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Today's
Stories
November 11, 2003
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
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
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
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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Veteran's
Day Edition
November 11, 2003
My Cambodian Moment
I
Was Misled on Iraq
By Senator ERNEST "FRITZ"
HOLLINGS
Floor Speech on the War in Iraq, Its
Parallels to Vietnam and Congress' Unwillingness to Pay for It,
November 3, 2003
Mr. President, I come to acknowledge
my "Cambodian moment" in the Iraq war. I refer to the
Cambodian moment that Senator Mansfield experienced after years
and years of opposing the war in Vietnam. He had a practice of
taking written memoranda time and again to both Presidents Johnson
and Nixon, supporting the President openly on the floor of the
Senate, but finally at the time Cambodia was invaded under President
Nixon, he could not take it any longer and spoke out.
He went on national TV and said: This
war was a mistake from the get go. The next day, he got a letter
from an admirer who had just lost her son. She said: I just buried
my son and came home and watched you on this program. You said
it was a mistake from the get go. Why didn't you speak out sooner?
She said: My regret is that you did not
speak out sooner or loudly enough for me to hear.
It is time we speak out, because unless
we put in 100,000 or 150,000 more United States troops and get
law and order in Iraq, in Baghdad, we are going to have operation
meat grinder continue, and it is our meat.
In conscience, I cannot stand silent
any longer. What happens if we had invaded the city of Atlanta,
let's say. We had landed at Hartsfield Airport, and then we had
gone on to an aircraft carrier and said: Whoopee, mission accomplished;
when the truth of the matter is, two divisions of Republican
Guards have blended into the environs of Atlanta with all kind
of ammunition dumps, and all they do day in and day out is raid
the dumps, set traps, blow us up, kill more Americans, and we
talk about schools opening and hospitals working, and that we
have a water system. This cannot go on. It has to stop.
Let me start by saying I believe, unlike
most of my colleagues, that the intelligence we had on Iraq was
sound. We knew from the outset a lot about Iraq in the sense
we had conquered it and we had two overflights, one in the north
and one in the south. We could look down and see in the middle
of Iraq. For 10 years we knew exactly what was going on. If we
had any doubts, we could check with the Israeli intelligence.
Don't tell me Israel didn't have good intelligence on nuclear
weapons because she went in there back in the eighties -- she
is a small country and can't play games and can't wait around
for the United Nations and conferences. She had to knock that
nuclear facility out.
What else did we know about Iraq? We
knew they didn't have terrorists there at the time. Oh, yes,
while we are trying to internationalize a defense effort, what
we find is, our effort is more or less internationalizing terrorism.
The most ridiculous thing on the TV last
night was to hear the President say foreigners are in Iraq killing
our soldiers. Can you imagine us, thousands of miles away, talking
about foreigners killing our soldiers? Come on. What happened
was, Iraq did not have terrorists at the time we went in. They
tried to connect al-Qaida to Iraq, but now the President himself
has acknowledged you couldn't connect al-Qaida. They didn't have
nuclear capability. And, of course, there was no democracy. There
weren't people yearning for it, as Deputy Secretary of Defense
Wolfowitz said, meeting us in the streets waving: Whoopee, we
finally got democracy.
Anybody who knows the history of the
Mideast knows that is a bunch of nonsense. They don't have democracy
in Iraq, in Syria, in Iran, in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt,
in Libya -- or go right around the Mideast. Where does somebody
think they are going to meet us in the streets and say: Whoopee
for democracy?
I wish the distinguished Chair would
pay attention to this one. What did George Herbert Walker Bush,
the former President, say in his book, "A World Transformed"?
I firmly believed that we should not
march into Baghdad....To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter
our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make
a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero...assigning young
soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator
and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban
guerrilla war.
That is what President George Herbert
Walker Bush, the President's daddy, said.
We all knew that about Iraq. But why
did we go in and why did the Senator from South Carolina vote
for the resolution last October? Why? I can tell my colleagues
why. On August 7, Vice President Cheney, speaking in California,
said of Saddam Hussein: What we know now from various sources
is that he continues to pursue a nuclear weapon.
Then on September 8: We do know with
absolute certainty that he is attempting to acquire the equipment
he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.
Then the President of the United States
himself said, in his weekly address on September 14, before we
voted in October: Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure
for a nuclear weapons program and has illicitly sought to purchase
the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.
Then on September 24, Prime Minister
Blair said that the assessed intelligence has established beyond
doubt that Saddam continues in his efforts to develop nuclear
weapons.
On September 8 of last year, Condoleezza
Rice said that we do not want the smoking gun to be a mushroom
cloud.
On October 7, President Bush said: Facing
clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof,
the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
Now, any reasonable, sober, mature, experienced
individual listening to that litany knows to vote against that
resolution would have been pure folly. One has to back the President.
I am not on the Intelligence Committee.
I was not privy to any kind of intelligence but I knew we had
a lot of intelligence. The truth is, I thought the Israeli intelligence
was really furnishing all of this information and that we were
going in this time for our little friend Israel. Instead of them
being blamed, we could finish up what Desert Storm had left undone;
namely, getting rid of Saddam and getting rid of nuclear at the
same time.
I voted for the resolution. I was misled.
Now we hear that this is not Vietnam. I read my friends Tom Friedman
and Paul Krugman. They say this is not a Vietnam.
The heck it is not. This crowd has got
historical amnesia. There is no education in the second kick
of a mule. This was a bad mistake. We were mislead. We are in
there now, and I am hearing the same things that the Senator
heard in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971 right on through
1973.
At the time I was a young politician,
having just come to the Senate, listening to those who knew.
