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Today's
Stories
December 19, 2003
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.
|
December
19, 2003
The Neocons' Dream
Memo
Featuring:
the Latter-Day Hitler, Saddam Hussein; His Intelligence Chief,
Habbush al-Takriti; Palestinian Terrorist, Abu Nidal; 9-11 Mastermind,
Mohammed Atta; and a Mysterious Shipment to Iraq from Niger
By GARY LEUPP
(1) The Capture of Saddam, in Perspective
So the big news Sunday morning was that they got
Saddam. This is not terribly surprising. They've been searching
for eight months and they do, of course, occupy the country.
I'm neither happy nor sad about it; Saddam was a middling-quality
fascist with a certain social base, as well as many opponents,
in a complicated society. Millions of Iraqis cheer, in genuine
exultation, the capture of the Butcher of Baghdad; others, familiar
with the history of U.S.-Iraqi relations from the early 1980s,
wonder what gives the foreign occupiers the right to arrest and
publicly humiliate a man they once coddled, even
as he was gassing Kurds. They have mixed feelings. Still
others, comprising a significant pro-Saddam social base, rage
and mourn.
Here in the imperialist Homeland pundits
opine that this is bad news for the Democrats, and for war opponents
and critics. They reason as follows: even if the (continuing)
war was and is illegal, and its stated pretexts lies; even if
it has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths; even if resistance
to the occupation continues; even if U.S. actions generate understandable
resentment and hatred among the "liberated" people---well,
at least we've got Saddam. "We" have really scored.
"We," who are led by Bush, whose courageous troops
have tracked down, arrested and humiliated a dictator.
That's gonna make him shoot way up in the polls. The Democratic
pols, for their part, hasten to gentlemanly congratulate the
President for his achievement. Those who in varying degrees questioned
the war are at least with him on this one: it's a great day when
you capture a dictator. Never mind that your troops shouldn't
be there and have no legal right nor moral authority to apprehend
anyone.
Now these pundits who see this as a big
boost for Dubya may be right. The human mind is a complex thing,
and many are capable of consigning their mounting realization
that the war was based on lies to one section of their gray matter,
while storing the image of the captured Saddam (hauled from his
"rat's nest," his "snake pit," his "lair"
in mainstream journalese) in whatever section produces seratonin.
The primitive inclination to rejoice, along with the entire Volk,
at a victory over the Enemy, can easily defeat reason. The Bush
team, especially the neocons, knows that. It also knows, as we
all should, that dictators are all over the place, and many of
them are supported by the U.S. A lot of decent folks are thinking
"Great. We've captured Hitler." The Bushites know better.
They're thinking, "Great! We've get people thinking this
former buddy of ours---who they don't even know is a former
buddy of ours---is a cross between bin Laden and Hitler, Evil
Incarnate! And since we've bagged him, we're gonna look so FINE
as the election approaches. On to Syria!"
The fact is, Saddam is not a Hitler;
and all those analogies between Iraq and Nazi Germany deployed
by the first Bush administration as it prepared to "liberate"
Kuwait (handing it back to its Emir, who from his
harem of chattel-slaves still presides over a society nowhere
near so progressive as Saddam's Iraq) were preposterous rhetorical
flourishes. Germany by the 1930s had won and lost a colonial
empire stretching from Tanganyika to Micronesia; it had led the
world in medicine and in chemical production; it had competed
with the other Big Powers for world dominion. It was an imperialist
country, even if it had seen some hard times. Iraq in 1990 was
a sophisticated "modernizing" nation with a well-educated
citizenry, committed to secularism under the heavy hand of the
Baath Party. But it was dependent upon global capital (as Germany
had not been), hence on the receiving end of imperialism.
Germany, under Hitler, developed a fascist command economy, and
was able to recover from its post-World War I depression. Saddam's
Iraq, saddled with crippling debts by the end of the (U.S.-abetted)
Iran-Iraq War, could not revive without generous debt forgiveness
from Kuwait and other nations wedded to western capital. It remained,
after all, a Third World country, and Saddam Hussein was merely
one, not atypically brutal, Third World ruler.
