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Today's
Stories
October
2, 2003
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess and Why?
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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October
2, 2003
Has Bush Become a
Threat to the Ruling Elite?
Who
Got Us Into This Mess and Why?
By SAUL LANDAU
Have some heavy weight members of the old wealthy
families reached a consensus that George W. Bush constitutes
a clear and present danger to their fortunes' future? Have the
CPAs of the truly well-born advised the families that the current
occupant of the White House may have misplaced his mittens?
Sporadic editorials from establishment
house organs like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA
Times should alert the newly enlivened Democrats that they could
receive substantial support from some of the upper crust. The
message also arrived at the office of WH Adviser Karl Rove--a
man as sensitive to potential power shifts as he is insensitive
to human suffering.
But how does Rove go about repairing
the damage done to the confidence of the well born--and the others
who voted Republican because they thought W would bring stability
and economic prudence--without having the president admit that
he made serious errors of judgments about war and peace (life
and death) and economic priorities? President Bush has asked
for $87 billion more to "deal with Iraq and Afghanistan"
while he has little to show for it: 300 plus servicemen and women
dead, thousands wounded, thousands more sick with strange infirmities.
And Saddam remains missing along with Osama bin Laden and the
Anthrax scoundrel.
Bush has bullied his tax cut through
Congress so that while he has spent about $200 billion he has
not figured out how to compensate with income. He has wrecked
the foreign policy alliances and partnerships that the liberal
establishment considered vital pillars of stability. The UN has
never felt shakier and serious bickering undermines the common
interests that the old guard has with its counterparts in France
and Germany. Repair all this? A formidable task!
The Bushies got warnings from the upper
crusties before they bruised and bungled their way into Iraq.
In August 2002, Daddy Bush's consigliari Brent Scowcroft and
James Baker placed op-eds in The Wall Street Journal and New
York Times respectively, warning that the UN kosher stamp would
prove essential before sending US troops into the sticky mire
of  Middle Eastern battlegrounds. Indeed,
Daddy Bush himself offered such advice in a Tufts University
lecture on February 26, 2003 shortly before Junior's impatience
overrode all prudence.
To the old elite, Bush's neo-con advisers,
some of whom are promoting new wars with Syria and Iran and repeating
the discredited homilies of Saddam's WMDs and Al-Qaeda links,
take on the aura of dangerous loony birds.
A few Democrats have also finally begun
to blow the critical trumpet. Liberal Massachusetts Senator Ted
Kennedy called the Iraq War a "fraud" and even the
hawkish Pennsylvania Representative John Murtha charged Bush
with misleading the country. As Bush's poll numbers drop so too
does the robustness of the flag facade with which he has covered
his less than prudent bellicosity since 9/11. House Minority
leader Nancy Pelosi has chimed in as well and demanded that the
President do a bit more than play "dress up" on large
ships (referring to his May 1 appearance in a flight suit on
the USS Abraham Lincoln) and begin to level with the Congress
about how bad a mire we're really stuck in--over there.
But how far will the Democrats push their
critique? Will they figure out a way to leave Iraq? Will they
have leverage in forcing concessions before they agree to Bush's
$87 billion occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan request?
More importantly, will they ask: who
got us into this mess and why?
Start with a slight modification of the
classical questions. What didn't they (Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld)
know and when didn't they (Wolfowitz, Powell and Rice) know it?
These questions arise in response to the Administration's use
of link-speak.
They start with a big fib and then go
on to create a structure of lies on top of it. In the Fall of
2002, American and British leaders could not wait for the conclusion
of UN weapons inspections team, whose forensic experts had begun
a thorough search and destroy operation for nuclear, chemical
and biological weapons in Iraq. Bush had warned repeatedly that
the United Nations would condemn itself to irrelevance if it
failed to take on Iraq.
So, Bush employed Secretary of State
Colin Powell to present the United Nations with "overwhelming"
evidence of Iraqi accumulation of WMDs and links to Al Qaeda.
Powell told the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003 about
"the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and
the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic
terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today
harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda
lieutenants."
By March most of the world concluded
that the United States and England had not made a case for a
UN war in Iraq. Indeed, France and Russia decided not to allow
the Security Council to become a rubber stamp for a <U.S.-led>
war.
Consequently, using the urgency--according
to Prime Minister Tony Blair's September 24, 2002 Dossier, "the
Iraqi military may be able to deploy chemical or biological weapons
within 45 minutes of an order to do so"-- of stopping Saddam,
the war commenced and quickly ended.
In May 2003, Bush claimed military victory,
the Iraqi people were about to greet us with roses as liberators
and the loss of US and British soldiers had been minimal. Bush
gloated, strutted and cavorted in his triumph.
Instead of retarding the anti-Americanism
that had become the base of the culture for Al Qaeda recruiting,
Bush's policies have provided nutriments for the fundamentalist
zealots intent on using violence to apparently infiltrate into
Iraq and fight against the American way of life and especially
its Middle East policies.
But the Bush Administration, now faced
with its first serious opposition from Congress members and editorial
writers from leading newspapers, no longer speaks with one clear,
albeit simplistic voice. National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on September 8, 2003:
"...Do we know that he [Saddam]
had a role in 9/11 No, we do not know that he had a role in 9/11.
I think that this is a test that sets the bar far too high. I
don't think that we want to try and make the case that he directed
somehow the 9/11 events."
Or listen to Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld's haiku on the issue.
In a mid September Pentagon news conference,
the quixotic Rummy responded to a reporter who asked about a
Washington Post poll in which some 70 percent of Americans believed
Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. "I've not seen
any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say
that."
In Washington, the Bushies have also
changed their line. On September 6, John Bolton, US Under-Secretary
of State for Arms Control, said that Saddam's WMD "isn't
really the issue." According to Bolton, "as long as
that regime was in power, it was determined to get nuclear, chemical
and biological weapons one way or another. Until that regime
was removed from power, that threat remained--that was the purpose
of the military action."
His shift of position may link to the
David Kay 's report. His 1,400 person Iraq Survey Group began
a Sherlock Holmes like search for Saddam's infamous weapons in
May. As of September 20, Kay, a Bush buddy, and his team, had
not found WMDs or signs that WMD programs were underway. On September
21, the U.S. Army further conceded that what had been reported
as its only significant WMD find two mobile chemical labs and
a dozen 55-gallon drums of chemicals "showed no positive
hits at all" for chemical weapons. The Iraqi government
did have scientists on payroll who could have restarted a weapons
program, but that's a far cry from having one.
The liberal establishment appears ready
to take the issue of dumping W beyond the gossip stage. With
the emergence of General Wesley Clark as a candidate, a Democratic
Eisenhower type with Bill Clinton's backing, the stubborn alcoholic
in the WH, who insists that lies are truth and that God directs
his most banal political moves, faces a formidable opponent.
Just as in 1973, when they lost confidence
in Richard Nixon and the prestigious newspapers and TV network
news shows seemed to open their pages and screens to those eager
to explore the holes in his Watergate argument, so too has the
liberal elite now seem to have gathered enough energy to expose
the lies and weaknesses in Bush and company's Iraq story. It's
not just that the Bushies deliberately lied to the people and
Congress. That's traditional. But playing around with language
about imminent threats to our security at a very high dollar
price and the alienation of our traditional allies that's serious.
Ideally, Clark can develop the Ike appeal
and win the nomination. If he only succeeds in splitting the
Democrats, then a dark horse can emerge -- perhaps a member of
a family that served liberal establishment interests well for
the last eight years of the 20th Century.
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, will be published
in September by Pluto Books. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
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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