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Today's
Stories
December 2, 2003
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
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
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December
2, 2003
Denial and Deception
Before
and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
By MATT VIDAL
When a preliminary report by White House chief
weapons inspector David Kay was released last month--nearly half
a year after the fall of the Hussein regime and the official
end of combat operations in Iraq--the Bush regime claimed vindication.
Bush argued that the report proves that "Hussein was a danger
to the world," while Secretary of State Powell is "even
more convinced with the Kay report that we did the right thing."
What did the Kay report find? No weapons
of mass destruction (WMD), and no evidence of WMD programs or
capabilities other than in the distant past. That is, the report
provided evidence that the only "imminent threat" to
be found was in the rhetoric used by the Bush regime--and dutifully
repeated in lockstep by the "liberal" corporate media--to
justify the war.
The case for the Bush regime's attack
and subsequent occupation of Iraq was made under the banner of
"Denial and Deception," and implemented under the predictably-Orwellian
euphemism of "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Yet, evidence
is accumulating almost daily which drives toward a single conclusion:
the White House and Pentagon have engaged in their own campaign
of denial and deception.
This campaign, making a mockery of truth,
reason, and accountability, among other casualties, has been
extraordinarily successful. It is astonishing that at one point
70% of the American public believed that Hussein was directly
involved in September 11, without a single shred of evidence
to support this belief. The Bush regime continues to define and
control the terms of public debate while extending the power
and reach of the US state apparatuses both at home and abroad.
None of this is in the interest of US national security.
A changed world?
The fact that the post-9/11 Bush
Doctrine was formulated prior to 9/11 has been thoroughly demonstrated.[1]
The document which laid out the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive
attack and specified Iraq as a first target is the National
Security Strategy of the United States. This strategy, however,
was outlined in the same form and much of same language in a
September 2000 document by the Project for the New American Century,
a group of neocon zealots including many currently occupying
posts in the Administration.[2] The main difference between the
two is the that the National Security Strategy is couched
in the language of new terrorist threats.
In other words, previously-formed domestic
and foreign policy agendas are being rammed through on various
false pretenses revolving around "security" and "safety."
Though there is much good work dissecting the Bush regime's pattern
of denial and deception, missing from its anatomy is analysis
of whether things were actually different after 9/11.
Starting immediately after the first
plane hit on September 11, cries could be heard: "The world
will never be the same." "Everything is different now."
New threats were said to require new types of military and policing
responses. And it was not just from the Administration and the
popular press. In an article in The American Journal of International
Law, Ruth Wedgwood describes the event with such dramatic
language in just three paragraphs: "Unprecedented scale;
extraordinary destructiveness of the act; irrational magnitude
of destruction; gravest of international crimes."
But was it more destructive or graver
than other international crimes? And did the vulnerability and
security context of the world change? Let's look at what the
numbers say.
The US State Department has been collecting
data on international terrorist incidents since 1968, published
annually in its Patterns of Global Terrorism report.[3]
It defines international terrorism as "terrorism involving
citizens or the territory of more than one country," thus
excluding domestic terrorism.
Is the post-9/11 world different? Is the threat of terrorism
more serious now than in the past? To answer these questions,
a reasonable place to start is to look at total international
terrorist attacks. The total number of international terrorist
incidents rose until 1987, where it peaked at 665 worldwide,
and has been declining ever since. The number of international
terrorist incidents in North America and the number of anti-US
attacks (which may happen outside the US) have remained relatively
stable, with attacks in North America declining since the1970s
and early 1980s.
Two key findings emerge from the data
on total international terrorist incidents. First, the general
threat of terrorism in the world has been declining over the
last two decades. Second, the bulk of the terrorist threat is
in places outside the US. That is, the US is relatively safe
in terms of terrorist threats, which is rather remarkable considering
the history of the US government in subverting democracy (Chile,
Iran) and supporting dictatorships (Indonesia, Nicaragua, Pakistan,
etc.) around the world.
But what about Sept 11 itself, was it
not of unprecedented scale? It was indeed an horrific event.
However, arguing that 9/11 is different from other terrorist
attacks in kind, rather than degree, does a disservice to the
memory of every individual killed in other attacks. Are 2,752
lives (the current official death toll from 9/11) worth more
than the 405 lives lost to international terrorism in 2000, the
741 lost in 1998, or the 816 lost in 1985? Only in the calculus
of military commanders safely away from actual combat weighing
"collateral damage" against official targets, or in
the calculus of nationalists making judgments based on what country
the dead were born in.
