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in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
September 2, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Recent
Stories
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
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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September
2, 2003
The Iman Ali Mosque
Bombing
Round
Up the Usual Suspects
By KURT NIMMO
At first the Iraqi police -- actually the Americans
-- said the Imam Ali Mosque bombing was the work of al-Qaeda.
But that didn't really make too much sense, not with Iraqis unrelated
to al-Qaeda killing US soldiers, American civilians working for
military contractors, and fellow Iraqis cooperating with the
Anglo-Americans. Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the assumed
target of the suicide bombing, was considered one of the latter
by many Iraqis.
As if to add a bit of drama to the bombing,
the "authorities" threw in the complicity of "foreigners,"
a few straggling Saudis, Syrians, and Palestinians. This addition
fits nicely in the Bushite explanation of things -- the Iranians,
Syrians, even the formerly obliging Saudis are nothing less than
arrant troublemakers and, down the road, their verminous nests
will need to be invaded as well.
Now it seems the perps are Iraqis. "There
are several suspects, none of whom has citizenship other than
Iraqi," admitted Haidar al-Mayyali, the governor of the
holy city of Najaf. These are Saddam "remnants," of
course, "dead-enders" or "bitter-enders."
Even so, the "authorities" are unwilling to completely
dismiss the al-Qaeda connection. "There is no exact information
on this matter," al-Mayyali added. But then there never
is.
Saddam, or members of his "remnant"
Ba'athist dictatorship, wasted little time denying all involvement
in the terrorist bombing. On Monday, al-Jazeera -- the Arabic
TV station the Americans have bombed in the past (in Kabul, Basra,
and Baghdad) apparently for reporting the news differently than
the Bush Ministry of Disinformation,
aka Fox News, has -- aired an audio tape supposedly recorded
by Saddam. "The infidel invaders are accusing, without proof,
the followers of Saddam Hussein after the killing of Shi'ite
leader Hakim," said the tape. "This is not what Saddam
attributes to himself."
Saddam may not attribute the bombing
to himself, but the US "appointed" Governing Council
has, more than likely with ample prodding by their taskmasters.
"They hastened to accuse us before they had any proof. Did
they do this to shift attention from those who really did this,
or were they just hasty? They have to tell the people the details
of this accusation and their investigation," the tape pointed
out.
Well, naturally, that's not the style
of viceroy Bremer and the FBI, who were called in to investigate
the bombing. Thomas Fuentes, dubbed the FBI's top agent in Iraq,
said experts will look for links between the attack in Najaf
and bomb attacks at the United Nations headquarters and Jordanian
embassy in Baghdad. "We'll be obtaining samples if we can
of the explosives used [in Najaf] and will be submitting that
to laboratory analysis, and comparing it with samples taken from
other bombings," Fuentes told the AFP news agency. Fuentes
said there's no shortage of suspects. "Just start a list.
Many groups are capable. There's no shortage of people [in Iraq]
capable of conducting a bombing like this," he said rather
unreflectively.
The conclusion will be multiple choice:
Saddam or al-Qaeda with the help of earmarked enemies (Iranians,
Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians, or the duplicitous Saudis).
Since all of these guys work in concert against freedom-loving
Americans, the pre-ordained conclusion of the FBI investigation
will not be hard to digest, especially for a subservient corporate
media.
The Iraqi police (actually there's no
such thing; more accurately, they would be described as American
military police with hand-picked Iraqi employees) say they have
discovered that up to 700 pounds of explosives were used in each
of the cars in the terrorist attack and the detonation of the
explosives were triggered by cell phone. They believe the explosives
and ordinance used in the attack were the same type used against
the UN Headquarters in Baghdad on August 19th that killed Chief
UN Envoy in Baghdad, Sergio Vieira.
None of this matters, of course. Fox
News and its wannabes will never tell the American people the
truth about Iraq: while most Iraqis hate Saddam -- at least the
non-Sunnis who didn't benefit from his corrupt and onetime American
supported regime -- they most assuredly hate the American occupation
even more. After all, Saddam is Iraqi and the Americans well,
in the eyes of millions of Iraqis they're foreigners, invaders
after Iraq's bountiful oil reserves, Crusaders out to enervate
Islam, servitors of the Zionists.
The Iraqi people share a long history
of foreign invasion and occupation (Persians, Mongols, Ottoman
Turks, and British), so their paranoia is justified. In fact,
the word "Iraq" is not of their making -- it was imposed
on them under British Mandate. The arrogant Brits imposed a Hashemite
monarchy on the Arabs of the former Mesopotamia and carved out
the territorial limits of Iraq with little consideration of natural
frontiers or traditional tribal and ethnic settlements. So preoccupied
were the British by their desire for a direct trade route with
India (another colony) and the prospect of Arab oil (discovered
in Kirkuk in 1927) that they completely ignored the dangerous
reality of Arab Nationalism burbling perilously at the heels
of their hobnailed boots. It is the same nationalism that the
Americans are up against today.
Pan-Arab nationalism is the primary reason
millions of Arabs relate to the plight of the Palestinians; they
share an emotional attachment and solidarity with brother and
sister Arabs under attack by foreigners and Afrikaner-style settlers
-- European (Ashkenazic) Jews and their American benefactors
and enablers. For Arabs crossing Iraq's porous and wholly artificial
borders, the struggle is against the real foreigners -- the Americans
and their British coconspirators, the Europeanized heirs to colonialists
and, as many Arabs view it, Crusaders.
The assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad
Baqir al-Hakim will soon catalyze the fence-sitters in Iraq.
Regardless of who actually bombed the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf,
Iraqis will blame the Americans for having done so little to
prevent the bombing. Even the former CIA lapdog, Pentagon favorite,
and convicted swindler, Ahmad Chalabi, blames the Americans for
lackadaisical security. ''I hold the coalition forces responsible
for security in Iraq. The Americans have taken responsibility
for security in Iraq, and I appeal to them to keep the peace.''
So precarious is the American grasp on Iraq that its puppet "governing"
council is losing members. Last week, for instance, Shi'ite cleric
Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum suspended his membership because of security
problems and what he called the Americans' inability to protect
prominent figures. He cited the Najaf bombing for his decision.
Rounding up the usual suspects is an
exercise in futility. The FBI -- a discredited agency with an
illustrious past of hounding mobsters and anti-war activists
-- will come away from Najaf with "forensic" evidence
implicating whomever the Bushites want to blame for the resistance
to their brutal presence in Iraq. The CIA will waste its time
-- and some of the secret budget money it receives without the
consent of the American people -- determining if it is indeed
Saddam Hussein on that tape released to al-Jazeera. It doesn't
matter if it is Saddam on the tape -- or one of his doubles,
or a CIA linguistics specialist, or Santa Claus -- because with
or without Saddam Hussein the resistance will continue. It doesn't
matter if it's al-Qaeda, the Fallujah branch of al-Qaeda, the
al-Faruq Brigades, Ansar al-Islam, the Muslim Youth, the Snake
Party, Jihaz al-Iilam al-Siasi lil hizb al-Baath, the Army of
Mohammed, or any other of the more than two dozen known resistance
groups in Iraq. As the FBI's Thomas Fuentes pointed out, there
is no shortage of such groups in post-Saddam Iraq.
Not long ago General John Abizaid finally
admitted that the Americans face a "classic guerilla-type
campaign" in Iraq -- while avoiding the logical conclusion
of his statement: a huge commitment of forces will be needed
to even begin the suppression of a guerrilla force -- or a number
of guerilla forces -- in Iraq. "Our coalition will stay
until our work is done," said neocon Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz last month. "The sacrifices that
our magnificent troops are making [are] for their children, and
their grandchildren, for our children and our grandchildren,
and ... for our security." The American people, however,
are beginning to think otherwise; according to a CBS News poll,
approximately half of the American public believes things are
not going well in Iraq and the threat of terrorism remains the
same.
Now is the time to exit Iraq and let
the Iraqi people decide their own future. However, this is unlikely
to happen even if Bush is trounced from the White House next
year. In order to force the US from Iraq there will need to be
the sort of massive civil disobedience and non-stop demonstrations
that eventually forced the US from Vietnam nearly thirty years
ago. The difference between US involvement in Vietnam and Iraq
is crucial for the formation of that sort of activism: the Pentagon
and the White House no longer depend on a national draft and
the involuntary servitude of hundreds of thousands of young people,
many who are likely hard pressed to even find Iraq on a map.
Eventually, considering the swelling
guerilla war in Iraq and the neocon desire to take out Iran,
Syria, North Korea, possibly Lebanon and (in the more delusional
fever dreams of the neocons) Libya, Cuba, and even China -- to
say nothing of inserting troops in the cauldron that is the West
Bank and Gaza as senators Dick Lugar and Dianne Feinstein are
now suggesting -- the idea of a military draft may once rear
its ugly head. It may have to if the Bushites are to avoid imperial
overreach.
"The exercise in imperial overreach
now all but forgotten is the first part of the British colonial
Indian Army's Mesopotamia campaign of World War I, an endeavor
that went horribly awry due to overconfidence, and a fixation
on Baghdad that led to going too far, too fast, with too few,
outpacing thinly-stretched supply lines left vulnerable to a
marauding enemy," writes Jason Vest. History may not repeat
itself, not exactly. Even so, the Americans seem to be repeating
the mistakes of the British in Iraq.
Neocons such as William Kristol and Robert
Kagan are urging more troops be sent to Iraq lickety-split. "While
it is indeed possible that, with a little luck, the United States
can muddle through to success in Iraq over the coming months,
the danger is that the resources the administration is devoting
to Iraq right now are insufficient, and the speed with which
they are being deployed is insufficiently urgent," write
the chicken hawk duo in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard.
"These failings, if not corrected soon, could over time
lead to disaster." In other words, if more troops are not
sent to Iraq promptly the neocon plan of splintering the Arab
world into tribal Bantustans will falter and eventually fail.
The neocons may hate the draft -- recalling the lessons of Vietnam
but they may have no choice: as it now stands, the US does
not have enough soldiers to carry out the demented neocon scheme
of world conquest.
Bush will not be able to send enough
soldiers to Iraq -- just as Johnson and Nixon were unable to
send enough to Vietnam to stem the tide of violence directed
against the invasion and occupation of their homeland. Even if
Bush puts 200,000 or 500,000 US soldiers on the streets of Baghdad,
Basra, and Najaf the resistance against the occupation will not
end. Resistance is human nature, a spontaneous human impulse
the obtund and think-tank bound neocons either forgot about or
never knew in the first place.
For as the Algerian revolutionary Frantz
Fanon understood, the people of Vietnam and the people
now resisting occupation in Iraq are struggling because
it has "become impossible for them to breath."
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Visit his excellent online
gallery Ordinary Vistas. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn
and St. Clair's forthcoming volume, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.
He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 30 / Sept. 1, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
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