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Today's
Stories
December 20 / 21, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
December 19, 2003
Elaine Cassel
Courts
Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution
Robert Fisk
Raid
on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back
Zoltan Grossman
The
Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis
Mike Whitney
Bush's
Afghan Highway to Nowhere
Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?
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.
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Weekend
Edition
December 20 / 21, 2003
Cheers of a Clown
Saddam
and the Gloating Bush
By CAROL NORRIS
The image of a bedraggled, prodded, defeated Saddam
has been endlessly paraded on TV since his capture for all to
see and cheer. It's wonderful for many of the Iraqi people that
such a ruthless tyrant might finally be held accountable for
his years of brutality. So, yes, cheer for the hope of justice
for those in Iraq who have been victims of his heinous crimes.
Cheer and be glad.
But, don't cheer for yourself and don't
cheer for your children here in the U.S., because there's little
to cheer about.
You and I were told by the Bush administration
that Saddam was a hugely powerful man who put the people of the
U.S. and the world in imminent danger and he must be stopped
immediately at nearly any cost, lest he unleash his powerful
weapons of mass destruction on us. This dangerous and looming
"reality" is why Congress and numbers of Americans
said, even if reluctantly, yes, let's go to war.
We were told Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction. But, he didn't. Bush told U.S. Senators Saddam had
the ability to bomb the East Coast. He didn't. We were told there
were working chemical weapons labs in Iraq. There were none.
We were given a litany of evidence and facts and figures to prove
we needed to go to war. But, all the "hard" evidence
was ultimately refuted. We were led to believe by inference that
Saddam was connected with the atrocities of 9.11. But, he wasn't.
Saddam is a merciless man who would've
surely fought with all his strength against an invasion, which,
no doubt, he did. And we saw what little strength he truly had.
It was such that he was forced to flee when the U.S. invaded,
ultimately ending up hiding, disheveled and weary in a spider
hole.
All the while, the man presumably actually
responsible for 9.11, Osama bin Laden, is still at large. And
the al Qaeda cells in Afghanistan - comprised of the folks we
probably need to be worrying about - are growing again, as are
the poppies and the heroin trade.
"What's the difference?" asked
Mr. Bush when Diane Sawyer recently asked him about the lack
of WMDs. Wow. We've all heard George Bush say some pretty flippant,
arrogant, unbelievable things. But, this one is a showstopper.
It's a statement inconceivably divorced from the realities of
the horrors of war, as it flippantly ignores the myriad and diverse
concerns and questions of the world.
The difference is plenty. The difference
is the U.S. government lied to its people about the WMDs. Period.
The lies and distortions by the Bush administration alone should
be front page, earth-shattering news. There should be a national
dialogue and an independent investigation. Nixon was impeached
for a lesser lie and Clinton was all but impeached for a much
lesser one.
Ask what the difference is to the families
of the hundreds and hundreds of U.S. service people who died
and continue to die serving a lie, whose bodies are now put in
"transport tubes" that are hidden from the media as
they arrive home, whose funerals Bush will not attend because
it's bad publicity. The difference is in the lives of the many
thousands of wounded U.S service people, some of who are dismembered
or maimed for life. Recently, some military families have even
been forced to hold fundraisers to buy their loved ones the standard
issue protective gear the military says it 'can't afford' to
give them. As with their predecessors in the First Gulf War,
these soldiers will in all probability feel the difference in
the lifelong, debilitating effects of depleted uranium coupled
with greatly reduced veterans' services and benefits that will
fail to adequately help them down the line when they need it
most.
The difference is that between an estimated
7,900 and 9,750 Iraqi lives have been lost in the war and occupation,
turned into "pink mist." These were people with the
same hopes and dreams as you and I have. Their country is in
ruins. The reconstruction efforts are beleaguered at best. Unemployment
is rampant. Women are afraid to go into the streets for fear
of being raped and kidnapped. The capture of Saddam does not
make this quagmire go away. Some say it will galvanize forces
previously afraid to come together, making the situation even
more dangerous.
The difference is because of the unilateral
decisions made and no WMDs found the U.S. has lost credibility
in the eyes of the world, with longstanding friendships and good
feelings gone or greatly damaged.
The difference is that, defying all sanity
and reason, the Bush administration has restarted a nuclear arms
race that will not make us one iota safer from the Osamas and
the Saddams out there, but will make those who get the military
contracts many iotas richer.
The difference is that for many months
the Bush administration has turned its attention and funds to
war and occupation, ignoring those of us at home who are struggling
to make ends meet. Our economy is in shambles. A record number
of jobs have been lost in the last few months. But, the Bureau
of Labor Statistics no longer puts out monthly job loss statistics,
just as the military no longer tallies civilian causalities in
Iraq. So, when Bush says all is well in both places, there is
less readily available data for you and me to find out otherwise.
The difference is that the U.S. now boasts
the largest deficit in history, one that is getting larger by
the minute as we divert funds for war and occupation. The truth
is, ironically, much of the modest upswing in the economy is
due to the military contracts from the war and occupation, an
upswing that doesn't benefit you and me, but a small fraction
of Americans who are already steeped in privilege. And at the
same time, the Bush administration is eviscerating workers' rights
and workers' benefits under the guise of "reform" as
he gives unprecedented tax cuts to the CEO's of those workers'
companies, widening the gap between employer and employee, rich
and poor.
The difference is that we now have a
president who has the audacity to say, "What's the difference?"
on national TV coupled with a cowed media that hardly bats an
eye or crosses a T over it.
The difference is that the American people
were duped, manipulated, flatly lied to, and worked up into a
collective state of fear not seen since in decades, all for oil
and gas, a pipeline, the supremacy of U.S. currency, and the
benefit of U.S. corporations. And, like the staged landing of
our president on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the fake, inedible
turkey he delivered to the troops, and the staged toppling of
Saddam's statue, we'll see the images of the real, conquered
Saddam plastered on our TV screens from now until Election Day.
In so doing, it's hoped that those images will loom larger in
our psyches than our bleak day-to-day reality and we'll feel
grateful and safe as we cheer George Bush all the way to the
voting booth.
"We're at war," we were told.
We must sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice because our very lives
are at stake from the threat of this formidable, threatening
tyrant and his WMDs. We were told fundamental aspects of our
democracy must be suspended, dissent must be squelched, U.S.
troops sacrificed, civil rights eviscerated, unprecedented wartime
secrecy must be maintained, the environment must take a back
seat, innocent people of Arab decent must continue to be detained
without charge because of the imminent threat of such an awful,
horrible man. But, as it turns out this brutal leader is, militarily
speaking, nothing but a shadow of his former self. The weapons
inspectors were right all along: there were no WMDs and Saddam,
as awful as he was to his own people, posed no imminent danger
to the people of the U.S.
So, what's the difference, Mr. Bush?
The difference is because of your war and the resulting way your
administration unilaterally comports itself in domestic and international
affairs, the world as we know it has changed considerably for
the worse and the lives of the people of the U.S. and the world
have been detrimentally, nonconsensually and perhaps forever
changed along with it.
And that is nothing to cheer about.
Carol Norris
is a writer and member of CodePink:
Women for Peace. She can be reached at: ohyeah@redjellyfish.net
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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