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Today's
Stories
December 20 / 21, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
December 19, 2003
Elaine Cassel
Courts
Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution
Robert Fisk
Raid
on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back
Zoltan Grossman
The
Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis
Mike Whitney
Bush's
Afghan Highway to Nowhere
Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?
Gary Leupp
The
Neocon's Dream Memo
December 18, 2003
Ann Harrison
A
Landmark Victory for Medical Pot
John L. Hess
Catfish
Blues: The SOB's from Out of Town
Karyn Strickler
Ebola
is Good for You!
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Duryodhana
Dies
Harry Browne
Hail
Jim Hickey, the "Irish Hero" of the Colonial Occupation
of Iraq
Hammond Guthrie
Captured in Abasement
December 17, 2003
Robert Fisk
Saddam's
Cold Comforts
Gideon Levy
"Don't
Even Think About the Children"
Marjorie Cohn
The Fortuitous
Arrest of Saddam: a Pyrrhic Victory?
Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's
Last Act
December 16, 2003
Robert Fisk
Getting
Saddam...15 Years Too Late
Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam
in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain
John Halle
Matt
Gonzalez and Me
Josh Frank
The
Democrats and Saddam
Tariq Ali
Saddam
on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism
December 15, 2003
Robert Fisk
The Capture
of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War
Dave Lindorff
The
Saddam Dilemma
Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein
Norman Solomon
For
Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun
Patrick Cockburn
The
Capture of Saddam
Stew Albert
Joy to the World
December 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
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
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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Weekend
Edition
December 20 / 21, 2003
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
By KURT NIMMO
When Robert Dreyfuss of the American Prospect
asked an unspecified Bush neocon "strategist" how best
to deal with the resistance in Iraq, the response he received
was chilling, "It's time for 'no more Mr. Nice Guy.' All
those people shouting, 'Down with America!' and dancing in the
street when Americans are attacked? We have to kill them."
It's not only Iraqis dancing in the streets
and elusive resistance fighters that deserve to be killed, but
pro-Saddam demonstrators as well.
"While Washington and London were
still congratulating themselves on the capture of Saddam Hussein,"
writes Robert Fisk in Baghdad, "US troops have shot dead
at least 18 Iraqis in the streets of three major cities in the
country. Dramatic videotape from the city of Ramadi 75 miles
west of Baghdad showed unarmed supporters of Saddam Hussein being
gunned down in semi-darkness as they fled from Americans troops.
Eleven of the 18 dead were killed by the Americans in Samarra
to the north of Baghdad."
The United States doesn't even pretend
to respect the Geneva Conventions these days. Obviously, shooting
unarmed demonstrators in the back as they flee is a war crime.
But then neocons don't do international law.
As Bush has repeatedly made clear, he
believes international treaties are for wimps, appeasers, and
the irrelevant. International law is for pantywaists such as
the French, not  intractable and self-righteous
Americans engaged in a forever war against "terr'ism,"
otherwise known as the Islamic religion.
Of course, it's not a war crime if the
media reports the murder of unarmed civilians as fair and square
combat against "armed demonstrators," as the Boston
Globe did. Naturally, the Globe didn't bother to mention the
video Robert Fisk witnessed, but then they are receiving their
information straight from the Pentagon, not unembedded journalists
on the street.
It wasn't the Boston Globe or other members
of the Bush Ministry of Disinformation that reported Hussein
al-Jaburi's death threat to the people of Tikrit. It was al-Jazeera,
the Arab news agency twice bombed by the Pentagon for the heresy
of telling the truth.
"Any demonstration against the government
or coalition forces will be fired upon," said Jaburi, the
US-imposed regional governor. "This is a fair warning."
So much for democracy -- but then the
sort of democracy the Bushite neocons have in mind does not include
the right to demonstrate.
The Bush version of democracy includes
"privatization" of the Iraqi oil industry and other
covetable natural resources by foreign transnational corporations,
but not the right for Iraqi citizens to complain about it. Grousers
and people in possession of Saddam's portrait will be shot.
No more Mr. Nice Guy.
According to Robin Pomeroy of Reuters,
demonstrations are illegal in the province surrounding Tikrit.
Demonstrators will be sentenced to a year or more in jail. "They
are not allowed to go around kissing pictures of Saddam in this
city," Lieutenant Colonel Steven Russell told Pomeroy. "It
will not happen... We cannot hand out lollipops, it does not
work."
Last week Iraq's Health Ministry ordered
an abrupt end to the count of civilians killed during the invasion
and occupation, according to the Associated Press. "We have
stopped the collection of this information because our minister
didn't agree with it," said Dr. Nazar Shabandar, the Health
Ministry's director of planning. "The CPA doesn't want this
to be done."
In other words, there will be no official
confirmation of the number of civilians killed by the US, such
as those mowed down recently in Ramadi, apparently for nothing
more than expressing their support for Saddam Hussein, although
the Pentagon would have us believe they were engaged in murder
and mayhem or releasing pigeons to signal to comrades.
Is it possible the CPA and the Pentagon
don't want you to know the exact number of people killed in Iraq
because those numbers are about to escalate dramatically?
As Robert Fisk notes in his report about
the Ramadi mass murder video, masked gunmen have appeared in
Baghdad and at road checkpoints outside of Samarra. "They
wear militia uniforms and, although they say they are part of
the new American-backed 'Iraqi Civil Defense Corps', they have
neither badges of rank nor unit markings," writes Fisk.
