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Today's
Stories
April
20, 2004
Stan
Goff
The Democrats and Iraq
April
19, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The "Central Hand" of the
Resistance
Mike
Whitney
Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles
Douglas
Valentine
52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1
Rule
John
Chuckman
The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often
Triumph
Doug
Giebel
Welcome to the Club
Rahul
Mahajan
Hospital Closings and War Crimes
April
16 / 18, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Bush Legitimizes Terror
Saul
Landau
Subverting Brazil and Cuba
Dave
Lindorff
Paying for War: $2,150 per Family
and Counting
Brandy
Baker
Fallujah's Collateral Damage
Mickey
Z.
The Left Attacks from the Right
Bruce
Jackson
The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit
Uns
Norman
Solomon
How the "NewsHour" Changed
History
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the
World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes
Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion
April 10 /
12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other
Delicacies
Robert Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview
with Lee Evans
Brandy Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website of
the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9, 2004
Robert Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L. Hess
The
Non-Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8,
2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6,
2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William Blum
The
Anti-Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
April 5, 2004
John Farrell
Lessons
from El Salvador and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Bloodbath
a Bad Omen for Bush
Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare
Scenario"
April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B.
Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry
Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher
Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez
del Solar
A
Year Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The
Illegal Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated
US and International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
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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April
19, 2004
The New Line
The
Democrats and Iraq
By STAN GOFF
"Failure to internationalize
the conflict in Iraq has made America less safe and destroyed
our credibility in the world."
I think I have that about right. This
is a paraphrase of the official Democratic Party line on the
war--the same war to which they assented when they were stampeded
by their own craven opportunism into giving Dick Cheney and his
ugly pet unlimited authority to attack Iraq.
So now both parties find themselves
trapped in their own oh-so-special cul-de-sacs. The Republicans
are stuck with an untenable military occupation and the Democrats
are stuck with an idiotic critique. The Republicans can't speak
about oil, and the Democrats can't speak about Zionism. So everyone
is stuck with the same shitty end of the stick--reduced to talking
in tongues to justify the bloody occupation of Iraq to an every
more skeptical American polity.
Even the most anodyne reporting
done by the Boeing/ADM press can no longer mask the reality that
the war in Iraq is indeed not like the war in Vietnam. It is
the same in that it is politically impossible to leave and militarily
impossible to win. But in many other respects, it is far worse
than Vietnam.
The gunfight in occupied Kosovo
between Arab and American police is a harbinger of a generalized
instability that now threatens to come pouring out of dike ruptured
by the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
I was just on the phone with
someone who talked to a woman whose soldier-husband was going
through Kuwaiti Customs to return home after 15 months in Iraq,
when his colonel walked in and told him he wouldn't be leaving.
Donald Rumsfeld admits he is surprised by the ferocity of the
recent uprising. Dick Cheney and Colin Powell are feuding. The
generals are cautiously leaking their dissatisfaction with Rumsfeld
to the press. George W. Bush just gave one of the most unintelligible
and bizarre performances on record in a press conference, where
he said--more ominously than he realized--that we can't let those
who have already forfeited their lives (he is speaking exclusively
of American lives, of course) have sacrificed in vain. That is
soooo Vietnam!
Lawrence Grossberg said that
"in their affective lives people constantly struggle to
care about something, and to find the energy to survive, to find
the passion necessary to imagine and enact their own projects
and possibilities Popular culture, operating with an affective
sensibility, is a crucial ground where people give others the
authority to shape their identity and locate them within the
various circuits of power."
This is the secret of much
advertising and all sound-byte politics, the ability to mobilize
and manipulate this struggle not to understand but to care, "to
find passion," in a society where alienation is the air.
But it is an emotional edifice now constructed in the path of
a flash flood, and when it is swept away by events, there will
be little left except appalling anger.
Now the event-cascade is upon
us in Iraq, and all the Democrats can do is quack on about internationalization
and credibility. But they build their house alongside the Republicans
and there is a loud noise upstream drowning out their feeble
platitudes.
Last April in Fallujah--ancient
history now - U.S. soldiers were sent there after local imams
had established order. The imams had stopped the looting and
vengeance attacks, re-opened public services, and established
an interim constabulary. Normalcy was beginning to take hold
when the Bradley fighting vehicles rolled into town, and the
Americans took over a recently re-opened school for their headquarters,
arrested the imams, installed their own mayor, and road blocked
the whole city.