The better parallel with Saddam's Iraq
is Suharto's Indonesia. Suharto, another Third World boss patronized
by successive U.S. administrations from the mid-1960s into the
1990s, killed some 700,000 Indonesians, including about one-third
of the total population of East Timor, which with U.S. approval
he invaded in 1975. (He did so mostly in the name of anti-communism.)
If the U.S. government suddenly wanted to vilify the recently
deposed Suharto (or numerous past and present client-fascist
local rulers) it could surely undertake a very effective campaign
to do so. That would be a policy decision, communicated
through state announcements and statements by state-aligned right-wing
"think tanks" to the corporate media, which then manufacture
"public opinion." For example, right now, there really
is no "public opinion" in the U.S. about Uzbekistan's
President Islam A. Karimov. Just as Saddam Hussein was not a
household name in the 1980s, Karimov is unknown to the CNN-educated
Homeland audience. But say the Bush administration, which is
now using Karimov's Uzbekistan to pursue its geopolitical
goals pertaining to Afghanistan and Iraq (much as earlier U.S.
administrations used Iraq to damage Iran) decided it needs
to take action against Uzbekistan, and needs to prepare the masses
to accept whatever course of action it plans. It can just haul
out the time-tested propaganda machinery, and suddenly we'll
hear about all the random arrests and the tortures and disappearances
and the Hitlerian qualities of this particular Uzbek,
Mr. Karimov. Again, vilification is a policy decision,
and once the decision's made, you can order your intelligence
services and disinformation apparatus to cherry-pick any materials
on hand to prepare the people, whom you pray will remain as bovine
as possible, to focus fear on whomever you choose.
As Saddam heads for trial there will
be much comment on his biography, with emphasis on his atrocities.
Unless forced by events to do so, the mainstream media will not
highlight his historical ties to U.S. administrations, lest its
patriotism be questioned by the power structure and its assorted
attack-dogs. If it focuses on the Halabja massacre of 1988, and
other brutalities, it will be "fair and balanced;"
if it notes U.S. complicity in Saddam's crimes, it will be tarred
with the "Blame America First" brush by the loud-mouthed
fasco-journalists who have become so prominent since 9-11. But
were one to merely list the ties, one would undercut the prosecutor's
case, and oblige the latter to recuse himself. Specifically:
In 1959, Saddam, at age 22, came into
contact with the CIA, which was backing an effort to assassinate
Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim. (Assassinations
are of course illegal, and the CIA's involvement here despicable.)
Qasim had led a coup that overthrew the British-imposed monarchy
in 1958, and had withdrawn from the anti-Soviet "Central
Treaty Organization" (CENTO) alliance that had linked Iraq
with Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, the U.S and Britain from 1954. He
had developed cordial ties with Moscow and tolerated the Arab
world's most vigorous Communist Party. The CIA and Saddam agreed
that Qasim should go. Saddam was set up in an apartment near
Qasim's office, but never pulled off the hit. Qasim was toppled
by members of the Baath Party in 1963, and a bloodbath of communists
followed. Anti-communist Saddam headed the party's intelligence
branch, maintaining ties with the CIA, which in fact supplied
the new government with lists
of Iraqi communists. At present, the U.S. government vilifies
the Baath Party, but it once treated the Baathists as a bulwark
against communism, and then later, as a counterweight to Islamic
militancy.
In 1979, Saddam seized power, becoming
President of the Republic of Iraq. In September 1980, he attacked
Iran, which had just experienced the revolution that toppled
the Shah (placed in power by the CIA in 1954). The U.S. government,
implacably hostile to the new regime in Iran, welcomed this
attack. ("Here is a man who has attacked his neighbors!"
snarls the current U.S. president, whose father served as Vice
President under a predecessor who encouraged him to do so.) Iraq
had been on the State Department's "terror" list, and
diplomatic relations between Baghdad and Washington had been
cut during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. But in early 1982, Iraq
was quietly removed from the bad guys' list, and in December
20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, representing the State Department,
visited Baghdad to discuss ways to cooperate against Iran. Then-President
Ronald Reagan had just issued a secret National Security Decision
Directive (NSDD) stating that the United States would regard
"any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat
for the West."
