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Today's
Stories
December 10, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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December
10, 2003
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Growing
the Dictatorship in Iraq
By KURT NIMMO
Yes, things are going haywire in Iraq -- but we
can fix the problem, or so says one of the top slot neocons,
Newt Gingrich.
See, according to Newt, the problem is
Bush didn't install an Iraqi dictator immediately after the invasion.
Instead he sent over Paul Bremer and his crew who took up residence
in one of Saddam's palaces.
It looks bad, having all these white
boys around calling the shots. Besides, they are really a bunch
of screw-ups.
So, as Newt explains, Bush needs to get
an Iraqi in there soon as possible. Put an Arab face on the neocon
Master Plan for Zionist domination of the Middle East. Maybe
that way it will be more palatable to the Iraqis. Maybe that
way not so many Americans will die.
Well, chances are it won't be the least
bit palatable to the Iraqis, but then the neocons are hardly
concerned about what the Iraqis think. Hell, on most days, the
Iraqis don't even have electricity.
"The idea that we are going to have
a corruption-free, pristine, League of Women Voters government
in Iraq on Tuesday is  beyond naiveté,"
Newt told John Barry and Evan Thomas of Newsweek.
Bush has to get a quisling in there,
a groomed puppet maybe like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.
Never mind that Karzai can't take a stroll
around the block in Kabul without a few dozen Special Forces
types protecting him from the people he supposedly represents.
Anyway, what Newt's saying is that Bush
needs to get a dictator in there pronto, another Saddam, a Saddam
minus the Ba'ath Party and all that exhibitionistic Arab nationalism
stuff, a Saddam who answers to Bush and the Zionist neocons and
doesn't fund Palestinian suicide bombers.
A dictator who will immediately recognize
Israel.
Newt put in a lot of time prior to the
invasion, browbeating folks over at the CIA, and hell if he's
going to let it all go down the tubes now.
He was "seen as a personal emissary
of the Pentagon and, in particular, of the OSP," the Guardian
wrote at the time.
For those of you who don't know, OSP
is short for the Office of Special Plans, a sort of neocon version
of the CIA that "cherry-picked" intelligence favorable
to the idea that invading Iraq and killing a few thousand people,
wrecking Iraq's already decimated infrastructure, and grabbing
its oil, all in the best interest of America -- or, rather, in
the best interest of Israel and multinational corporations, most
notably oil and death merchant, i.e., "defense industry"
corporations, connected to Bush and Cheney.
Last time we heard from Citizen Newt,
the washed-up and disgraced former speaker of the House, he was
lambasting the State Department.
There were people in Colin Powell's State
Department "appeasing dictators and propping up corrupt
regimes," complained Citizen Newt.
In his speech, delivered before the neocon
choir over at the American Enterprise Institute -- known fondly
as the "Temple of Doom" by Washington insiders -- Newt
sounded oddly like the infamous senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy,
when he said back in 1950 that the State Department was "thoroughly
infested with communists."
These days, of course, communists are
pretty much old hat--the new enemy burrowing deep inside our
government, according to the neocons, are treacherous Middle
East specialists who do not demonstrate the requisite degree
of allegiance to Israel and the whacked out Zionists.
Back in April, when Newt made his Joe
M. speech, Powell was off to Syria to talk. Neocons, of course,
don't talk--they drop bunker buster bombs.
"The last seven months have involved
six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success,"
said Citizen Newt, referencing the previous month's mass murder
in Iraq. "The first days after military victory indicate
the pattern of diplomatic failure is beginning once again and
threatens to undo the effects of military victory."
In other words, diplomacy only spoils
all the good work accomplished by mass murder and wanton destruction
predicated on a swarm of lies and deception, most of it spawned
from the OSP where Gingrich worked.
As well, diplomacy doesn't earn a bundle
for the death merchants, the guys who have a stranglehold on
the government, the same government more than a few clueless
Americans believe has their best interests at heart.
Frankly, Newt is a Richard Perle automaton.
For some reason it's hard to imagine
Gingrich talking without a nod from his ideological boss, the
Prince of Darkness and accused Israeli spy Richard Perle.
Both of these right-wing zealots spend
their time plotting the demise of Arab children and grandmothers
over at the Defense Policy Board (DPB), along with other dangerous
rogues such as the former spooks James Woolsey and James Schlesinger,
war criminal at large Henry Kissinger, intellectual luminary
Dan Quayle, and a few retired generals who take JINSA-sponsored
walking tours over in Israel.
Not long ago Perle was the chairman of
Rumsfeld's DPB, but his apparently insatiable desire to profit
from war and misery got in the way and he had to step down, although
he is still firmly entrenched in the DPB.
As previously stated, the DPB is stacked
with war profiteers beholden to death merchant corporations such
as Boeing, TRW, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Booz Allen
Hamilton, all of whom have a keen interest in bombing "failed
states" such as Iraq for fun and profit.
As the Center for Public Integrity notes,
of the DPB's thirty members "at least nine have ties to
companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts
in 2001 and 2002." Additionally, four DPB members "are
registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three
largest defense contractors."
As well, a large number of Rummy's DPB
members are connected to far right- wing extremist "think
tanks":
Former national security adviser Richard
Allen, in addition to being a lobbyist for Alliance Aircraft,
is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (these guys were
Dubya's "brain trust" -- since it seems Bush doesn't
have much of one--during the 2000 election).
Retired Admiral David Jeremiah, who works
for no less than five corporations doing business with the misnamed
Defense Department, is a board member of JINSA, or the Jewish
Institute of National Security Affairs (a rabidly Zionist organization
that hosts the General and Flag Officer's program; this rewires
American military officers into pro-Israel Stepford humans).
Kiron Sinner, assistant professor of
history, political science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon,
and helpmate to Condoleezza Rice, is a fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations.