These actions were their orders,
orders from people who knew nothing of Iraqi society, and this
ignorance was delivered into the hands of the Iraqi resistance
like a priceless gift.
Popular outrage was swift.
The Americans--still tightly strung from recent combat--were
besieged by angry demonstrators, who they then began to shoot.
Between April 28-30 last year, twenty Iraqis were killed and
scores wounded. Lies about weapons in the crowds were concocted,
and eyewitnesses were effectively excluded from the Boeing/ADM
media. CENTCOM could say anything, no matter the number of witnesses,
and it would be given equal weight against all claims to the
contrary.
But lies are only misrepresentations
of reality. They do not erase reality, which is the problem now
for Republicans and Democrats. In Fallujah last year, the masses
were served a helping of occupation reality, and they were galvanized
by it. Resistance is fertilized by blood, and the American guns
in Fallujah nourished the greening fields of Iraqi opposition.
The popular basis for a guerrilla struggle had been established
by the American military's hand, and it wouldn't be long in coming.
A whole population was now
prepared to take a supportive role in an armed resistance. This
was a signpost, but it was written in a foreign tongue for the
Americans.
None of this is provided as
context by the Boeing/ADM press, so when four American mercenaries
were ambushed and given the Mussolini treatment on March 31st
this year, the rage of Fallujah appeared to be that of savages.
The patrician fellow-Bonesman who is aiming for George W. Bush's
job--who in 1971 offered up a damning indictment of US war crimes
in Vietnam--is now silent as a tomb on the context of this ambush
against mercenaries. The Siren of Career has rendered him deaf
to the cries of Fallujah.
The Israeli assassination of
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound leader of Hamas, caused
the pot of righteous Arab rage to boil over. Then the US, in
the infinite wisdom of CENTCOM and the CPA, opened up an Israeli-style
vengeance-attack that was stopped in its tracks by Fallujan resistance.
Fallujah was then assisted by a second front when Shias in the
south opened a furious multi-focal attack on the occupiers, after
Viceroy Bremer closed a Shia newspaper and had troops open fire
on those who protested.
Suddenly, the so-called Arab
Street had cause "to find the passion necessary to imagine
and enact their own projects and possibilities," when the
fable of US military invincibility was shattered in Iraq. Fallujah
et al proved that the beast bleeds, and a billion people are
watching--and cheering. And Iraq is not now a sound-byte.
Senator Kerry, this conflict
is already internationalized.
The real bone of contention
between Bremer and the Shias--all the Shias--has not been who
is "moderate" and who is "radical," but the
general Shia demand that sovereignty mean something; a condition
Bremer can't meet, because that would mean the expulsion of US
troops, and permanent US military bases in the heart of the earth's
primary energy patch has been and remains the raison d'etre of
the whole adventure.
The Democratic Leadership Council
will not pounce on this, and not just because they co-signed
it. They have no intention of ceding Iraq either. The election
is a family feud, but no one is going to surrender the family's
position a position that well before the thirteen year Energy
War in Iraq had already "made America less safe and destroyed
our credibility in the world."
Senator Kerry, would you like
to comment on the US-supported-Zionists' assassination of Abdel-Aziz
al-Rantisi?
Kerry would sooner piss up
a rope.
On April 12th, I watched C-Span.
The Chair of the Brandeis University Middle Eastern Studies Department,
hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Studies Center, spent
over an hour stating what will likely become the academic version
of the Democratic Party's stance on Iraq.
Yitzhak Nakash began by giving
a very clear and pointed account of the situation in Iraq.
Nakash stated that in no uncertain
terms the current course of US military and political policy
is leading the US into a situation where the occupation of Iraq
will become "untenable."
Untenable. For the Democratic
leadership, this is bad.
He counseled that Sadr and
his followers must be brought back into the fold with a seat
at the political table. His assessment was very realistic, and
he provided a wealth of evidence to support his dark prognostications.
His reasoning was that the US cannot afford to fail in Iraq--without
saying why, but we can probably figure that one out--and that
to succeed, it must establish a political system where the US
does not direct the outcome, but where pluralism creates a check-and-balance
default. This would check Sadr and others' influence, he points
out, in the same way that Hezbollah has been checked in Lebanon
precisely by putting then in the Parliament. This is a very clever
way of saying that technical "democracy," as such,
is a more effective means of population control than direct occupation,
and that it involves providing various incentives and disincentives
to ensure that everyone is given enough power in a legitimized
political process to disincline them stepping outside that process--a
confined divide-and-conquer strategy.
