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Today's
Stories
November 24, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
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
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for More Stories.
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November
24, 2003
Iraq
Now
Oh
Good, Then the War's Over?
By
RON JACOBS
Great news!! The Iraqis will be running their
own country by June 2004. Once again, the mission will be accomplished.
It must be time to celebrate. George Bush can be elected president
and continue his holy mission to make the world a safer place.
Yay! As the saying goes, if you believe this, then there's
a bridge I know of that's for sale.
This latest pronouncement from the Bush
administration regarding the situation in Iraq is not only insulting
to Americans, it illustrates to the world that the US continues
to operate on the assumption that the Iraqi people are either
stupid or naive. If the US policy isn't based on this assumption,
then why the hell does it continue to insult their intelligence?
After all, even a cursory glance of history shows that the US
is extremely unlikely (like it ain't gonna' happen) to allow
a truly independent Iraq to exist any time soon. Those headlines
about Iraqi transfer of power are just one more strand in the
web of deception that Washington has spun to maintain its war
over there.
Besides the fact that the so-called transfer
is timed to occur during the stretch run in the US presidential
race, there is other, more ominous fine print in administration
statements regarding the change in faces scheduled to take place
in Baghdad next summer. Foremost among that fine print is the
insistence that the US military is not going anywhere. It is
staying put. In fact, according to Bush and Rumsfeld, the troops
could well be there for many more years, with their numbers increased.
Even if the nominal command of those troops shifts to another
body (say the UN or NATO), the fact remains that it is the US
military that will be propping up the new Iraqi "government."
If this is the case, then what would
a transfer of power from the occupation authority to an Iraqi
council really mean? One need only look to America's other current
war to get a glimpse at the answer to this question. You know-Afghanistan-where
the women were freed from religious extremist persecution and
everybody's safe and living a nice comfortable life thanks to
the bombardment of their country for a few weeks by the US Air
Force. Afghanistan-where democracy flourishes and peace is prevalent,
thanks to those wonderful folks in the US Special Forces. Yeh,
Afghanistan-where the US soldiers are greeted with flowers and
feasts and never have to use their weapons. Anyhow, you get
my point: no matter what some Iraqis might hope, the "transfer
of power" being promised to them by the United States is
a sham. It will mean very little on the ground, except in that
it could pave the way for a civil war as those who want the US
out wage war against those who throw their lot in with the Americans.
Speaking of the latter, check out who
is on record as looking forward to the transfer: Ahmed Chalabi
and Jalal Talabani. Both of these men are beholden to the US
and its military and intelligence agencies for their prominence
in post-Saddam Iraq. Although they have differences with the
US (mostly over who gets what portion of the monies involved
in Iraq's post-invasion reality), these men and the groups they
represent owe their continued existence to CIA and Pentagon funds.
Consequently, they see the metamorphosis from an overt occupation
authority to a proxy US government with Iraqi faces to be to
their benefit. This is because they stand a very good chance
of being powerful figures in that puppet regime.
Let's go back further though. Before
Afghanistan to Vietnam. While not a model that Washington likes
to point to, there are some parallels between that country's
history and the governing structure being proposed for Iraq.
After taking over the war against the liberation forces from
the French in the mid-1950s, the US set up a proxy regime in
the southern half of Vietnam and created the country of South
Vietnam. Populated largely by Catholics beholden to the imperial
powers, the South Vietnamese government existed solely because
it was propped up by American money and its military. Any elections
that it won-elections that were vain attempts by the US to provide
the regime some legitimacy in the world-were rigged by the CIA
and its cohorts and made very little difference to the insurgency
against it or the population that supported that insurgency.
These insurgents were popular among the population and existed
in true guerrilla fashion like "fish in the sea."
In short, the scenario in South Vietnam
looked like this: the US proxy regime in Saigon was composed
of Vietnamese with financial, cultural and sociological ties
to the west (France, then the United States). These individuals
served at the whim of the leadership in DC, which is why the
CIA allowed/assisted in the coup that killed South Vietnamese
president Diem in 1963, when he refused to follow the US game
plan for the region. In addition, the regime itself existed
only because of the incredible amounts of money pumped into it
by US taxpayers. As for the South Vietnamese military (ARVN),
some of its members were anti-communist zealots committed to
fighting the liberation forces and their communist supporters,
but most of them were just men looking for a paycheck. Consequently,
they left most of the fighting up to the Americans. In the end,
it was the ARVN's lack of will that contributed to the victory
of the insurgency as much as the US withdrawal of its ground
forces did. It can be reasonably argued that the Saigon government
was doomed to failure from the start even if the US had done
more than it did. Most of the southern Vietnamese people never
saw it as their legitimate representative no matter who was at
its head and it suffered from infiltration by the resistance
throughout its tenure. The US, in its arrogance, truly believed
that it could overcome not only the odds it faced from its puppet
regime, but also generations of Vietnamese resistance to foreign
invaders. Suffice it to say that Washington misjudged.
Let's get back to Iraq in late 2003.
The US occupation is (literally) under fire and risks losing
its support even amongst those sectors of society that initially
supported its presence. Simultaneously, the insurgent forces
are becoming bolder and more deadly. In addition, their support
amongst the civilian population continues to grow; especially
now as US forces become more indiscriminate in their attacks
and more civilians become casualties. Billions of US dollars
are being spent to maintain the occupation and things just seem
to get worse. So, what is Washington's solution? Change the
face of the occupation. Put Iraqis beholden to the US in positions
of nominal power while retaining actual control of the regime.
Hold elections where the results are ensured to maintain US
control of the country and call the whole show a democracy.
Create a national army made up of some fierce supporters of the
US-built regime and thousands of Iraqis who just need a paycheck.
Meanwhile, keep the US military in country and let them do the
real fighting against the insurgency-an insurgency that functions
like "fish in the sea." Of course, the continued US
military presence will be at the "invitation" of the
new "Made in the USA" regime. Despite the fact that
this regime would exist at the behest of the US, some of its
members might actually start pushing for their independence from
Washington. If this happens, they could meet the same fate as
Mr. Diem did in November 1963. Eventually, if history is any
indicator, there will be some level of civil conflict between
those Iraqis who depend on the US for their survival and health,
and those Iraqis who want the US in all its forms out of their
country. Then, the US would find itself in a familiar role fighting
indigenous peoples for control of their country by claiming that
the US is supporting the genuine government.
What this means in human terms is simple:
more death, more destruction, and more despair. What it means
in political terms is harder to predict. If the US managed somehow
to defeat the insurgency, it might give Washington a few years
of unchallenged domination of the Middle East. If the US is
defeated by the insurgency and withdraws from the region it might
mean a whole new round of popular insurgency. Or, if those people
in the US opposed to the US war on Iraq made it their goal, they
could mount a popular movement against the worsening situation
and force a US withdrawal, thereby allowing the Iraqis the chance
to truly determine their own destiny.
Ron Jacobs
is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
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