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Today's
Stories
October
3 / 5, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
All Armi
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
Recent
Stories
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
October 3 / 5, 2003
Occupation as Rape-Marriage
Withdrawal
as "Failure," Necessary Deals as "Success"
By GARY LEUPP
"Failure in Iraq is not an option
The President needs to get personally involved to build a broad,
international coalition. He should immediately direct his Secretary
of State to get on a plane to drum up the troops and the money----and
make the deals that are necessary to get our allies and friends
to join us in the effort to make Iraq a better place. That is
what the President's father did so successfully 13 years ago.
It is high time that this President Bush follow the example set
by that President Bush."
"Anti-war" presidential candidate
Howard Dean, supporting the occupation of Iraq, and the first
President Bush's successful deals in that country, in
San Jose, California, Sept. 7.
Quite a number of "anti-war"
politicians, including former Vermont governor and Commander-in-Chief
wannabe Howard Dean, argue that while "we" were wrong
to invade Iraq, now that we're there, we need to stay for years,
expand the occupation force, hustle up an international military
force to aid us, and make sure that our security isn't threatened
by an Iraq crawling with al-Qaeda and other terrorists. The Dean
team calls for a "democratic transition" period of
12-18 months, but tells us up front: "Troops
should expect to be in Iraq for a longer period."
Personally, I didn't have anything to do with the invasion of
Iraq, and opposed it as best I could from the
day Bush made it clear that he was going to deliberately conflate
al-Qaeda with Saddam Hussein and implement the neocons' plans
for the Middle East.
So I respectfully ask to be left out
of that lousy "we." I further don't think the American
people---even those duped into supporting the war through the
calculated hard-sell campaign undertaken by a conspiratorial
cabal backed up by an unforgivably unquestioning, cheerleading
press---are
collectively responsible for the crime.
The troops on the ground, sucked into
a horrible situation, who just want to come home, aren't
to blame either.
The Bush administration wrongly and brutally
invaded Iraq, and now it wants to stay as long as it takes to
meet its (not my, not our) strategic objectives
there and throughout Southwest Asia, which if really, democratically
discussed among a well-informed citizenry, would surely produce
much more dissent among us. As it is, Dean's argument asserts
that:
(1) "we" should accept that
we were lied to, but still stay the course resulting from that
lie;
(2) that we should accept occupation as a morally legitimate
"white
man's burden;"
(3) that we should treat all Iraqi resistance as "terrorism"
and suppress it, even if that means a drawn-out struggle, so
long as we share the military burden "with our allies and
friends."
But (and maybe Dean knows this) that
counter-insurgency effort requires that we blur the lines between
a wide variety of resisting groups, while inevitably generating
more anti-U.S. sentiment.
As for al-Qaeda: really, there hasn't
been much evidence for its presence in Iraq, although the experts
seem to agree that it's greater post-Saddam than during the secularist's
iron rule. Al-Qaeda thrives within bedlam, and the crudely executed
occupation has handed it creative chaos on a silver platter.
Maybe the (putatively) al-Qaeda-linked group al-Ansar is active,
but the size and strength of this Kurdish-based gang are unclear
and probably overstated. Most of the violence directed at the
invaders surely originates from Iraqi nationalists of various
stripes, and not only Baathists; from a variety of religious
fundamentalists, and not only Sunnis; and from the relatives
of civilian victims of trigger-happy U.S. soldiers. Defense Department
officials have essentially conceded as much to the New York Times
(http://www.fff.org/.
The occupation seems designed to generate Iraqi, Arab, Muslim
and general global animosity towards America; each day it continues,
the antipathy mounts, lending a perverse credibility to the claim
"it's better to fight terrorism in Baghdad than in New York,"
although in the end (if I may paraphrase Lennon & McCartney),
the hate you take is equal to the hate you make. That hatred,
fueled by the New American Century millenarian project, is spreading
all over the planet.
But what if "we" (as
many military families are demanding) just pull
out the troops?
