraq, to conduct campaigns
throughout the Middle East and beyond. "Oh yes, sir, not
only is it Afghanistan. There's a list of countries. We're not
that good at fighting terrorists, so we're going after states:
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Iran. There's a five-year
plan." This strategy at some point has to require close
cooperation with Israel.
After the April speech, amidst a climate
on ongoing friction between the State Department and Defense
Department, the administration agreed to seek U.N. authorization
for an Iraq attack, to follow a return of weapons inspectors
should inspections fail. Rumsfeld effectively insured their failure,
sabotaging the best efforts of Hans Blix to conduct scientific
searches, insisting that they would find nothing, because the
WMDs would be so well-hidden. Unconcerned about the near-universal
objection to a U.S. attack on Iraq, Washington disparaged the
French and German leaders, the Turkish Parliament, Arab governments
and global public opinion. While (as if to invite as much global
scorn as possible) Congressional cafeterias renamed "french
fries" "freedom fries;" and Fox Channel's fairly
unbalanced Bill O'Reilly pronounced France an "enemy"
whose products should be boycotted by loyal Americans; Richard
Perle discussed ways to "contain" longtime European
allies. With the significant material support of only one
ally, Britain (and that support opposed by the great majority
of Britons), Bush went to war March 20, and was able to declare
victory over the badly-equipped, disorganized Iraqi army May
1. Bush's approval rate was 65%.
Almost immediately the Iraq victory soured.
Having lost perhaps 30,000 troops (many of them conscript teenage
boys) and about 10,000 civilians in the war, and having seen
their already sanctions-crippled infrastructure destroyed by
the U.S. attack, Iraqis did not welcome the occupation with the
expected enthusiasm. The "embedded" media dutifully
reported staged jubilation scenes as indications of Iraq's "liberation."
But soon reality sunk in. Today the mainstream press routinely
reports on the depth and complexity of resistance to occupation,
and notes (as do official intelligence reports) that the
constant infliction of "collateral damage" on Iraqi
families is producing ever more coordinated and violent response.
The Iraq war is in a second phase: the
guerrilla one.
The war planners had predicted a quick
withdrawal of the bulk of U.S. troops; instead, they are maintaining
a force at about 130,000 and are hopelessly overextended. The
soldiers are demoralized; they know they were lied to. The justifications
for war have all fallen apart. The press has become more questioning,
and the
Plame Affair has done the Bushites much damage, involving,
as it does, a major lie used as justification for the war; exposure
of the rift between professional intelligence agencies and the
disinformation-promoting warmongers; and exposure of the slimy
character of officials who would even violate laws about protection
of intelligence operatives to vent their anger on those who expose
their lies.
Meanwhile since about April, numerous
articles have appeared exposing the role of the neocons in all
this.
A key suspect in the Plame leak (Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Cheney's chief of staff)
ranks prominently among these, and if he goes down, they are
all in trouble. If the upper tier of the Bush administration
is largely of oil-baron background (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice),
the second level is these "neoconservatives" who combine
a conservative domestic agenda with an activist, imperialist
foreign policy that seeks to take advantage of the U.S.'s emergence
as the lone post-Cold War superpower. The neocons seek a "New American Century"
in which the U.S. military enjoys "full
spectrum dominance" and makes use of "pre-emptive"
strikes against potential rivals. Including Feith and Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security John Bolton, and Elliott Abrams (director
of the National Security Council's Office for Near East Affairs)
they lay great emphasis upon the refashioning of the Middle East
to insure the security of Israel. Weakened by the unexpected
difficulties in their pet project---the conquest of Iraq---they
remain powerful and continue to pursue their Middle East regime-change
program.
The Los Angeles Times article
about the Harpoon cruise missiles cited at the top of this column
should be read in this light. According to it, a high-ranking
administration official stated that "We tolerate nuclear
weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate them in Britain
and France. We don't regard Israel as a threat." The Guardian
reporting on the story adds: "Despite the anonymity
of the source, the sentiment is almost identical to that of the
John Bolton, who told British journalists last week that America
was not interested in taking Israel to task for its continuing
development of nuclear weapons because it was not a 'threat'
to the United States. Even if Bolton was not one of the sources
for the story, his comments, coming on top of that of the two
other sources, suggest the degree to which senior members of
the
Bush administration can now not even be bothered to hide America's
assistance and encouragement for Israel's nuclear programme."
(Bolton, aside from serving in the State
Department has served as a lawyer for the Agency for International
Development, held posts in the American Enterprise Institute
and the Heritage Foundation, and served on the Advisory Board
of the super-hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Religious affiliation unclear, he is very close to Israeli authorities,
whom according to Ha'aretz Daily he told February 17 of
this year, "It will be necessary to deal with threats from
Syria, Iran and North Korea" after the second Iraq War.
Presumably he meant: both the U.S. and Israel together.)