This may prove too subtle for
the neo-cons, who are blood-and-guts fantasists of empire.
The most interesting part of
this refreshingly frank account by Nakash of the degree of disorder
confronting the US occupation was what he saw as the absolute
precondition for all this political maneuvering: "security,"
meaning massive expansion of troop numbers there, with a commitment
to stay for a decade or more. John Kerry is saying this very
thing right now more troops. While attempting to claim some mantle
from JFK, he is sounding a lot like LBJ.
The rulers--Heinzes and Soros
and so on--are trying to correct here for a political establishment
that has, in some regards, gone out of control. Johnny Kerry
to the rescue!
The political significance
of religion in Iraq, in Southwest Asia, and in the United States,
where Christian Zionists constitute a significant fraction of
the ruling party's base, cannot be overstated. Nor can the Bush
Doctrine politics of macho-narcissism.
Kerry can't even go after that.
His campaign has partially turned into a military-dick-measuring
contest with GWB about service records, as if the war in Iraq
would be just okey-dokey if the Commander-in-Chief were only
a veteran with a pile of fruit salad ribbons on his mildewed
uniform.
My rep, Democrat Congressman
David Price, is a veritable meteorologist so closely does he
monitor the changing political wind and a jellyfish if you're
looking for his vertebral column. He gets re-elected because
his opponents are always misogynistic theocrats yearning for
the plantation--which matters to a quite a few people here along
the Black Belt.
David is sometimes honest,
though, when his constituents come in groups to badger him. He
told me once that he could not call down the Bush administration
for going to war in violation of the UN Charter because he himself
had voted to give Bill Clinton the authority to do the exact
same thing in Yugoslavia.
I have emailed him three separate
videos of US forces committing war crimes--all available on the
internet--and he has quit returning my emails, even with that
auto-responder thingie. I think I've been blocked.
The only good news here is
that alluded to above--the US public is getting fed up. A recent
Pew poll showed that in December, Americans favored staying on
in Iraq 63% to 32% who said we need to leave. As of this month,
the Stay Group has dropped to 50% and the Get Out Group has risen
to 44%. If this trend continues, driven by more and more bad
news from the Coalition Provisional Authority, by November the
ratio will be 22-68.
Today, a 14-hour gun battle
near the Syrian border killed 5 Marines and sent dozens to the
hospital, and dozxens more Iraqis were killed, while firefights
rage across the country, and as this is drafted, ten American
soldiers (we don't know how many mercenaries and other contractors)
have been killed, making this the deadliest month yet for US
troops. American Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles bristle
around Fallujah and Najaf--the latter established as a no-cross
line by Ayatollah al-Sistani--and reconstruction crews are bailing
like rats off a sinking ship. The Spaniards are leaving, Japan
is on the brink of a political crisis, and there are hostages
held from the United States, Denmark, Italy, Israel, France,
the Czech Republic, and Japan.
The Sunnis and the Shias are
forming tactical alliances, meaning GWB has accomplished something
after all--he has re-awakened pan-Arab nationalism, and with
that re-awakened the brooding peshmerga to the north and further
north the Turkish army.
Is all that international enough
for you, John?
I have said--at the risk of
having my leftie-credentials pulled--that we cannot stay out
of electoral politics. I am saying it again.
Everywhere any Democrat candidate
shows up in public, we need to be dogging his or her footsteps
and confronting them in front of the cameras with the very questions
they least want to hear, as a way to go after sections of the
Democratic Party base with a public-education effort.
Questions about Palestine.
Questions about the number of dead Iraqis. Questions about American
war crimes. Questions about permanent military bases in Iraq.
Questions about who exactly will make up any future UN force,
when experts say it would take 500,000 troops to "pacify"
Iraq. Questions about whether they will authorize more emergency
funds to continue the war. Maybe even a question about whether
a people have the right to expel invaders by force of arms if
necessary.
That's not lesser-evilism y'all.
This is about using their podium not to defeat a candidate, but
to assist in the defeat of an empire.
Time for Kissnger's boy, Paul
Bremer, to go home. US out of Iraq! Israel out of Palestine!
That's how we win back our credibility and our safety, John.
Let's hear the Democratic Party
leadership say that!
Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous
Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti"
(Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book "Full
Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He
is a member of the BRING
THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special
Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier.
Email for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is bthn@mfso.org.
Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org
Weekend
Edition Features for April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B.
Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry
Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
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