Dean rules that out entirely, because
at least for several years, an Iraq without American troops will
in his view constitute a threat to America. I submit the troops'
continued presence will in fact exacerbate terror threats. There's
no better evidence for that than the fact that demands for immediate
withdrawal come not only from the actively violent resistance,
but also from those who have so far most closely cooperated with
the occupation. These include members of the handpicked Governing
Council to the
U.S.-trained Fallujah police force. As Brookings Institute
analyst Ivo Daalder put it recently, the Council is "not
legitimate because we [the U.S. government] installed" it,
"and so we [sic] now have the problem of going against the
people we [sic] put in power, saying they can't be trusted"
(AP, Sept. 25). Alaska Republican Representative Don Young says
that even Ahmad Chalabi, hitherto viewed as a reliable quisling,
"now seems like he is no longer one of us. He seems to be
one of them now" (Boston Globe, Sept. 27). One of
them? You know, terrorists, ragheads, anti-Americans, evil-doers,
people who don't lick boot and say "Thank you, sir"
afterwards. (Young's ire is apparently based on the Council's
support for OPEC oil price and production policies and its---thoroughly
understandable---decision to purchase electricity from neighboring
Syria and Iran. Wherever in Iraq does Congressman Young expect
to find Iraqis who will remain "with us," with the
lights off, to his satisfaction?)
And didn't that recent (under-reported)
Zogby poll ("the first scientific survey of Iraqi people")
show that the Iraqi people "want to 'control their own destiny,'
without the intervention of outside forces" and that 58.5%
do not want the U.S. or U.K. to "help" set up a government
in Iraq? (Financial Times, Sept. 11, 2003). Asked whether
the U.S. would "help" or "hurt" Iraq during
the next five years, 35% said help, 50% said hurt. Will a protracted
occupation bound to produce more and more "collateral damage"
improve these figures to the occupiers' advantage?
Some war critics view the invasion of
Iraq as a "mistake." It was no such thing. It was a
conscious violation of international law, and the appropriate
object of global condemnation. It was a crime carefully planned
and undertaken, although its perpetrators may have miscalculated
its outcome. The suffering it has and continues to generate makes
the following analogy woefully inadequate, even if some might
find it a little bit harsh.
There are some societies, past and present
and widely distributed (Celtic,
Kyrgyz, Ethiopian, etc.), in which a man who kidnaps and
rapes (from the Latin rapere or raptum, to seize)
a woman might, if he "does the right thing" and pays
a bride-price to her family, and marries her, somehow undo his
crime. (For a Biblical example, see Deuteronomy 22:28-29.) But
most of us today don't accept that logic. Nowadays, what decent
people with common sense want to do is to separate that victim
from the rapist, by as vast a distance as possible (and ideally
by a row of bars). The criminal can do no good for her, other
than pay reparations---and even those payments can of course
never undo the crime. His obnoxious presence will hurt her rather
than help her.
The ravisher here is not the common soldier,
pressed into a supporting role in the Rape of Iraq, and his or
her own life violated thereby. The culprit is something called
U.S. imperialism, which has serially raped countries since
the occupation of the Philippines in 1899, and even before that.
Those directing that imperialism, like rapists faced with bride-price
demands, now look to their longtime buddies for help in dealing
with the consequences. But most of the latter, who given their
own histories don't really occupy a higher moral plain than their
ally (and might even secretly, enviously crave their own "piece
of the action"), wince a bit at his request for aid.
They advise their friend to just free his victim rather than
buy her, and they deny
him both their money and their physical complicity.
Meanwhile some even closer to the rapist,
who once counseled against the crime, and are so damned proud
that they once said, "Best not to do that," or "I
don't agree with that," now endorse the rape-marriage of
prolonged occupation. In doing so, they endorse the violation
in its aftermath---as something, after all, not really all that
shameful---and take the rapist's side as he seeks to buy legitimacy.
Shame on them. (Not us, who don't believe in rape as a
matter of principle, and want nothing to do with it. But shame
on them.)
* * *
"US officials need to get our [expletive
deleted by the Post] out of here," Staff Sergeant Charles
Pollard, stationed in Baghdad as part of the 307th Military Police
Company Sergeant Sami Jalil, an Iraqi police officer under Pollard's
command, said: "The truth has become apparent The Americans
painted a picture that they would come, provide good things to
the Iraqi people, spread security, but regrettably Iraqi people
hate the Americans."
---Washington Post, as cited by
the antiwar Green Left Weekly,
July 9.
"Actually, ---the Iraqi people are
happy that we're there. At least in Kirkuk Daily we're told by
the Iraqi people that live there that 'we love you, we are glad
you're here, thank you for helping us.' So that's a lot of uplifting
times there when people tell us that."
---widely-referenced U.S. Army Spc. John
Perkins, talking to pro-war CNN's
Iraq-attack enthusiast Bill Hemmer, Sept. 26.
"Don't you love me now?"
----Boxer Mike Tyson, after
raping Desiree Washington, July 19, 1991.
Gary Leupp
is a professor of History at Tufts University and coordinator
of the Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
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