Terror War, Stage
IV: Target Syria (with Israel's Help)
Now this very same Bolton made a presentation
to Congress September 16 laying out the case for sanctions against
Syria. This may well have inaugurated Stage Four in the Terror
War. He was supposed to testify in July, but the CIA offered
so many objections to his prepared testimony, as the Agency has
objected to so much of the "intelligence" coming out
of the neocon-dominated Defense Department (feeling it skewed
to promote a particular policy line), that his
appearance was delayed several months. Once on stage he
presented several reasons why the U.S. should impose sanctions
against Syria. Syria occupies Lebanon. (Occupation, in
this day and age? How awful!) Syria has weapons of mass destruction
programs. (It maintains a stockpile of sarin, and appears to
be trying to develop more toxic nerve agents. It has sought chemical
weapons-related precursors and expertise from foreign sources.
It has an agreement on "nuclear cooperation" with Russia.
But other Arab countries, including Egypt, second largest recipient
of U.S. aid, also
have biological or chemical warfare programs. And Syria
argues it needs a deterrent to Israel's 100-200 nukes.)
Bolton intimated that Iraq's missing
WMDs might have been skirted over the border to Syria (with whom
its relations have not been friendly, and which supported Iran
in the Iran-Iraq War.) It will be interesting to see how this
one plays out. In December 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon stated, "We
are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological
weapons into Syria." . ("We" meaning the ever-reliable
Mossad?) After the Bush-Blair summit on April 8, 2003, an unnamed
"Bush administration official" said: "Significant
equipment, assets and perhaps even expertise was transferred,
the first signs of which appeared in August or September 2002.
It is quite possible that Iraqi nuclear scientists went to Syria
and that Saddam's regime may retain part of its army there. .
. . Satellite photographs revealed heavily guarded convoys moving
from Iraq to Syria last year." Leo Strauss disciple Wolfowitz
characteristically leaves the matter tantalizingly possible;
he's said "we just don't know." (Which means: we
can make it up, if it serves our purposes, just like we did with
Iraq.)
Syria, Bolton avers, "allows"
fighters who want to engage U.S. forces in Iraq to cross its
porous 400-mile border. (President al-Assad has told Colin Powell
it's impossible to police that border, but urges the U.S.
to do so now that it's occupying Iraq.) Syria is harboring terrorists
such as members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah. (Syria
says members do reside in Syria, and have press offices there,
but do not have training camps, and that Damascus gives no "operational
support" to the listed organizations. And of course the
Syrians contest the U.S. State Department's definition of "terrorist,"
as do lots of reasonable people.) It is clear that the Bush
administration is building its case against Syria, just as it
did against Iraq, packaging "intelligence" to justify
a course of action already chosen.
On October 5, two weeks after Bolton's
report, as the press indicated that Congress would adopt sanctions
against Syria, Israel bombed what it called a "terrorist
training camp" in Syria ten miles north of Damascus. Damascus
said the camp had been abandoned seven years ago. Apparently
there were no casualties, and the Syrian response was restrained.
There is some evidence that the Syrians are puzzled by the attack,
which was (officially) in retaliation for a suicide bomb attack
in Haifa which killed 21 people, and for which the Palestinian
group Islamic Jihad had taken responsibility. They must assume
it was approved by the U.S. While the governments of the U.K.,
Germany, France, and Spain all said it was "unacceptable,"
the Bush administration said it was just fine, because (in the
words of U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte) Syria "is
on the wrong side in the war on terrorism." (Compare
the reaction of the Reagan administration in 1981, when Israel
attacked Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor. Then the U.S. joined
the rest of the world in condemning the attack. Nowadays Israel
threatens to bomb the Iranian Bushehr reactor. Should that happen
while this regime remains in power, expect Bushite support and
praise.) Bush declared that Sharon must "defend the homeland;"
he might as well have said "secure the realm." Bush's
stance receives bipartisan support in Congress: "The training
of terrorists in terrorist camps in Syria is an outrageous affront
to the civilized world," says Rep. Tom Lantos, ranking Democrat
on the House Committee on Foreign Relations. As the "Syria
Accountability Act " was passed, 398-5, by the House of
Representatives Oct. 16, the Voice of America reported:
[House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay said
that should send an unmistakable message to Syria. "We will
send a very clear message to President Assad and his fellow travelers
along the 'axis of evil.' The United States will not tolerate
terrorism, its perpetrators or its sponsors," he says. "And
our warnings are not to be ignored."
The White House has said it is waiting
to see the final language of the Syria Accountability Act once
it emerges from Congress. But the administration is clearly on
board now in support of the legislation, a White House spokesman
saying again just last week that Syria "remains on the wrong
side of the war on terror."
The Israeli foreign minister immediately
declared he was "very
happy" with the vote.
"Wrong side in the war on terror."
But
Syria has cooperated extensively in the efforts against al-Qaeda.
What is the U.S. trying to say, by supporting the first such
strike by Israel against Syria in 30 years? (Why now,
when Palestinian militant groups have been active in Syria, often
more significantly than now, for a long time?) Is Damascus supposed
to congratulate the U.S. on invading and occupying a neighboring
Arab country? (Actually, they just, reluctantly, voted to support
the U.S.-authored resolution to approve the occupation.) Is
it expected to somehow prevent all supporters of the Iraqi resistance
from crossing its vast border? Is it supposed to lay down its
(perfectly legal) guard while Israel maintains its WMD arsenal?