Those of us who have always rejected
this logic were less moved by 9/11, in part because the focus
of our fear was not more terrorism but rather the Administration's
response. Indeed, the focus on the single event and its scale
is the product of a conceptual framework which definitionally
excludes US actions from accountability. Thus if the same number
of deaths are spread out over a longer timeframe it is somehow
more palatable, as is the case in the deaths of thousands of
Palestinians and East Timorese under US supported regimes in
Israel and Indonesia, respectively.
Terrorism is officially defined by the
US State Department as "premeditated, politically motivated
violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational
groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an
audience," therefore effectively excluding actions by a
state. Aside from this caveat, the US "Shock and Awe"
campaign in Iraq, among countless other US supported and assisted
international actions, fit the definition. An Associated Press
investigation put the total number of civilian deaths in Iraq
during the month of Operation Iraqi Freedom at 3,240.[4]
Osama bin who?
The remarkable thing about the official
ideology is not its effectiveness but its pliability. The threat
of terror and the need for security, mixed with a healthy dose
of patriotism is an ideological formula apparently able to legitimate
nearly any action or policy of the Bush regime. The "global
war on terror" is the new euphemism for the expansion and
further militarization of US geopolitical dominance. Yet, the
increasing majority of activities carried out under this label
have no relation to Al Qaeda, Sept 11, or any other real-world
threat.
The shift in focus from Al Qaeda and
bin Laden to Iraq and Hussein was nearly seamless. This amazing
effort--shifting the public consciousness from one superficially-connected
but substantively-unrelated event to another--succeeded through
shrewdly calculated flag-waving and fear-mongering by the Bush
regime, but only with the support of a corporate media that functioned
effectively as an arm of the government propaganda machine. In
a nightmare perhaps worse than Orwell imagined, the Ministry
of Truth is coordinated in the private market through capitalist
ties of ownership (e.g., GE, a defense contractor, owns NBC),
rather than by Big Brother from within the government.
Thus, we went from smoking Al Qaeda out
of their holes in Afghanistan to WMDs in Iraq. Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld switched effortlessly from "We know where they
are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east,
west, south and north somewhat" (March 30, 2003) to "I
never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction
in that country" (May 4, 2003). Meanwhile, according to
Amnesty International "discrimination, violence, and insecurity
remain rife" in Afghanistan, and globally "al Qaeda
and its associates have been maintaining a level of activity
over the past sixteen months that is actually higher than in
the months leading up to the New York and Washington atrocities."[5]
Most fundamentally, the clear message is the disconnect not only
between the Bush regime's rhetoric and its actions, but between
either of those and the reality of security issues facing the
US population. In fact, if anything, the Administration's actions
at home and abroad have actually decreased national security.
Edward S. Herman makes a compelling argument in this regard concerning
terrorist and military threats. He notes that "if we extend
the concept to encompass the security of the U.S. citizenry from
threats of unemployment, pension loss, lack of medical insurance,
street crime, security state abuses of civil liberties, breakdowns
in electrical water, or transportation service, or damage to
health resulting from environmental degradation, the Bush threat
to security is overwhelming."[6]. But real people and real
problems are far from the agenda of those in charge of US national
security.
Matt Vidal is
pursuing his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
He can be reached at: mvidal@ssc.wisc.edu
Notes
1. See Bookman, Jay, "Bush's real
goal in Iraq," The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Sept 29, 2002; and Murphy, Bruce, "Neoconservative Clout
Seen in U.S. Iraq Policy," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
April 5, 2003.
2. "Paul Wolfowitz is now deputy
defense secretary. John Bolton is undersecretary of state. Stephen
Cambone is head of the Pentagon's Office of Program, Analysis
and Evaluation. Eliot Cohen and Devon Cross are members of the
Defense Policy Board, which advises Rumsfeld. I. Lewis Libby
is chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Dov Zakheim
is comptroller for the Defense Department," (Bookman, ibid).
3.Most of the data used here can be found
at see http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/.
I got a complete data set back to 1968 from Joe Reap at the US
Department of State.
4. See http://www.commondreams.org/.
5. On Afghanistan, see the Amnesty International
report Afghanistan: 'No one listens to us and no one treats
us as human beings': Justice denied to women, October 6,
2003 (http://www.web.amnesty.org/).
On al Qaeda, see Rogers, Paul, "The Prospects for al Qaeda,"
Foreign Policy in Focus, January 24, 2003 (http://www.fpif.org/).
6. Herman, Edward S, "George Bush
Versus U.S. National Security," Z Magazine October
2003.
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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