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Today's Stories November 12, 2007 Vicente Navarro Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed Ben Brown A Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father   November 10 / 11, 2007 Alain Gresh Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard Mike Whitney For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street Ron Jacobs A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq Jeffrey St. Clair The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story Alan Farago Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism Binoy Kampmark When Language Drowns: Torture in America Robert Fantina Legitimizing Torture Fred Gardner Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values Ayesha Ijaz Khan The General in His Labyrinth Nicola Nasser NATO's Southward Drift Philip Rizk The Blame Game in Gaza Michael Dickinson Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins Joel S. Hirschhorn The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties Paul Krassner Flunking Out of the Electoral College Wadner Pierre / Joe Emersberger The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti   November 9, 2007 Patrick Cockburn In the Kandil Mountains with the PKK Mohammed Hanif Musharraf and the Drunk Uncle John Ross Blackwater Goes to Mexico Mike Whitney Ron Paul, Big Media's Invisible Candidate Tom Barry In Latin America, the Hillary Clinton Policy is the Bush Policy Corporate Crime Reporter Is the AFL Trying to Derail Single Payer Health Care? Badruddin Khan Pakistan and the Israel Lobby David Macaray The WGA STrike: the Empire Strikes Back Martha Rosenberg The Blood Sport of Vice Presidents Website of the Day Stryker Blockade!   November 8, 2007 Kathleen & Bill Christison Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine William Loren Katz Waterboarding in American History Mike Whitney The Long Fall: a Market Without Parachutes Sheldon Richman Why Woodstock May Have Saved John McCain's Life Liaquat Ali Khan Solidarity with Pakistan's Lawyers Marc Gardner The Victims of "Jessica's Law": Parolees Without Rights (or Homes) Jackie Corr The Big Fish from Whitefish: Montana, the Last Retreat of the Investment Banker? Brenda Norrell Between Bombs and Border Walls Dave Lindorff Ridiculing Impeachment at the New York Times China Hand Rewriting the History of the Sudan Calamity Sen. Russ Feingold FISA and America's Basic Freedoms: Let's Not Repeat the Mistakes of the Patriot Act Website of the Day The Welfare Poets Meet Hugo Chavez   November 7, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Dollar's Fall Collapses the American Empire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: Can't the Democrats End the War By Not Bringing the Funding Bill to the Floor? Vijay Prashad The Apotheosis of Bobby Jindal Niranjan Ramakrishnan Educating Pakistan: What Mukasey Can Teach Musharraf Alan Farago To Bee or Not to Bee? The Politics of Colony Collapse David Macaray The Writers' Guild Strike: Is There an Ice-Breaker? Nikolas Kozloff The Case of the Slimy Senator: Chuck Schumer Greenlights Mukasey Charlotte Laws What We Learned from Stephen Colbert's Presidential Campaign Daniel White Zahid's Story William Cook The Politics of Servility: Congress and the Israel Lobby Website of the Day Safe Lawns   November 6, 2007 Mike Whitney Welcome to Year 27 of the Reagan Revolution Ralph Nader Who Determines the Price of Oil? Andy Worthington The Torture of Ali al-Marri Pam Martens Wall Street Metes Out Street Justice to Citigroup Liaquat Ali Khan Pakistan's Dark Future William Schroder The Return of Water Torture Stephen Lendman Punishing Gaza William Blum Cuba and Original Sin Former US Intelligence Officers A Memo on Torture, Intelligence and Mukasey   November 5, 2007 Alexander Cockburn How I Spent the Eighth Brumaire Russell Mokhiber Pelosi and Me: The Democrats and Single Payer David Macaray How to Turn Workers Against Each Other (and Make Them All Poorer) Gary Leupp General Musharaff's "State of Emergency" Dave Lindorff Those Minot Nukes Ludwig Watzal Israel's Dilemma in Palestine Patrick Cockburn Tensions Ease in Iraqi Kurdistan Peter Stone Brown John Fogerty Makes Peace with His Past Michael Simmons Yo! What Happened to Peace? Website of the Day Petition: In Defense of the Morton West HS Antiwar Students   November 3 / 4, 2007 Tariq Ali Pakistan Sinks Deeper into Night David Price Army's Price Salesman of Counterinsurgency Manual Seeks to Defend Stolen Scholarship Jeffrey St. Clair Splitsville Alan Farago The Housing Crash, Suburban Sprawl and the Crisis of the American Middle Class Paul Krassner He's Back! Don Imus Meets Michael Richards Rannie Amiri Why the U.S. is Safeguarding Iraq's War Criminals P. Sainath Indexing Humanity, Indian Style Ayesha Ijaza Khan Pakistan in a Daze Robert Fantina Is the Bush Administration Talking Itself Into a War With Iran? Seth Sandronsky The Politics of Health Care in California Ron Jacobs The Bebop of Baraka Ramzy Baroud A Case for Arab