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Today's
Stories
November 5, 2003
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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November
6, 2003
Glitzy Weaponry Over
People
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
By CONN HALLINAN
War is the ultimate test of reality and illusion.
On the eve of World War I, the French
General Staff was convinced victory would go to the attacker,
that massed soldiers marching together into battle could overcome
technology with courage and elan. German machine guns and artillery
swiftly shattered that illusion, along with several hundred thousand
young Frenchmen.
Today, the United States is engaged in
a very similar application of theory and warfare, albeit the
opposite of the one the French tried. Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld's military is a swift moving, micro-chipped, killing
machine, where electronics turns night into day, and satellites
and laser guided weapons slice and dice enemy armor and artillery.
President George W. Bush called it a "revolution,"
that has "shown that an innovative doctrine and high-tech
weaponry can shape and then dominate an unconventional conflict."
Has it? With the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq under our belt, isn't it time to tote up the bill and
separate reality and illusion?
On the plus side for the 'revolution,"
we won. On the minus side, it was hardly a fair fight. In Afghanistan
it was the 21st century verses the 12th, and we're not of the
tunnel yet. Iraq had a 20th century army, but one hollowed out
by a decade of sanctions and with little loyalty to the brutal
dictatorship it served. And that war, too, is far from over.
Even the final victory in Iraq was not
exactly a triumph for the "revolution." It wasn't swift
moving, light troops that took Baghdad and Basra, but the conventional,
tank-heavy U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, and the British 7th Armored
Division. In short, the "old model army."
The latest "revolution" in
warfare, the brainchild of the late Air Force Col., John Boyd,
goes by the name "transformation" and combines high
tech and maneuver. Its model was the German Blitzkrieg. But Rumsfeld's
New Model Army is discovering that the very instruments which
make it so invincible on a conventional battlefield are of little
use in the non-conventional war the Bush Administration finds
itself embroiled in. As long as the enemy was the Iraqi army,
the "revolution" works just fine. It has done less
well against roadside explosives, ambushes, and suicide bombs.
Part of the problem is the "transformation"
army itself.
The US military looks increasingly like
a temp agency on steroids: a massive organization of part-time
workers armed with the latest in firepower.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, some 292,000 National
Guard and reserve troops have been called to active duty, and
more than 190,000 are still serving. The Pentagon just announced
a further call-up of 30,000. Reserve and National Guard units
now make up 46 percent of the military.
Reserves have always been an important
component of the US military, but they are only supposed to be
called up in times of national emergency. From World War I to
Gulf War I---75 years--- they were called up nine times. In the
last 12 years they have been mobilized 10 times.
Normally such troops work behind the
front lines and serve for shorter periods than regular troops.
However, under "transformation," their deployment has
been stretched to 12, and sometimes 15 months. And the front
line in Iraq and Afghanistan is anyplace a soldier happens to
be.
The thinking behind all this is simple
math: reserve and Guard troops are much cheaper than regular
troops. As Christopher Caldwell at the Weekly Standard notes,
"it is hard not see a similarity between the army's shift
to part-time soldiering and businesses preferences for part-time
vs full-time labor."
Transformation" has essentially
shifted much of the financial burden for maintaining permanent
troops to the families of the reserves. Most joined up for the
educational grants and small stipends that comes with the job.
But reserves are suddenly finding themselves locked into open-ended
deployments in very dangerous places. "Weekend warrior,
my ass," one sign spotted in Baghdad read.
The toll on these temps has been considerable.
According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, 75 percent
of the 478 troops shipped home from Iraq for mental health reasons
were reservists.
Wounded reservists returning from Iraq
complain they have been "warehoused" at Fort Stewart,
Ga. in barracks without showers or bathrooms and sometimes wait
weeks to see a doctor.
Inadequate medical care---another way
the New Model Army is trying to save on personal costs--- has
touched a raw nerve among veterans as well, many of whom are
partially or fully disabled from Gulf War Syndrome. Veterans
groups charge that almost 150,000 vets from Gulf War I have been
waiting more than six months to see a doctor, and the wait for
a specialist is up to two years.
Those numbers are likely to climb because
solders in Iraq today are being exposed to many of the battlefield
toxins that felled some 118,000 veterans in the first Gulf War.
The Syndrome has been linked to some
345 tons of Depleted Uranium Ammunition (DUA) used in the 1991
conflict. According to the London Express, the Americans and
the British used between 1,100 and 2,200 tons of DUA, much of
it in urban areas during the recent war. Radiation 1,000 to 1,900
times normal has been detected in four locations in Baghdad.
The situation is "appalling,"
according to Professor Brian Spratt, chair of the Royal Society,
Britain's leading scientific body. "We really need someone
like the UN environmental program or the World Health Organization
to get into Iraq and start testing civilians and soldiers for
uranium exposure."
Such testing is unlikely because the
Department of Defense denies that DUA poses any health risks.
Reservists also charge that they are
given second-rate equipment in the field, including inadequate
body armor.
While spending on high-tech whiz-bangs
is at an all time high, the Administration has steadily shaved
the cost of personnal.
A recent Pentagon attempt to cut active
duty pay was defeated by congressional outrage, but the Administration
is still attempting to disqualify some 1.5 million veterans from
eligibility for disability benefits.
The Pentagon has also resisted the Retired
Pay Restoration Act that would correct an anomaly that reduces
military retirement pay by the amount veterans draw in disability.
The measure would level the playing field between Civil Service
retirees and 670,000 vets caught in this bureaucratic oddity,
but the Pentagon has resisted it as a "budget buster."
Besides increasingly relying on temp
soldiers, the "transformation" army is also trying
to apply private industry practices to public service. Rumsfeld
is seeking the right to hire, fire and promote some 700,000 civilian
Pentagon employees on "merit" alone, free of government
employment regulations.
"The risk that this system will
be politicized and characterized by cronyism in hiring, firing,
pay promotion and discipline are immense," says Bobby Harnatge,
president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
While the manpower crisis on the ground
is bad---there are just not enough troops available to match
the Administration's imperial sprawl--- it is likely to get a
whole lot worse. A recent poll by the military newspaper, Stars
and Stripes, found that only 49 percent of the reserves intend
to re-enlist.
So is this blind folly? Or does "transformation"
offer an unseen benefit?
"The arguments in support of technological
monism echo down the halls of the Pentagon," Major General
Robert Scales (Ret.) told the House Armed Service Committee Oct.
21, "precisely because they involve the expenditures of
huge sums of money to defense contractors."
In the 2002 election cycle, US arms corporations'
political action committees spent $7,620,741, two-thirds of which
went to the Republican Party. "Transformation" might
not work well once the initial "shock and awe"of battle
is over, but it can be a formidable re-election machine.
When the "Young Turks" of the
French Army adopted the doctrine of elan, they were certain it
was a formula for victory. The battle of the Marne convinced
them otherwise, and the French abandoned the tactic. Of course
the French General Staff wasn't running for office.
Conn Hallinan
is a provost at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He
can be reached at: connm@cats.ucsc.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 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
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