By 1985, the U.S. provided 1.5 billion
in military equipment to Saddam Hussein. For example, CIA director
William Casey supplied cluster bombs obtained through an arms
company called Cardoen, from Chile, then under the fascist dictatorship
of Augusto Pinochet, which the CIA had helped place in power.
Such support continued through the end of the war with Iran in
1988. It was not affected by Saddam's use of chemical weapons;
this was never an issue. As late as September 1988, a Maryland
company sent 11 strains of germs, four of anthrax, in a Commerce
Department-authorized sale to Iraq. This was six months after
the Halabja incident that generated outrage around the world.
From Eisenhower to Bush I, the leaders
of the imperialist power now disposed to indignantly inveigh
against the Great Dictator were once very happily in bed with
him. How many Americans know this? However short people's historical
attention spans, this record is not immaterial, ancient history.
It's material evidence for the prosecutors' utter unsuitability
to try the jilted bedmate's case.
In 1990, when he made the mistake of
invading Kuwait (thinking, apparently, that the U.S. would be
neutral on the matter) Saddam drew down upon himself the hellfire
of this vilification apparatus. Never mind that the crime itself
(annexing what many believe had historically been Iraqi territory)
was on a magnitude roughly equal to that of the U.S. annexation
of Mexican territory in the early nineteenth century. (The great
majority of people living in Kuwait did not hold Kuwaiti citizenship
but were foreign workers, and the fact is, for better or worse,
many of them welcomed annexation thinking they'd be better off
as part of secular Iraq than under the medieval, fundamentalist,
Saudi-like emirate.) President George Bush I (whose father Prescott
Bush, as everybody should now know, had business
ties to Nazi Germany through the Union Banking Corporation
of New York City up to 1942, when the bank was closed down pursuant
to the Trading with the Enemy Act), immediately conflated Saddam
with the Führer. So when Americans, even those disgusted
by the war and the transparent dishonesty surrounding it, greet
the news of this puny Hitler's arrest with satisfaction, they
can't really be blamed for their feelings. The system does not
encourage any sense of historical perspective.
(2) The Coincidental
Accompanying Announcement of Saddam's al-Qaeda Ties
A news story as potentially important
as the capture of Saddam comes, via Britain's The
Telegraph, out of the Iraqi Governing Council. Dr. Ayad
Allawi, a long-time intelligence operative, in exile for three
decades, a CIA intimate and leader of the Iraqi National Accord,
confirms the authenticity of a top-secret, hand-written memo
by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi
Intelligence Service (Jack of Diamonds in the card deck of still
at large Iraqi officials), to Saddam Hussein. Dated July 1, 2001,
the memo supposedly describes a three-day "work programme"
undertaken by none other than Chief 9-11 Hijacker Mohammed Atta
at a Baghdad base of the late, well-known Palestinian, Sabri
al-Banna (a.k.a. Abu Nidal). The memo also refers to a "Niger
shipment" of some unspecified material arriving in Iraq
via Libya and Syria.
So this is truly exciting! U.S. forces
apprehend Saddam, and the U.S. media dutifully splashes scenes
of Iraqi joy onto our television screens. Simultaneously, the
Telegraph furnishes the world proof of everything
Saddam's been accused of by the neocons in their efforts to justify
the invasion. One single memo connects Saddam to Notorious Palestinian
Terrorist Abu Nidal (who
died under mysterious circumstances in a Baghdad apartment in
August 2002), as well as to al-Qaeda and to two countries
on the neocons' list of countries scheduled for attack during
Bush's second term. If authentic, the document will go a long
ways towards validating the neocon's whole project.
