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October
8, 2003
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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
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
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
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
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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
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Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
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Steven Sherman
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Vest
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October
8, 2003
Flashback: Beirut,
June 1982
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
By JAMES BOVARD
In his televised speech to the nation on September
7, President Bush declared, "In the past, the terrorists
have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that
if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge.
In this, they are mistaken." There are many parallels between
the 1982-84 U.S. deployment and decimation of U.S. troops in
Beirut and the current Iraqi situation. None of them bode well
for the success of Operation Iraqi Freedom or the life expectancy
of American troops.
Few Americans remember the bitter details
of one of Reagan's biggest foreign debacles. Lebanon had been
wracked by a brutal civil war for seven years when, in June 1982,
Israel invaded in order to crush the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
U.S. troops were briefly deployed in August in Beirut to help
secure a ceasefire to facilitate the withdrawal of the PLO forces
to Tunisia.
U.S. troops exited Beirut after the PLO
withdrawal was largely completed. However, in mid-September 1982,
the massacre of more than 700 Palestinian refugees threatened
to plunge Lebanon into total chaos. Lebanese Christian Phalangist
militia butchered residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps; the militia was armed, aided, and fed by the Israeli Defense
Force, which surrounded and blockaded the camps.
The Lebanese government appealed to President
Reagan to send American troops back into Beirut as a stabilizing
factor, and Reagan quickly obliged. As fighting escalated between
Christians, Muslims, Syrians, and Israelis in Lebanon, the original
U.S. peacekeeping mission became a farce. The U.S. forces were
training and equipping the Lebanese army, which was increasingly
perceived as a pro-Christian, anti-Muslim force. (Most Lebanese
are Muslim).
On April 18, 1983 a delivery van pulled
up to the front door of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and detonated,
collapsing the building and killing 46 people (including 16 Americans)
and wounding over a hundred others. The U.S. embassy was a sitting
duck for the terrorist assault: unlike many other U.S. embassies
in hostile environments, it had no sturdy outer wall. Newsweek
noted: "Delivery vehicles are supposed to go to the rear
of the building. Why Lebanese police guarding the  embassy
driveway would have made an exception in the case of the black
van remained a mystery." The attack lacked novelty value,
since the Iraqi and French embassies had been wrecked by similar
car bomb attacks in the preceding 18 months.
Five days later, on April 23, 1983, Reagan
announced to the press: "The tragic and brutal attack on
our embassy in Beirut has shocked us all and filled us with grief.
Yet, because of this latest crime we are more resolved than ever
to help achieve the urgent and total withdrawal of all American
forces from Lebanon, or I should say, all foreign forces. I'm
sorry. Mistake." But the actual mistake was a U.S. policy
that would cost hundreds of Americans their lives.
By late summer 1983, the Marines were
being targeted by Muslim snipers. In the same way that some Bush
administration officials are shocked by the Iraqi resistance
to American troops, Reagan administration officials seemed surprised
at rising attacks on American soldiers.
The Reagan administration responded to
sniper potshots and scattered mortar attacks on U.S. troops with
a massive escalation. On September 13, Reagan authorized Marine
commanders in Lebanon to call in air strikes and other attacks
against the Muslims to help the Christian Lebanese army. Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger vigorously opposed the new policy,
fearing it would make American troops far more vulnerable. Navy
ships repeatedly bombarded the Muslims over the next few weeks.
At 6:20 A.M. on Sunday morning, October
23, 1983, a lone, grinning Muslim drove a Mercedes truck through
a parking lot, past two Marine guard posts, through an open gate,
and into the lobby of the Marine headquarters building in Beirut,
where he detonated the equivalent of six tons of explosives.
The explosion left a 30-foot-deep crater and killed 243 marines.
A second truck bomb moments later killed 58 French soldiers.