Dignity Heather Gray When Capitalists Get a Free Ride   November 2, 2007 Dr. Mary Pipher Acting on Conscience: Psychologists and Abusive Interrogations Saul Landau How Pete Stark Became a Pariah Andy Worthington Guantánamo as House Arrest Sharon Smith A Tale of Two Stadiums Gary Leupp Fascist Beatifications: the History and Politics of Sainthood Gregory Harms The Chorus of Slander on Palestine Christopher Brauchli Racism in High Places Peter Morici The Falling Dollar and the Stubborn Trade Deficit Dave Lindorff The Easy Way to Stop the Looming US Attack on Iran David Penner Zombie Nation Website of the Day Fall in Yosemite   November 1, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts The Wages of Hegemony Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Dam in the World Dave Lindorff The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight Jonathan Feldman The Strange Political Economy of Death in the South Mike Ferner They Met the Resistance in Iraq William S. Lind A Question for Would-Be Presidents Diana Johnstone "Fascislamism" Versus "Shoah Business" Jacob Hornberger The War on Telephone Privacy A..K. Gupta The Apocalypse will be Televised Lyuba Zarsky / Kevin Gallagher The Enclave Economy of Mexico's Silicon Valley Felice Pace Does the SPLC Equate Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism? Website of the Day This One's for You, Ed Abbey   October 31, 2007 Bill Quigley New Orleans' Broken Criminal Justice System Rev. William E. Alberts A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS News Ray McGovern Attacking Iran for Israel Eric Walberg Poisonous Espionage: Litvinenko and the New Cold War V. G. Smith The Second Death of Guy Môquet Luis J. Rodriguez "Social Cleansing" from Guatemala to LA Sheldon Richman Bush has Time to Run the World Walter Brasch A Real Halloween Scare Website of the Day Boogie Rocks! October 30, 2007 David Price Pilfered Scholarship Devastates Gen. Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual M. Shahid Alam The Pakistan Question Andy Worthington The Epiphany of Matthew Waxman: a Government Insider Turns Against Gitmo Patrick Cockburn The Bicycle Bomber of Baquba Anthony Papa The Twisted Logic of Drug Laws Floyd Rudmin What "All Options are on the Table" Really Means Sherwood Ross Giuliani and Torture Website of the Day The Worst Lobby? You Decide   October 29, 2007 Lisa Hajjar Inside Israel's Military Courts Joe DeRaymond The Politics of Lethal Injections Patrick Cockburn The High Stakes in Iraqi Kurdistan Isabella Kenfield / Roger Burbach Corporate Murder in Brazil Fred Gardner The Frivolous Investigation of Dr. Sterner Farzana Versey Caricaturing Islam Stephen Fleischman The Greening of the Oligarchy Marcelle Cendrars The Congressional Rip Cord Eamonn McCann Dan Keating, the Last of the Republican Irreconcilables Martha Rosenberg For Halloween, Ann Coulter Dresses as .... Ann Coulter! Website of the Day Campaign 2008   October 27 / 28, 2007 Alexander Cockburn So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Jeffrey St. Clair The Dam That Isn't There James Bovard Breaking Down an Innocent Man: The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Ralph Nader Beyond the Rule of Law M. Reza Pirbhai The Wahhabis are Coming, the Wahhabis are Coming! Robert Sandels Pay the Invaders! Cuba, Claims and Confiscations Jacob G. Hornberger Ruling By Decree Missy Beattie The Arsonists in the West Wing John Ross U.S. Eyes on Oaxaca Robert Fantina Condi Rice, the Imperial Cheerleader Ron Jacobs Labor at the Crossroads Ali Moayedian In Search of Logic About Iran David Michael Green What If We Had a President Who Didn't Give a Damn About Terrorism? Poets Basement Block, Davies and Ford Website of the Day Bring 'Em Home: a Music Video   October 26, 2007 Brian Cloughley Revenging Bloodshed Saul Landau Portrait of Rudy Ahmad Al-Akras Getting Justice in the HLF Case Franklin Lamb Does "Loving" Lebanon Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Mike Whitney Murdoch's Cuckoo's Nest Dave Lindorff Home of the Brave? Reducing US Casualties By Killing More Civilians Alan Farago A Castro Behind Every Bush Yifat Susskind Conscripting Feminism into the War on Terror Website of the Day Dead Life in a Political Prison October 25, 2007 Jeffrey St. Clair / Joshua Frank Iraq's Environmental Crisis Manuel Garcia, Jr. Homes of the Crash Test Dummies Paul Craig Roberts The Fraudulent War on Terror Col. Dan Smith The Politics of Paranoia: Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment Alan Farago The Way to Paradise? Chris Kutalik The Lesson of the Chrysler Rebels Brian McKinlay John Howard and the Curse of Bush Cindy Sheehan Pete, Nancy, George and WW III Website of the Day Support the America's Program!   