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Today's
Stories
March 26, 2004
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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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March
26, 2004
Somalia and Iraq
Looking
Back and Ahead
By MICKEY Z
"Once you hear the details of victory,
it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat."
Jean-Paul Sartre
The preamble to the United Nations Charter begins,
"We the people of the United Nations determined to save
succeeding generations from the scourge of war...."
Such idiom becomes useful when the United
States intervenes under the auspices of UN humanitarianism. As
the endgame in Iraq grows progressively more muddled and calls
for UN involvement increase, it's interesting to note that March
25, 2004 marks 10 years since the last U.S. troops left Somalia.
In 1992-93, Somalia experienced <U.S./UN>
munificence firsthand. Operation Restore Hope (sic) was sold
to the public as an act of U.S. philanthropy with images of malnourished
African children and stories of evil Somali warlords...but little
of the nation's history was allowed to get in the way.
"During the early 1970s," explains
Stephen Zunes, "Somalia was a client of the Soviet Union,
even allowing the Soviets to establish a naval base at Berbera
on the strategic north coast near the entrance to the Red Sea."
Siad Barre, Somalia's dictator, cultivated
a relationship with the USSR due to U.S. support of Ethiopia
Under the rule of the feudal emperor Haile Selassie, Ethiopia
was a bitter rival of Somalia. The U.S. supported Selassie's
monarchy until he was toppled in 1974.
Within three years, the Ethiopian military
turned towards Moscow while President Carter eyed Somalia, telling
his advisers that he wanted them 'to move in every possible way
to get Somalia to be our friend." The U.S. succeeded in
luring Siad Barre away from the Soviet sphere of influence and
he remained an ally until his ouster in 1991, an ouster not opposed
by Barre's benefactors.
"For its part, Washington couldn't
be bothered by what was going on," says historian Stephen
R. Shalom. "Barre was a U.S. ally, but so too were the various
guerrilla leaders who were fighting against him."
"From the late 1970s until just
before Siad Barre's overthrow in early 1991, the U.S. sent hundreds
of millions of dollars of arms to Somalia in return for the use
of military facilities which had been originally constructed
for the Soviets," Zunes declares. With valuable military
bases located in Somalia to support U.S. intervention in the
Middle East, warnings that U.S. support for Barre's dictatorship
could eventually lead to chaos and famine went unheeded.
Of course, chaos and famine ensued...creating
ideal conditions for U.S. exploitation and whitewashing. Scholar
and activist Eqbal Ahmad called Somalia "a perfect example"
of a nation discarded by the U.S. in the post-Cold War world:
"Siad Barre...was first allied to
the Soviet Union. The Soviets put in artificial military and
economic muscle into that state. The aid started to decline with
the economic crisis in the Soviet Union. Siad Barre shifted to
the United States, which was at the time looking for strategic
insertions in the Persian Gulf area. So they took on Siad Barre.
More aid flowed in. He stayed on. When the Cold War ended, he
was abandoned. The crisis of the state began. It fell apart.
The glue was removed."
"The U.S. responsibility for supporting
and arming Siad Barre is seldom acknowledged by U.S. mass media,"
says journalist Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
(FAIR). "One of the noteworthy exceptions was by ABC's Peter
Jennings, who reported that Siad Barre had received 'almost $200
million in military aid and almost half a billion in economic
aid.' Jennings explained why the U.S. ignored Siad Barre's corruption
and human rights abuses: 'To Washington's satisfaction, he was
more than willing to keep [Soviet-allied] Ethiopia tied down
in a debilitating war.... Millions of innocent civilians paid
the price.'"
Into the vacuum left by the eventual
overthrow of Barre, the U.S. pushed an International Monetary
Fund structural adjustment program on a nation besieged with
drought conditions. This was a recipe for disaster and the resulting
famine killed an estimated 300,000 people, mostly children.
Thanks to media spin, this crisis was
misrepresented.
"In January 1991, six leading relief
agencies warned that 20 million people in Africa faced starvation
unless food aid was forthcoming," reports Naureckas. "In
the fall of 1991, U.N. officials estimated that 4.5 million Somalis
faced grave food shortages. In all of 1991, Somalia got three
minutes of attention on the three evening network news shows.
From January to June 1992, Somalia got 11 minutes."
Thanks to media spin, this crisis was
exploited.
In November 1993, after the worst of
the famine had already passed, the U.S. sent 30,000 troops, primarily
Marines and Army Rangers, to Somalia on a "humanitarian
mission." One month later, the UN Security Council endorsed
the move thus providing Washington with the smokescreen of charity.
Somalia was not fooled.
"Large numbers of Somalis saw the
American forces as representatives of the government which served
as the major Western supporter of the hated former dictatorship,"
says Zunes. "It wasn't long before the slogan of American
forces was 'The only good Somali is a dead Somali.' It had become
apparent that the U.S. had badly underestimated the resistance."
As U.S. casualties mounted, more and
more Somalis found themselves under attack. Marine Lt. Gen. Anthony
Zinn commanded the operation. "I'm not counting bodies,"
he said. "I'm not interested." President Clinton, who
inherited Operation Restore Hope (sic) from his predecessor,
ordered the bombing of civilian targets. George Stephanopoulos
later recalled Clinton's words in his book, All Too Human:
"We're not inflicting pain on these
fuckers," Clinton said, softly at first. "When people
kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers." Then,
with his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding
his thigh, he leaned into Tony [Lake, then his national security
adviser], as if it was his fault. "I believe in killing
people who try to hurt you. And I can't believe we're being pushed
around by these two-bit pricks."
If it wasn't a humanitarian motive, why
did the U.S. risk military embarrassment to intervene in Somalia,
killing an estimated 7000 to 10,000 Somalis?
As the song goes, "Gold is the reason
for the wars we wage."
"Considered geologically analogous
to oil-rich Yemen across the Red Sea, it has been the site of
oil exploration by such companies as Amoco, Chevron and Conoco,"
says Naureckas. "Not until six weeks into the operation
did a journalist for a major media outlet...report on the 'close
relationship between Conoco and the U.S. intervention force,'
which used Conoco's Mogadishu headquarters as a 'de facto U.S.
embassy.'"
Distinguishing victory from defeat is
not always as easy task. We are continually taught to view Vietnam
as the war America lost. But which America lost? Which Americans?
Somalia is often portrayed as an embarrassment...but for whom?
Outside of corporate media pundits and those who trust in them,
who is upset with the outcome? What about the quagmire in Iraq?
Well, that one is supposed to play out similarly in the image
of chaos and mismanagement. However, like Vietnam and Somalia,
Iraq may still play out as yet another foreign policy nightmare
that enriched the coffers of Corporate America.
Sooner or later, this gambling strategy
will backfire and the losers will number more than dead soldiers
and civilian victims of terror.
(This article is adapted from Mickey
Z.'s book, "The Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind
War Propaganda," to be published in May 2004 by Common Courage
Press.)
Mickey Z.
can be reached at mzx2@earthlink.net.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
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