I knew Leader Mansfield would know about Vietnam. I knew my friend
Senator Dick Russell was against the war in Vietnam from the
get-go. Now, if Senator Mansfield had spoken up, he could have
saved 10,000 lives. We would have followed him in the Senate.
But he was trying to follow the mistake and the misread of Maddox
and the Turner joy that brought about the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
There are similarities. There are the
misleading statements that I have just given, the litany by the
President telling us all there was reconstituted nuclear. Here
again we are in a guerilla war. It is an urban guerilla war,
not in the bushes of Vietnam but we still again are trying to
win the hearts and minds.
We were trying to victimize Vietnam.
In this one we are trying to Iraqi Iraq. We are trying to do
our best doing the same things over and over again. In fact,
in this particular war we received the Pentagon papers a lot
earlier. I ask unanimous consent that this article in USA Today
entitled "Defense Memo: A Grim Outlook," by Secretary
Rumsfeld, be printed in the Record at this particular point.
Mr. President, I do not know how many
more similarities we are going to get. Iraq is Vietnam all over
for the Senator from South Carolina.
Now we have to either put the troops
in there or else get out as soon as we can. I take it the present
plan is to Iraqi Iraq; namely, train up a bunch of folks together,
give them high pay. They have 70-percent unemployment so they
will all grab and get a uniform and act as if they are security,
but that will give us a cover and face to leave and leave as
soon as we can, unless we are going to put the troops in there
and get law and order.
What we have done is come into Iraq against
the military requirements of taking the city. We just stopped
at the airport and declared mission accomplished, and look around
and wonder and say this is part of the war on terror.
This is not and was not a part of the
war on terror. Yes, there are terrorists in there now, but Iraq
was not a part of the war on terror. It was quiet. It was not
bothering anybody. They did not have al-Qaida. They did not have
nuclear capabilities. They were not connected in any way to 9/11.
We went in there under a mislead.
We learned in World War II that no matter
how well the gun was aimed, if the recoil is going to kill the
guncrew one does not fire the gun.
Yes, it was a good aim to get Saddam
but now look at the headline. I ask unanimous consent to include
this particular article from the Financial Times, "Al-Qaida
Exploits Insecurity in Iraq to Acquire Weapons and Swell Its
Ranks."
I thank the distinguished Chair. We now
have more terrorism than less terrorism. That is the fact. We
have the entire world turned against us. When we cannot get Mexico
and Canada to go along with us, we are in trouble.
I am hopeful the United States will win
back the hearts and minds of the world's people, because we were
always loved, respected, and looked up to for leadership.
In this particular venture what we have
done is exactly what President George Herbert Walker Bush warned
against. He said to watch out; do not go into that place. I quote
again, now that my distinguished friend is here. I want that
particular quote to appear in the Record again.
He said in his book "A World Transformed":
I firmly believe that we should not march
into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition,
turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant
into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless
hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to
fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war.
Iraq is Vietnam all over again. I know
the distinguished Senator from Alaska revered our friend Senator
Mansfield. I will never forget when Senator Mansfield said all
Senators are equal, and when they rolled the Senator from Alaska
on a particular matter he was concerned with, he, himself --
that is Leader Mansfield -- got up, took the floor, and put Alaska's
amendments up and we passed them.
So Senator Mansfield took some 5 years
and 17 memos to Presidents before he finally changed his mind
and spoke. That is exactly where I am today as I enter this particular
debate with respect to the supplemental. I would oppose the supplemental
on one score, namely we will not pay for it. We tell that poor
GI, downtown in Baghdad, we hope you don't get killed, and the
reason we hope you don't get killed is because we want you to
hurry back. We want you to hurry back so we can give you the
bill because we are not going to pay for it. We in the Congress,
my generation, we need a tax cut so we can get reelected next
year. We are not going to pay for it.
This is the first war in the history
of the United States where there is no sacrifice on the homefront.
They all run around the mulberry bush here saying "it's
not Vietnam" and that we have to stay.
We either have to get in or get out.
We can't stand for operation meat grinder to continue day in
and day out.
In a war on terror, I just want the administration
to know that might does not make right. On the contrary, right
makes might. Winning the hearts and minds of the world's peoples,
I can tell you here and now, we have to get right on our policy
in the Mideast. We all back Israel, but we don't back the taking
over of these settlements. If you have been a conquered people
-- and I read where the distinguished Senator from Alaska went
down into those areas for the first time in Israel -- for 35
years you have looked not only for your light and water but your
jobs up in Israel. Anybody with any get-up-and-go has gotten
up and gone, after 35 years. You have the disenchanted. They
don't have an army or anything else like that. So don't be amazed.
You have to play it with an even hand.
Might makes right in this terror war.
We got onto this Iraqi venture, which was a bad mistake from
the very beginning. There is not any question about it. If I
went to a funeral this afternoon of a fallen soldier in Iraq,
what would I say? Did they fall there for democracy? They are
not going to have a democracy. It is going to be the Shiite democracy,
like they have in Iran -- at best. That is exactly what Secretary
Rumsfeld said we were not going to have.
Was it for nuclear? No.
Was it for terrorists? No, they didn't
have terrorists there.
Your son gave his life for what? As their
Senator, I am embarrassed. It wasn't for any of those things.
Why we went in, the administration has yet to tell us. They keep
changing the rules and the goalposts every time. But somehow,
somewhere they have to really put the force in there, quit trying
to do it on the cheap, put the force in there and clean out that
city, so they will quit killing them, or otherwise get out as
fast as we can.
I thank the distinguished Chair.
Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, Democrat, is the senior senator from South
Carolina.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 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
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