It's no secret the CIA has assassinated
numerous Iraqis since Bush set his sights on their country. Recently
leaked plans to kill even more, possibly many more, in much the
same way the CIA killed 40,000 Vietnamese under the Phoenix program.
As Dana Priest of the Washington Post reported on 29 March, CIA
covert teams are "one feature of the largely invisible war
being waged in Iraq by the CIA's and Pentagon's growing covert
paramilitary and special operations divisions."
If we are to believe Seymour Hersh over
at the New Yorker, the US has summoned the Israelis to help murder
Iraqis who resist occupation. "The Israelis have been training
us in some of their tactics," Hersh told Amy Goodman of
Democracy Now!
"By now, we have put together enough
sophisticated former Iraqi intelligence [Mukhabbarat] officers,
we think, to form ad hoc advisory groups that would travel with
our special forces," Hersh explained. "They'll also
have an Israeli adviser, I think, pretty much undercover in the
country advising them, too. So, that's the next step, you know.
Bang, bang, bang."
And yet decades of bangs in the West
Bank and Gaza have not put an end to Palestinian resistance to
Zionist occupation and brutality. The Palestinians have actively
resisted Zionist hyper-colonialism for well over thirty years.
There's a good chance they will continue to do so for another
thirty years.
The CIA, with Israeli help, will kill
more than people directly involved in the resistance. "Compare
America's conquest of Iraq with Israeli's conquest of Palestine,
and you begin to understand," explains author and researcher
Douglas Valentine. "In each case the strategy is massive
war crimes on the one hand, and targeted kills of inspirational
leaders on the other."
In other words, the CIA hit teams now
roaming Iraq will assassinate intellectuals and "inspirational
leaders," just as they did in Vietnam under the Phoenix
program. "Under Phoenix," writes Valentine, "due
process was totally non-existent. South Vietnamese civilians
whose names appeared on blacklists could be kidnapped, tortured,
detained for two years without trial, or even murdered simply
on the word of an anonymous informer." No doubt many Iraqis
will face much the same.
It won't be the first time the CIA has
targeted civilians in Iraq. In the 1963 military coup that eventually
resulted in the US sanctioned dictatorship of Saddam Hussein,
the CIA provided lists of "communists" to be slaughtered.
According to author Said Aburish (A Brutal Friendship: The West
and the Arab Elite, 1997), 5,000 people were killed, including
many doctors, lawyers, teachers, and professors who comprised
Iraq's educated elite.
"No-one was spared. Even pregnant
women and elderly men were killed. Some were tortured in front
of their children," writes Mohamoud Shaikh in a review of
Aburish's book. "According to the author, Saddam 'had rushed
back to Iraq from exile in Cairo [where he labored as a CIA asset]
to join the victors... [he] was personally involved in the torture
of leftists in the separate detention centers for fellaheen [peasants]
and the Muthaqafeen or educated classes.'"
Murder is second nature for Dubya, the
son of a former CIA director who targeted over a million people
(with the help of Clinton) for death through illegal bombing
raids, starvation, and disease in the wake of the first Iraq
invasion. As an appointed-president-in-waiting, Bush the Minor
sharpened his murderous instincts in Texas by condemning nearly
150 people to death. Now he says he wants the same for Saddam.
"I think he ought to receive the
ultimate penalty," Bush told ABC News, "for what he
has done to his people... [he is] a disgusting tyrant who deserves
justice, the ultimate justice."
Ultimate justice, for our Christian Zionist
president who spends much of his time marooned in the Old Testament,
is nothing short of the death penalty.
Indeed, Saddam was "a disgusting
tyrant," one enabled by the United States and Europe. The
US does not have an aversion to disgusting tyrants per se, so
long as they do what they are told and remain obedient clients.
Maybe Bush should call for the execution
of William Lakeland, the US assistant military attaché
in Baghdad at the time of the coup that eventually brought Saddam
to power. Lakeland was the main orchestrator and contact for
the Ba'athist thugs the CIA now wants to hunt down and assassinate.
If Bush is truly disgusted by the rape
rooms and mass graves of Saddam, he would have every person involved
in the CIA-sponsored coup arrested, sent before a tribunal, convicted,
and executed. At minimum, he should call George Tenet on the
carpet and tell him no more Saddams, no more coups, no more mass
assassination programs.
Of course, that will never happen. Only
clients who run afoul of the Master Plan -- making damn sure
every profitable corner of the earth is sucked dry by neoliberal
exploitation -- will be hunted down, rounded up, rushed before
a tribunal, and executed (or if lucky slammed into prison like
another US client and CIA asset gone bad, Manual Noriega).
The Bushites over at the Pentagon have
their work cut out for them. However, a spanking new Phoenix
program aimed at Iraqi guerillas, intellectuals, or those who
get in the way of what Halliburton and Bechtel want, will not
put an end to the resistance, nor will US soldiers cutting down
demonstrators "kissing pictures of Saddam" put an end
to Iraqi outrage over the occupation and planned looting of their
country.
If Bush gleans anything from the Israelis,
it should be that brutality in the name of colonialism does not
put an end to resistance, it only redoubles it. But then the
Israelis do not understand this themselves, so how can we expect
them to teach the Americans anything -- that is an anything except
how to kill people in large numbers.
History books are filled with repeated
examples of successful resistance to invasion and occupation
-- from the Persian emperor Darius facing Scythian guerillas
to Fulgencio Batista's overthrow by a threadbare group of revolutionaries
in Cuba.
But then Bush doesn't bother to read
books.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another
Day in the Empire, will soon be published by Dandelion
Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
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