Colin Powell, who was then a major general,
commented in his autobiography: "Since [the Muslims] could
not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target,
the exposed Marines at the airport." A surprise attack on
a troop concentration in a combat zone does not fit most definitions
of terrorism. However, Reagan perennially portrayed the attack
as a terrorist incident and the American media and political
establishment accepted that label.
Reagan administration officials scrambled
to assert that the administration was blameless. White House
press spokesman Larry Speakes declared on the day of the attack
that the bombing "definitely was a difficult situation for
us" since "people come out of nowhere and perform these
acts." Vice President George H.W. Bush rationalized: "It's
awfully hard to guard against that kind of terrorism." Defense
Secretary Weinberger announced that "nothing can work against
a suicide attack like that, any more than you can do anything
against a kamikaze flight." Actually, during World War II,
the U.S. Navy quickly responded by placing rows of antiaircraft
guns on the sides of its big ships.
In the aftermath of the Marine barracks
bombing, Reagan's creativity with the facts matched George W.
Bush's Iraq tales. In a televised speech four days after the
bombing, Reagan portrayed the attack as unstoppable, declaring
that the truck "crashed through a series of barriers, including
a chain-link fence and barbed-wire entanglements. The guards
opened fire, but it was too late." Reagan claimed the attack
proved the U.S. mission was succeeding: "Would the terrorists
have launched their suicide attacks against the multinational
force if it were not doing its job? . . . It is accomplishing
its mission." He warned that a U.S. withdrawal could result
in the Middle East being "incorporated into the Soviet bloc."
Reagan also declared that the U.S. was involved in the Middle
East in part to secure a "solution to the Palestinian problem."
Reagan sent Marine Corps commander Paul
X. Kelley to Beirut. Kelley quickly announced that he was "totally
satisfied" with the security around the barracks at the
time of the bombing. Upon returning to Washington, Kelley was
summoned to Capitol Hill and bragged to Congress: "In a
13-month period, no marine billeted in the building [destroyed
by the truck bomb] was killed or injured" from incoming
fire. Kelley inaccurately testified that the Marine guards had
loaded weapons and that two of them had been killed in the attack.
When congressmen persisted questioning, Kelley became enraged
and shouted: "We're talking about clips in weapons, but
we're not talking about the people who did it. I want to find
the perpetrators. I want to bring them to justice! You have to
allow me this one moment of anger."
Even though there had already been numerous
major car bombings in Beirut that year and scores of other suicide
attacks, Kelley told the committee that the truck bombing "represents
a new and unique terrorist threat, one that could not have been
anticipated by any commander." Kelley denied the Marines
received any warning of an impending attack. However, on the
morning of Kelley's second day of testimony, the New York Times
reported that the CIA specifically warned the Marines three days
ahead of time that an Iranian-linked group was planning an attack
against them.
Other military officials involved in
Lebanon also denied any culpability. Vice Admiral Edward Martin,
the commander of the Sixth Fleet, declared: "The only person
I can see who was responsible was the driver of that truck."
Martin stressed in an interview: "You have to remember that
prior to Oct. 23, there hadn't been any real terrorism threat."
A New York Times investigation concluded: "Marine officers
in Beirut and the admirals and generals in the chain of command
above them did not consider terrorism to be a primary threat
even after the embassy bombing, and even though Beirut had been
full of terrorists for years."
Shortly after the bombing, Reagan appointed
a Pentagon commission headed by retired Admiral Robert Long to
investigate. The commission report, finished in mid-December
1983, concluded that military commanders in Lebanon and all the
way back to Washington failed to take obvious steps to protect
the soldiers. The commission suggested that many fatalities might
have been prevented if guards had carried loaded weapons. The
report stated that the only barrier the truck overcame was some
barbed wire that it easily drove over. The commission also noted
that the "prevalent view" among U.S. commanders was
that there was a direct link between the Navy shelling of the
Muslims and the truck bomb attack.