I will go way out on a limb and express
doubt. Some points, in no particular order:
1. The story wasn't echoed in the Boston
Globe. I've heard no reference to it on CNN as of Tuesday.
It hasn't been featured on National Public Radio. Indeed, commentators
on both CNN and NPR have emphasized in recent days that there
is no evidence of Iraq-al Qaeda ties. The story was featured,
of course, on Fox News Sunday night, where Bill O'Reilly noted
(with apparent disappointment) that it hadn't yet attained "traction"
in the U.S. press. On Monday he again alluded to it, in an iffier
vein. You'd think such a blockbuster of a story would be all
over the news of the nation occupying Iraq; Washington wants,
after all, very badly to legitimate that occupation by proving
al-Qaeda ties and a nuclear program. If the U.S. mainstream corporate
press is hesitating to use it, maybe it's a bit leery doubtful
about its real adhesive power.
2. On January 30 of this year the Bush administration promised
that it would provide proof of the linkage between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
It is under great pressure to do so.
3. While the capture of Saddam has no
bearing on the legality or morality of the war, and can't be
logically deployed to affect opinions on that issue one
way or the other, it makes the (still criminal) occupation seem
more "successful." Thus it is widely advertised by
the political pundits as a huge plus for the Bush re-election
campaign. The Democratic presidential candidates, given their
inability to construct a consistent anti-imperialist critique,
are reduced to praising Bush for capturing a tyrant (as though
this were any business for anybody but the Iraqis). This confused
situation provides an excellent backdrop for the dissemination
of the al-Tikriti memo story: not only do we have Saddam, but
coincidentally, simultaneously, we have the smoking gun
proof of Saddam's al-Qaeda connections and nuclear ambitions!
Seems just to good to be true.
4. The neocons lie. They believe
it is moral and reasonable to do so, in pursuit of their higher
goals, the goodness of which is not necessarily transparent to
ordinary mortals who must thus be tricked
into acquiescence. Hence Richard Perle's interesting declaration,
in Milan in September 2002, that "We have proof" that
"Mohammed Atta met Saddam Hussein
in Baghdad prior to September 11." That blockbuster
never somehow never made the U.S. media, but floated around the
net on Agence France-Press and in Italian and Dutch sites. The
Defense Department has openly admitted its intention to use disinformation
to influence public opinion, here and globally, and surely has
paid agents in the corporate media. Particularly given this,
we should maintain a skeptical attitude towards reports such
as the Telegraph's.
5. The memo was reportedly hand-written
by a man who was involved in last-minute efforts, involving
Richard Perle as U.S. representative, to stave off war with
the U.S. Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti actually invited the
U.S. to send in FBI or military inspectors to ameliorate U.S.
concerns about weapons of mass destruction, and even indicated
Saddam's willingness to support any U.S. plan for peace between
Israel and the Arabs. He also has insisted there was no
Saddam-al Qaeda link. The Telegraph report requires
us to believe that a man facilitating Iraqi/Palestinian "terrorist"/al-Qaeda
links in September was making the above-mentioned proposals four
months later.
6. Recently a memo authored by Douglas
Feith, Undersecretary of Defense and boss of the Office of Special
Plans that has specialized in the circulation of cherry-picked
intelligence justifying expansion of the Terror war, was pompously
presented by the warmongers in the far-right press as a document proving Saddam's al-Qaeda ties. In fact, it didn't cut the mustard or "close
the case," and the Defense Department itself in a
highly unusual move dissociated itself from the memo. Perhaps
the neocons feel something more is needed.
7. Ayad Allawi, the member of the (puppet) Iraqi Governing Council
in possession of the memo, has a
long relationship to U.S. intelligence. (Interesting that
his ties are to the CIA, rather than to the Defense Department
which has favored Ahmad Chalabi, another appointed Council member
who may be so discredited by now that he serves less effectively
as a funnel for disinformation.) Allawi told the Telegraph,
"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement
with al-Qaeda. But this is the most compelling piece of evidence
that we have found so far." Reminds me of Judith Miller's
New York Times story last April; she declared that a statement
from an unnamed Iraqi scientist "may be the discovery"
of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Nothing came of that story.