October 24, 2007 Natalie Washington-Weik White Fantasies About Race-Based Intelligence Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Suicides Michael Birmingham What Happened in Nahr Al Bared? Corporate Crime Reporter The Nuclear Democrats Tariq Ali Bush's Cuba Detour Farzana Versey Imagining Serfdom in a Scarf Dave Zirin White Noise James Murren What "Support Our Troops" Means Todd Chretien Looking Reality in the Face Martha Rosenberg What Came First, the Chicken or the Cage? Website of the Day Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Power   October 23, 2007 Ralph Nader Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric Lawrence R. Velvel Goldsmith Stands Convicted--By His Own Mouth: How a Harvard Law Professor Justified Rendition at the Bush Justice Dept. Vijay Prashad The Nuke Deal is Dead Bonnie Bricker / Adil E. Shamoo The True Cost of War for Oil Dave Lindorff Christopher Dodd's Make or Break Moment Mike Whitney The Big Squeeze Farzana Versey Race with the Devil Stanley Heller / Ben George Something New from the Antiwar Movement Marcelle Cendrars You Too Can Confront the Holy Executive Regan Boychuk Burma and Haiti: Comparing the Media Response Website of the Day King Corn   October 22, 2007 Ishmael Reed Should Blacks Go Green? Marjorie Cohn Mukasey and the Constitution: Another Loyal Bushie Rannie Amiri Is There a Method to Bush's Middle East Madness? Diane Farsetta Time to Pay for Payola: the FCC and Pundit-for-Hire Armstrong Williams Todd Alan Price Renewing No Child Left Behind: A Hurricane Katrina Aimed at Public Education Robert Jensen The Quagmire of Masculinity Stephen Lendman The UAW Leadership Sells Out Its Workers Jemima Khan The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf Sunsara Taylor David Horowitz Can't Handle the Truth Binoy Kampmark No Ideas, Please: the Australian Elections Website of the Day Support the Center for International Policy     October 20 / 21, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The Man Who Builds Hillaryworld Tariq Ali A Massacre Foretold Jeffrey St. Clair Greetings from Echo Park Andy Worthington The Shame of Diego Garcia Mike Whitney Housing Flameout Daniel Wolff Play It As It Lays David Rosen Deviants on Parade: Folsom St. Fair and America's 4th Sexual Revolution Saul Landau David and Goliath in Iraq Ron Jacobs COINTELPRO and the Panthers Robert Fantina The Strange Love of Mitt Romney and Bob Jones David Heleniak Erring on the Side of Hidden Harm Joe Allen Hoffa Brown-Nosing at UPS Prairie Miller Lions for Lambs Poets' Basement Gibbons, Holt and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Crash!   October 19, 2007 John Ross Che's Mexican Legacy Sheldon Rampton Shared Values Revisited: a Case Study in the Limits of Propaganda Rahul Mahajan A Tale of Two Atrocities: Blackwater and Haditha Devra Davis Deadly Secrets: Chemical Pollution and Cancer Christopher Brauchli Blasphemous Science Wadner Pierre Haiti After the Deluge Bill Quigley Jailed for Justice Website of the Day Textbook Sticker Shock   October 18, 2007 Saree Makdisi Academic Freedom is at Risk Meg Dwyer What I Learned from 9/11: Who Wouldn't Want Us Dead? Alevtina Rea Sketches of Russian Life Norman Solomon The United States of Violence Kristoffer Larsson Something is Rotten in Sweden Harvey Wasserman Nukes are Back and So are We Website of the Day Eve Ensler: "A Filibuster Would Stop This War"   October 17, 2007 Steve Niva Counter-Insurgency, American-Style Andy Worthington The Case of Mohamed Jawad Alan Farago The Credit Shock Russell Mokhiber The New Billionaire-Criminal Class Sharon Smith Democrats, AWOL When It Mattered Mike Whitney Time for the Banks to Face the Hangman Robert Fantina Iraq, Iran and the US: Business as Usual Chris Irwin Where Have All the Rednecks Gone? Website of the Day Sex Ed at Oral Roberts University October 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh Doris Lessing and the Dynamite Prize Paul Findley Follow the Leader: The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby Robert Bryce Inconvenient Corrections: Al Gore's Wacky Facts Uri Avnery The Mother of All Pretexts Paul Craig Roberts The Iraqi Genocide Ray McGovern What Did Nancy Pelosi Know About NSA Spying and When Did She Know It? Norman Solomon The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal Martha Rosenberg The Curse of Cymbalta William S. Lind Out of the Frying Pan Joel S. Hirschborn Time to Boycott Voting Website of the Day Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Arctic Play         Subscribe Online

November 12, 2007 Letter from Ho Chi Minh City A Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father By BEN BROWN Ho Chi Minh City. I can't say that I was exactly nervous in the days before I met my father in Vietnam. He has come a long way since my childhood, when his world suddenly darkened, and he would lose days on end to haunted memories of his war. I remember him from those times, sitting all night in his sadness and a flickering light, drinking the green-label Sierra Nevadas and wearing out our VHS copy of Platoon. But his family and friends know that he has aged well, mellowing with the passing of time. So, then, not nervous; but I was curious how he would find himself in this country, what it would mean to him to return for the first time after