When the White House saw the final version
of the commission's report, they issued a stop order. The Washington
Post reported that the White House "delayed release of the
report for several days, allowing Reagan to respond to its criticism
before it became public, and then attempted to play down its
impact by vetoing a Pentagon news conference on the document."On
December 27, 1983 Reagan revealed that "we have never before
faced a situation in which others routinely sponsor and facilitate
acts of violence against us." Reagan sought to make the
report "old news": "Nearly all the measures that
were identified by the distinguished members of the Commission
have already been implemented and those that have not will be
very quickly." Reagan announced that the Marine commanders
in Beirut "have already suffered enough" and should
not "be punished for not fully comprehending the nature
of today's terrorist threat." Reagan then effectively declared
that no one would be held accountable: "If there is to be
blame, it properly rests here in this office and with this president,"
he announced, just before leaving Washington for a vacation in
Palm Springs, California.
The Reagan administration blamed its
antiterrorist failures on the Carter administration. White House
press spokesman Larry Speakes announced: "We don't quarrel
with the fact that the CIA and other intelligence-gathering agencies
have been crippled by decisions of the previous administration,
and we are in the process of rebuilding capabilities. But it
takes time . . . to re-establish our intelligence-gathering methods."
The following September, shortly after
a suicide bomber again obliterated much of the poorly-defended
U.S. embassy in Beirut, Reagan blamed the debacle on Carter administration
CIA cutbacks: "We're feeling the effects today of the near
destruction of our intelligence capability in recent years before
we came here." Reagan falsely asserted that the Carter administration
had "to a large extent" gotten "rid of our intelligence
agents."
Reagan quietly withdrew U.S. combat troops
from Beirut in early 1984. During the 1984 presidential election,
the Reagan administration also responded to its Beirut debacles
by attacking the patriotism of Democrats. In the vice presidential
candidates debate, George H. W. Bush denounced Democratic candidate
Walter Mondale and his vice presidential pick, Geraldine Ferraro:
"For somebody to suggest, as our opponents have, that these
men died in shame, they had better not tell the parents of those
young marines." Neither Mondale nor Ferraro had said that
the Marines "died in shame." Bush denounced Mondale
for running a "mean-spirited campaign": "We've
seen Walter Mondale take a human tragedy in the Middle East and
try to turn it to personal political advantage." But Mondale's
criticisms of the Reagan administration's failures in Lebanon
were less strident than Reagan's criticisms of Jimmy Carter for
the Iran hostage crisis during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Muslims also responded to U.S. troops
by seizing American hostages. Reagan sent military equipment
to Iran as a means to entice the Iranians to exert pressure to
get hostages released. After the "arms for hostages"
deal became public (along with the illegal funneling of the proceeds
to the Nicaraguan Contras), Reagan's credibility was devastated.
Reagan went into such a tailspin after the crisis broke that
his new chief of staff, Howard Baker, briefly examined invoking
the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove Reagan from office because
of medical unfitness. The Tower Commission report on the debacle
concluded: "The arms-for-hostages trades rewarded a regime
that clearly supported terrorism and hostage-taking."
The 1982-84 deployment of U.S. troops
in Beirut achieved nothing. And, contrary to the arguments of
today's hardliners, a larger, longer deployment would have merely
boosted the number of body bags arriving at Dover Air Force base.
The Israelis were far more aggressive against perceived opponents
in Lebanon than were the American troops. But even the Israelis
were effectively driven out of Lebanon over a decade and a half
later, after failing to suppress Hezbollah and losing more than
twice as many soldiers there as it lost during the 1967 Six Day
War.
The Reagan administration paid no political
price for its Beirut debacle. Reagan and Bush Sr. succeeded in
falsifying, blustering, and smearing their way out of political
trouble. Now, two decades later, the only "lesson"
that seems to be recalled is to stick resolutely to floundering
policies - at least until the number of dead soldiers threatens
to become politically toxic.
James Bovard
is the author of Terrorism
& Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice & Peace to Rid
the World of Evil (St. Martin's/Palgrave MacMillan, September
2003).
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
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