Is it supposed to lock up or turn over to Israeli justice all
Palestinian militants resident in the country? Already the Bush
administration has presented such demands (which some might find
unreasonable and contrary to the "American" principle
of press freedom) as insisting that Syria close down Palestinian
press offices, and Syria,
out of fear, has partly complied.
What,
might the Syrians be thinking, does it take to satisfy these
people, and prevent them from attacking us, if they've already
made up their minds to do so, and they keep raising the bar?
"Everything's Possible Syria
is Weak."
Expect the charges against Syria to proliferate;
Haaretz reports that there are $ 3 billion in Iraqi assets
in Syrian government-owned banks that may be "financing
terror." . And the saber rattling, both from Israel
(which threatens another strike), and U.S. officials. On October
14, super-hawk, Defense Policy Board member, and member of Jerusalem
Post board of directors Richard Perle told an applauding
audience of Jewish and Christian "analysts and politicians
opposed to conceding a Palestinian state" that he was "happy
to see the message [that] was delivered to Syria by the Israeli
air force, and I
hope it is the first of many such messages." (Repeat:
he is happy about Israel bombing Syria, and hopes Israel
sends many more such messages! And this warmongering,
habitual prevaricator and high-profile Iraq war advocate
regularly has the president's ear.) Perle was quoted the next
day in the Jerusalem Post as stating: "President
Bush transformed the American approach to terrorism on Sept.
11, 2001, when he said he will not distinguish between terrorists
and the states who harbor them. I was happy to see that Israel
has now [sic] taken a similar step in responding to acts of terror
that originate in Lebanese territory by going to the rulers of
Lebanon in Damascus." When asked whether this would include
possible U.S. military action against Syria, he said: "Everything's
possible," adding that despite heavy commitments elsewhere,
it would be easy to commit U.S. forces to Syria too, because
"Syria
is militarily very weak."
Generally the ideas of the Prince of
Darkness are in sync with those of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. While
it's hard to believe this gang would be so stupid and reckless
as to attack Syria at this point, given the Iraq imbroglio and
mounting antiwar sentiment at home, it is, of course,
part of their New
American Century game plan.
As Bush's star declines, they may become
desperate to achieve their world-transforming goals before the
next presidential election. As they used to say of Saddam: We
must not assume that we are dealing with rational people here.
They think in apocalyptic terms, certain they stand on the side
of Good, no matter what happens on this fragile planet as a result
of their actions. ("John Bolton," said Jesse Helms
a few years ago, "is the kind of man with whom I would want
to stand at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final
battle between good and evil." Salon, July 16, 2003).
In their peculiar rationality, they say
of Sharon: "He is a man of peace." And in the epoch
struggle of Good vs. Evil, he is now scheduled to play a greater
role. While Israel has stood on the sidelines during the Afghan
and Iraqi campaigns, concentrating on the Palestinian "problem"
with unprecedented U.S. support, it has fired the first shots
in
what I'm suggesting will become Stage
Four of the Terror War. I think it unlikely that Israel could
or wants to occupy Syria, the way the U.S. is occupying
Iraq (although Israel did occupy about 10% of Lebanese territory
for 22 years and has occupied Syria's Golan Heights since 1977).
But the Sharon government might help the U.S. bring down a regime,
with or without the above-mentioned U.S.-supplied cruise missiles
armed with nuclear warheads aboard Israeli submarines, and bring
more neocons dreams into perverse fruition. Whether or not U.S.
troops will indeed be in Damascus soon (as Perle imagines), I
don't know. I do think that will have a lot to do with the strength
of the antiwar movement, resistance among the GIs, the vagaries
of electoral politics within this system (imperialist not by
recent fluke but for over a century by definition), and
the general progress of reason.
The neocons are not wholly in charge
in Washington, and despite what some want to believe, Bush is
not driven primarily either by the neocons or Israel's
interests. Israel is the junior partner, advantaged at present
by U.S. policy that principally serves U.S. corporate, military
and geopolitical goals. Control of Southwest Asia, a vulnerable
and turbulent but resource-rich region, will give Washington
enormous leverage over longstanding allies it now wants to "contain,"
and over any future rivals. In Bush's Terror War so far, Israel
has played a bit part. One would think the Bushites would want
to keep it that way, and given the historical antipathies, just
ask Israel to stand aside and not complicate U.S. ambitions in
the region. But
again, one mustn't assume that they're acting rationally even
in their own imperialist interests.
With Syria in the cross hairs, Israel
will probably achieve an expanded role in this terrible war.
The Prince of Darkness, and some of his colleagues, plainly want
it to, even if some in the administration might be rolling their
eyes, considering early retirement, wondering how much stupider
U.S. policy can get. Undoubtedly al-Qaeda, the original foe of
9-11 with its own apocalyptic visions in mind, its
ranks now swollen by the Iraq invasion, wants this too.
Gary Leupp
is a professor of History at Tufts University and coordinator
of the Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
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