nearly forty years. Our home is the Mattole Valley on northern California's Lost Coast, where my father runs a modest cattle operation. My mom works in the schools there and also co-founded the Lost Coast Camp with her friend Ellen, which runs every summer in Petrolia. I arrived in Vietnam a few days before my parents, after a year of living in steaming, teeming Bangkok. I've been teaching English in a public school there, as well as studying Thai. The first night that I arrived here in what is officially called Ho Chi Minh City but to locals is still Saigon, I sat in a bar in the backpacker area known as Pham Ngu Lao. As I looked around at the staff-a bunch of smiling, friendly Vietnamese kids in their twenties-I experienced something that might be called a vicarious flashback. I felt myself as my father, and saw these young men as theirs before them: its '68 and we kill each other. But it lasted only for a moment; a slight, pretty waitress broke through my somber reverie, clinking the scotch in my hand with her Tiger, and shouted what has to be one of the best words for 'cheers' in any language: "Yo!" For most of his time in 'Nam, my father served in the Iron Triangle, an area to the north of Saigon that buffered the capital from the Cambodian border and a terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He also saw time in the Mekong Delta. He fought in an infantry recon platoon through the Tet Offensive, and survived countless firefights, mortar attacks and ambushes. Many of his brothers were not so lucky. In the twelve months of 1968, his infantry company of ninety young men took 100% casualties, including more than a dozen flag-draped coffins. His war ended when he was shot in the arm after his platoon was ambushed west of the village of Rach Kien, on the eastern edge of the Plain of Reeds, on November 22, 1968. My folks hired a Vietnamese guide through a friend in the US. Mr. Khanh is maybe five foot eight and strong, with a round face and copper skin. He packs a few extra pounds around his waist, the dividends of a man who enjoys an occasional rich meal and a cold beer. On first impression, he was quiet and polite, with a bright gleam in his eyes. Over the next ten days, we would come to appreciate both the scope of his historical knowledge and his easy friendship. He is the son of a Catholic family originally from the northern city of Hue that fled south after the communist takeover of the North, where Catholics were quite violently persecuted. After 1975 and the fall of Saigon, several of his family members were sent to 're-education' prisons, and he himself fled to a Hong Kong refugee camp as a 'boat-person.' He finally returned in 1996, just in time for the economic collapse of the following year. Despite all of this, he remains remarkably upbeat about the future of his country and refuses to dwell on the past. I believe that his presence and this perspective did much to welcome my father and put him at ease. Mr. Khanh took us on a trip up Highway 13, leading north out of the capital through what was the Iron Triangle. In the war, this was known as "Thunder Road" for the constant rocket attacks on American truck convoys. My father remembered scattered, thatch-roof villages surrounded by rice paddy. Now we saw attractive three story houses, sprawling industrial parks and growing prosperity. Indeed, many of the places he fought in seem to have been swallowed up by the Saigon sprawl. As we drove on, he whistled low or muttered incredulously at all the change swirling around him. He tried over and over to impress upon my mother and I what it used to look like. It wasn't until close to Lai Khe that the city thinned, and something of what he remembered returned. Lai Khe was a major air base supporting the First Infantry Division. He told me of a massive camp centered on a paved airstrip and surrounded by concertina wire. During the war, it would have been a flurry of activity. Bombers, attack helicopters, tanks and APC's, artillery batteries and bunkers; thousands of fighting men, and thousands more of the ever-clean officers pejoratively called REMF's by the front-line GI's. Poor southern white boys, urban blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics and Hawaian islanders, thrown together into units that became closer than family. There were mess halls and a hospital, and the men and women to run them. There were USO shows and banks of diesel generators and nightly mortar attacks. And there was the inevitable Vietnamese town that sprung up on its edge, full of the laundries, bars, whorehouses, hawkers and peddlers of all kinds that such camps draw. And now: virtually nothing remains. The government planted a vast rubber-tree plantation atop its ruins. Under the deep shadows those trees cast, we found a brief section of crumbling pavement that Mr. Khanh told us once was part of the airstrip. There were a few large permanent bunkers still standing, like the legs of Ozymandias, though hard-up locals had broken up the concrete in