Nothing at all.
8. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani,
the former Iraqi intelligence officer who had reportedly met
with Atta in Prague in 2001, and has been in U.S. custody since
July, has stated that
he never met the hijacker. The CIA and MI6 had long since
dismissed that report, which came out soon after 9-11 and was
obviously a piece of disinformation designed to facilitate an
attack on Iraq. But al-Ani's denial may have put further pressure
on those sowing disinformation to respond with new, bigger, better
"intelligence" on the Iraq-al Qaeda link that they
must establish to garner sufficient popular support to realize
their world-transforming dreams.
9. Seems odd that in the very same memo,
handwritten July 1, 2001, al-Tikriti would mention both Atta's
"work programme" with Abu Nidal, and what we are supposed
to believe was a uranium shipment from Niger (that the CIA doesn't
believe ever happened). These are very different topics. Was
al-Takriti informing Saddam that a single grand project, linking
both of these activities, was proceeding apace?
(Another question for discussion: Might
whoever forged the first Niger uranium
document still be in the business?)
10. Abu Nidal isn't known for his competence
in organizing airline hijackings. His organization's effort to
hijack a plane in Karachi in 1985 was botched, and 22 people
died. So why would Atta be working with him in Baghdad, in July
2001, after having already garnered adequate flight training,
and while 9-11 plans were surely already in place?
11. Abu Nidal broke with Yasir Arafat
and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1974; thereafter
his group (the Abu Nidal Organization) received support on and
off from Libya, Syria and Iraq. It has had offices in Egypt.
As a self-described "socialist Muslim" accustomed to
working with secular governments in the Middle East, Abu Nidal
would seem to have little in common with the fundamentalist Islamists
of al-Qaeda.
12. Lastly and most importantly: If I
were Paul Wolfowitz, or Abram Shulsky (Leo Strauss disciple,
Machiavelli scholar, and chief disinformation operative in the
office of Special Plans), or Douglas Feith, or Richard Perle,
and I were just dreaming up what might be the perfect "find"
to validate my actions to date (questioned, as they have been,
by numerous recently retired intelligence operatives in the U.S.,
Britain, and Australia), I would think: Hmmm We'll find a document
addressed to Saddam, from someone currently without access to
the press, reporting on the Chief Hijacker's welcomed presence
in Iraq just before the 9-11 attacks. (Never mind the FBI and
CIA place Atta in Florida at the time.) Saddam's intelligence
chief would be the best source to cite for this information.
We'll connect al-Takriti, and Atta, with Palestinian terrorism
(thus continuing our effort to link Afghanistan/al-Qaeda with
Iraq and Syria and Iran and the PLO, and Evil generally.) The
Abu Nidal connection is especially good because Adu Nidal is
dead and won't pose a problem. Let's float the report through
an Iraqi operative, not too well known, and use a British
paper for the initial revelation. Then use Fox and see if CNN
will buy it. (If they do, let's think about adding a North Korea
link into the next finding; we might have Abu Nidal facilitating
a missile technology transfer to bin Laden via Cuba, for example.)
Big lies are big risks, but having suffered
some setbacks lately (in relation to their regime-change plans
in Iran, and their efforts to split the U.S. from "Old Europe")
the neocons are likely desperate and inclined to favor bold new
disinformation initiatives. If proven wrong, I'll gladly recant
all the doubts expressed above. Meantime, I'll just say that
this memo, like some others preceding it, smells very fishy to
me. My rule of thumb is: the Terror War is based on lies.
To sustain its momentum, the liars will have to lie bigger, while
periodically showing the people (among them the most confused,
frightened and easy to manipulate, whom they naturally best cherish)
hopeful results of this war that they relentlessly, if preposterously,
depict as the necessary response to 9-11.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
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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