Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 8, 2003
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Recent
Stories
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
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
8, 2003
Bush
and the Echo Chamber
Globalizing
the Whirlwind
By KURT NIMMO
I didn't watch George Bush on TV this evening.
Instead, I watched Michael Moore's Bowling
for Columbine, a film I missed when it was in the theaters. As
I watched Moore's exposé on American violence, Bush stood
in front of a podium in the White House Cabinet room and rambled
on about how America needs to be more violent, how it needs to
kill more people. America needs the United Nations to help injure
and murder even more Iraqis (according to the Iraq Body Count
database and archive of war reports, nearly 8,000 Iraqi civilians
have died and at least 20,000 have suffered injury).
Of course, Bush didn't exactly say it
that way.
Bush said -- as I read later on the web
-- Security Council members who were disgusted and repelled by
what the United States did and continues to do in Iraq "now
have an opportunity and responsibility to make sure Iraq becomes
a free and democratic nation" (as Fox News put it). In other
words, they should donate their sons and money to the ongoing
slaughter. "We cannot let past differences interfere with
present duties," said Bush. "Terrorists in Iraq have
attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing
them must be the cause of the civilized world."
In other words, now that the US is floundering
in Iraq -- faced with an unwinnable war against indigenous revolt
in opposition its brutal and illegal occupation -- Bush no longer
believes the United Nations is irrelevant. Rather, now that Bush
and the neocon hawks running US foreign policy need more bodies
to stop the bullets and RPGs fired by Iraqi guerillas, the United
Nations is not -- for the moment anyway -- irrelevant.
Is it possible they will change "freedom
fries" back to "French fries" in the House of
Representatives' cafeterias now that Bush wants to French to donate their
kids to the neocon war to terrorize and "democratize"
the Middle East?
Apparently, al-Qaeda has successfully
attacked Washington -- they must have spiked the water system
or the air conditioning ducts in the capitol with LSD because
both sides of the aisle are speaking hallucinatory gibberish.
"It's been so obvious to our commanders
and to others that we need troops from other nations," said
a senile Carl Levin. "This president must offer more specifics
on these and other important questions if he is to build the
legitimacy and consent of this nation and our neighbors throughout
the world to win the peace in Iraq and win the global war on
terror," babbled John Kerry. "Now that the president
has recognized that he has been going down the wrong path, this
administration must begin the process of fully engaging our allies
and sharing the burden of building a stable democracy in Iraq,"
gibbered Richard Gephardt. "We cannot afford to lose the
peace in Iraq," prattled presidential hopeful Howard Dean.
And to think a lot of people consider Dean too liberal to win
a general election.
Turn them upside down and they all look
the same -- with the notable exception of Dennis Kucinich, who
called for an immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq
during the so-called first national Democratic presidential debate
held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on September 4.
Bush promised to squander an additional
$87 billion in Iraq, if Congress lets him -- and you can bet
the farm they will. "This will take time and require sacrifice.
Yet we will do whatever is necessary -- we will spend whatever
is necessary -- to achieve this essential victory in the war
on terror, to promote freedom, and to make our own nation more
secure," Bush said. That $87 billion is up and beyond the
$350 billion Bush gave away to rich people (meanwhile, as the
Labor Department reported the other day, employers cut 93,000
jobs from payrolls in August, up considerably from the 43,000
positions lost in July).
All Bush and these echo-chamber Democrat
presidential wannabes will manage to do is create and perpetuate
the worst foreign policy blunder in US history.
"The future of Iraq obviously cannot
be separated from future developments in the entire region,"
writes Gary Bruce Smith. "Many are of the opinion that the
neo-conservative elements in the US have as their basic plan
to secularize and democratize the Middle East, with Iraq as the
test case. To say that things are not going well would be an
understatement. The deterioration in the situation has resulted
in the turnabout in the US attitude and the recent attempts to
internationalize the situation are signs that the Bush administration
is starting to realize the folly of their actions."
The assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad
Baqer Al-Hakim "was the opening volley in the coming Iraqi
civil war," explains William O. Beeman, director of Middle
East studies at Brown University. "The United States will
reap the whirlwind."
The Bush speech is an admission that
Beeman's whirlwind is closing in with the determination of Hurricane
Fabian. Dubya sorely needs "old Europe" to cover his
ass, but it is remains to be seen if they will, especially considering
neocon and Republican hostility toward France, Germany, and Belgium
(the list of Republicans engaging in Europe bashing is remarkably
long -- not only have neocons such as Frank Gaffney, Richard
Perle, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz
said excessively nasty things about these erstwhile friendly
allies, but so have loudmouth Republicans such as Tom DeLay,
Dennis Hastert, Tom Lantos, Ginny Brown-Waite, Roy Blunt and
many others).
Chances are, however, the Europeans will
eventually enter into a deal with the neocon nest of vipers in
one way or another in the weeks ahead. Naturally, none of this
will have much of an impact on the brewing guerilla war in Iraq.
The Iraqis will fight on, regardless of Bush's decision to shift
the focus of his so-called war on terrorism directly on the Iraqi
people.
The only difference will be a lot of
French, German, Belgian, Polish, and other Europeans kids will
die alongside the Americans.
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 Sept. 1 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
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