Ruth Wedgwood, professor of law at Johns
Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies,
is also a CFRite.
Former CIA director James Woolsey labors
in the service of JINSA.
Richard Perle, the quintessential dual-allegiance
Zionist and accused Israeli spy (in the Jonathan Pollard espionage
case), is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
for Public Policy Research, a board member of the hawkish pro-Israel
Advisors of Foundation for Defense of Democracy (Perle shares
this position with the right-wing Zionists Charles Krauthammer,
William Kristol, and Gary Bauer), and is the former director
of the Jerusalem Post.
Finally, Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow
at the American Enterprise Institute, a distinguished visiting
fellow at the Hoover Institution, and "analyst" for
the Bush Ministry of Disinformation, aka Fox News.
It's no secret that these individuals
and organizations, along with the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC), are primarily responsible for planning and conspiring
together to illegally and immorally invade Iraq (current number
of innocent civilians murdered: over 10,000).
No doubt, in the aftermath of the invasion
and the muddle the Bushites have made of it, the above-mentioned
neocons and others are antsy for stability.
There is, after all, a schedule here
-- the US has to build military bases in Iraq in preparation
for new invasions, decades of occupation, and fulfilling its
obligation to be the policeman for a Likudite Greater Israel
and enforcer for multinational neoliberalism, otherwise known
as global theft.
So, according to the Perle neocons, there
needs to be an Iraqi "leader" put in place, and sooner
the better, hopefully before the election next year.
Over at the Pentagon where Rummy's DPB
holds court, the idea has long been to put the CIA stooge, Iraqi
National Congress darling, and convicted bank swindler Ahmed
Chalabi in charge. Richard Perle is hot on Chalabi, mostly because
he's an Arab who will do what the Likudites want.
"Chalabi and his people have confirmed
that they want a real peace process, and that they would recognize
the state of Israel," the Prince of Darkness told the Washington
Post in April. Naturally, this is the most important thing for
the Zionist neocons at the Pentagon, to hell with bringing stability
and security to the Iraqi people. Plus, it would serve as a big
slap in the face to millions of Arabs who want justice for the
Palestinians.
Perle and the DPB are rolling out Gingrich,
hoping to get something moving in regard to imposing Chalabi
or some other Iraqi exile on the Iraqi people, and soon, before
the occupation slips further out of reach and the insurgency
is taken up by the Shi'ites.
Once the uprising against US occupation
moves beyond the minority Sunni community, the neocon vision
of an emasculated Iraq, no longer able to challenge Israel or
pay stipends to Palestinian suicide bombers, will be shattered
and lost.
Israel sorely needs to defuse the "Palestinian
problem," most likely by turning the West Bank and Gaza
into huge open-air concentration camps, or by way of "transfer,"
i.e., ethnic cleansing -- but it can't do any of this effectively
until the Arab Middle East is rendered politically and militarily
inert.
That's what the "war on terr'ism"
is all about.
Moreover, before Bush gets too disillusioned,
what with an election right around the corner and his apparent
and growing willingness to find a quick fix to the Iraqi quagmire,
the neocons hope to short circuit any talk of actual democracy
in Iraq.
Obviously, allowing Iraqis to vote for
whomever they want would result in a Muslim theocracy of one
sort or another, possibly aligned with Iran, a complete nightmare
scenario for the Zionist neocons. Instead, they hope get a malleable
dictator in there, and right quick, preferably before the election
next year.
"The real key here is not how many
enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow,"
Gingrich told Newsweek. "And that is a very important metric
that [the US military] just don't get."
It's not that Gingrich and the Zionist
neocons want to stop the killing and give peace a chance.
No, the Perle neocons simply want to
take the killing off the front page, stop the incremental killing
of US soldiers (it's bad PR), and install a strong dictator and
an effective security apparatus, maybe something along the lines
of the Shah's SAVAK in Iran, something with teeth able to effectively
terrorize the resistance, something organized and trained under
the guidance of the United States and Israeli intelligence officers,
as was SAVAK in 1957. SAVAK, after all, was the prefect instrument
for one-party rule, for torture and execution of political prisoners,
and for mercilessly crushing dissent.
This, however, may not be necessary for,
as the Telegraph reported in May, the US was busy at work recruiting
former members of Saddam's Mukhabarat, regardless of Bremer's
stated desire to pursue "de-Ba'athification" measures.
In fact, these former thugs in Saddam's
employ may be exactly what Newt was referencing when he said
the "idea that we are going to have a corruption-free, pristine,
League of Women Voters government in Iraq on Tuesday is beyond
naiveté."
On December 5, the handpicked Iraqi Ruling
Council indicated it plans to revive Mukhabarat.
"We will use their own dogs to hunt
them down," exclaimed Nabil al-Musawi, deputy president
of the Iraqi National Congress and the party's chief of security.
"To think that I am supporting this idea surprises even
me. But we have to be realistic... If I have to deal with the
devil for short-term gain for the sake of my people, then I will."
Nabil al-Musawi, of course, is being
extremely disingenuous--once Mukhabarat, or a SAVAK-like equivalent,
is unleashed on the Iraqi people, it will not be a "deal
with the devil for short-term," but a permanent fixture
of the US- Israel imposed state (or possible states, since there's
talk of breaking Iraq up along ethnic lines).
The neocons have a lot riding on Iraq--they
can't afford to have Bush blow it now with his trifling concerns
over an election next year, an election that really means absolutely
nothing to the neocons beyond that the fact that if Bush is trounced
they will be unceremoniously bounced as well.
Besides, that's what Diebold voting machines
are for.
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent no holds barred blog at www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's,
The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays
for CounterPunch, Another
Day in the Empire, will soon be published by Dandelion Books.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 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?
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