places to sell the re-bar. Beyond that: red earth, rice, mango trees, peppercorn vines and barefooted country kids. My father volunteered. His motivations were mixed: a tradition of military service in my family extends back to the earliest years of our Republic, and he honored this as well as his blue-collar patriotism. Together with wanderlust, the GI bill, and undoubtedly some 20-year-old machismo, he went willingly while millions of his peers sought student deferrments, burned their draft cards or emigrated to Canada. But by the time he returned home his outlook had changed. He carried a Purple Heart, the gear and identity papers of a dead NVA officer he'd killed, and a lifetime's worth of internal conflict wrought by a growing recognition that he and his brothers had been used and then abandoned. At the start, my father was not unlike so many of my generation who have volunteered to fight this new war in Muslim lands. They mostly believe in what America is doing over there, and believe what our leaders tell them. But very few of these leaders ever saw war themselves. When my parents go to protests to stop this war, he wears his military decorations with both sadness and pride. Together with Mr. Khanh, we visited the war museum in Saigon. Its walls are covered now with a photographic dedication to the many journalists who died during the conflict. The pictures tell tragic stories; their truths are impervious to the propaganda that at times composed their captions. They showed boys from both sides blown to pieces. They showed the mud and blood and terror that is war. War reveals humanity's fundamental bipolarity-in the face of such unspeakable carnage and barbarism our greatest qualities surface: a picture of a blown out crater and two men down in the mud, one with most of his torso gone and dying, and the other holding his hand in comforting love. At some point on the tour, somewhere between these pictures and the display case of Soviet-made 82mm mortar tubes, my father disappeared. I found him later, sitting in the shade outside, his head down in one hand and his other holding his straw hat. All around him, tourists from a dozen countries swarmed about the tanks and artillery pieces, chattering and snapping photos, as the Vietnamese peddled over-priced bottles of water, postcards and chewing gum. I've heard many people speak of a veteran's return leading to something called 'closure'. If there even is such a thing, I doubt that my father will ever find it. He will never forget the faces of the men around him who died, or that he killed other men. But that day in Saigon, he brought the identity papers with him. They were of a young man he always told us was a hero, though an enemy. He was an NVA officer, perhaps twenty-five like me. His unit was overrun and my dad and several other Americans pinned him down on a day in March of '68. They shouted at him in pidgin Vietnamese to give himself up. Instead he stood and fired and killed and then died himself. He was buried along with the rest of the enemy in an unmarked grave. At first, I think my father carried his things like trophies; I know that over time they came to hang from his neck like a karmic weight. So we sat in an air-conditioned room with the director of the museum, who works with a Vietnamese project that identifies missing soldiers. My father spoke to him gravely, through our friend Khanh, and told him his story. He spoke of the man's courage under fire and the feeling of respect that fighting men develop for their enemies. He gave him the identity papers, including a picture of a dark strong face with a military haircut. This director said that, by the insignia on his uniform, he could tell what NVA unit he'd fought in, and thus where he came from in Vietnam. Perhaps an anonymous family in the far north will finally learn of their fallen son's resting place, and perform the rites and rituals he was denied. We all shook hands. We walked out again, slowly, into the Saigon inferno. My folks held each other, and I walked just behind. There was no profound change in the world, or in his face: only that he now has fresh, warmer memories of this place so long synonymous with hell to seed atop the scars in his mind. I walked feeling blessed to be a part of this journey of return, and with the sense that I've never been closer to understanding my father. Ben Brown teaches in Ho Chi Minh City. He can be reached at aminbrown@gmail.com The New Print Edition of CounterPunch Contains the Explosive Investigation That Rocked the Pentagon! Stolen Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual Anthropologist DAVID PRICE exposes how the fabled Counterinsurgency Manual contains a chapter filled with "borrowed" quotations. Price reveals the crucial role in the debacle played by anthropologist Montgomery McFate. The University of Chicago Press is badly compromised. And much more. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair Your Ad Here

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