Today's
Stories
Febrauary 16, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
Their Own Economic Reality
February 15,
2006
Brian Conacnnon,
Jr.
Haiti's Elections: Chaos, Supression
and Fraud
Dave
Lindorff
Democrats Shoot Their Own, Too
Saree Makdisi
Israeli Ultimatums
Joshua
Frank
The Rhetorical Gore
Amira Hass
Down the Expulsion Highway
CounterPunch
Wire
Winter of Discontent: a 34--Day Fast
Against the War
Robert Bryce
The United States of Enron
Website
of the Day
Osama's
Game: an Interview with Michael Scheuer
February
14, 2006
John Sugg
Those Cartoons and the Neo Con: Daniel
Pipes and the Danish Editor
Don
Santina
DiFi and the Royal Democrats: the
Curious Withdrawal of Cindy Sheehan
William A.
Cook
Shaming Sharon
Ray
McGovern
Who Will Blow the Whistle About
Iran?
John
Ross
Bush's Mexican Poodle
Website
of the Day
Willie
Nelson Records CPer Ned Sublette's "Cowboys Are Frequently
Secretly"
February 13, 2006
Lila
Rajiva
Axis of Child Abusers: UK Troops Beat
Up Barefoot Iraqi Teens
Christopher
Brauchli
Whistleblowers and Witch Hunters:
the Bush Inquisition
Dave
Lindorff
Deadeye Dick: If Stupidity Were
Impeachable, Cheney Would Be History
Ron
Jacobs
Black Liberation
Mike
Whitney
Riding High with Hugo Chavez
Michael
Neumann
Respectful Cultures and Disrespectful
Cartoons
Website
of the Day
Virtual Resistance
February
11 / 12, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
How Not to Spot a Terrorist
Ralph Nader
Bringing Democracy to the Federal Reserve
Paul Craig Roberts
Nuking the Economy
Pat Williams
John Boehner's Dirty Little Secret:
Flying Lobbyist Air at $4,000 a Junket
Fred Gardner
Dr. Mikuriya's Appeal: a Last Minute
Twist
Saul Landau
From Munich to Hamas
John Chuckman
Cartoons and Bombs: Was Rice Right
for Once?
Roger Burbach
Evo Morales: the Early Days
Seth Sandronsky
Economy on Ice
Website of the Weekend
Just Say Know
February 10, 2006
Carl
G. Estabrook
A US War Plan for Khuzestan?
Sen.
Russell Feingold
A Raw Deal on the Patriot Act
Roxanne
Dunbar--------Ortiz
How Did Evo Morales Come to Power?
Saree Makdisi
The Tempest Over the Hamas Charter
Website of the Day
The
New York Art Scene: 1974--------1984
February 9, 2006
Dave Lindorff
Bush
and Yamashita: War Crimes and Commanders--------in--------Chief
Mike Marqusee
The
Human Majority was Right About Iraq
Paul Craig Roberts
How Conservatives Went Crazy: the Rightwing Press
Peter Phillips
Inside
the Global Dominance Group: 200 Insiders Against the World
William S. Lind
Rumsfeld the Maximalist: the Long War
Christine Tomlinson Innocent
Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's
Eavesdropping Program
Will Youmans
Church of England Votes to Divest from Israel
Robert Robideau
An American Indian's View of the Cartoons
Richard Neville
The Cartoons That Shook the World: All This from the Danes, the
Least Funny People on Earth
Peter Rost
The New Robber Barons
Website of the Day
Eyes Wide Open
February 8,
2006
Ron Jacobs
The
Once and Future Sly Stone: Soundtrack to a Riot
Stan Cox
Making
and Unmaking History with General Myers
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why
Bush's Wiretapping Program is Illegal and Unconstitutional
Robert Jensen
Horowitz's
Academic Hit List: Take a Class from One of the CounterPunch
16
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Bush Should Have Wiretapped FEMA and Chertoff
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Alberto Gonzales Channels Mark Twain
Don Monkerud
Covenant Marriage on the Rocks
David Swanson
Inequality and War
C.L. Cook
Nuking Ontario
Christopher
Fons
Chill Out Jihadis: They're Just Cartoons!
Jeffrey Ballinger
The Other Side of Nike and Social Responsibility
Website of
the Day
Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas
February 7,
2006
Edward Lucie--------Smith
An
Urgent Plea to Save a Small Estonian Museum from Neo--------Nazis
Robert Fisk
The Fury: Now Lebanon is Burning
Paul Craig Roberts
Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man"
Neve Gordon
Why Hamas Won
Joshua Frank
The Hillary and George Show: Partners in War
Peter Montague
The Problem with Mercury: a History of Regulatory Capitulation
Jackie Corr
The
Last Best Choice: Public Power and Montana
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Rumsfeld's
Enforcer: the Secret World of Stephen Cambone
Website of the Day
Negroes with Guns
February 6,
2006
Christopher
Brauchli
Spilling
Blood: Two Sentences
Robert Fisk
Don't
Be Fooled: This Isn't About Islam vs. Secularism
John Chuckman
What Did Stephen Harper Actually Win?
Jenna Orkin
Judge Slams EPA for Lying About 9/11's Toxic Air
Paul Craig
Roberts
Who
Will Save America: My Epiphany
February 4
/ 5, 2006
Alexander Cockburn
"Lights
Out in Tehran": McCain Starts Bombing Run
Mike Ferner
Pentagon
Database Leaves No Kid Alone
James Petras
Evo Morales's Cabinet: a Bizarre Beginning in Bolivia
Alan Maass
Scare of the Union: Dems Collaborate with Bush on Surveillance
Fred Gardner
Annals of Law Enforcement: a Look Inside the San Francisco DA's
Office
Ralph Nader
Bush's
Energy Escapades
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Speaking in Tongues
Saul Landau
Freedom 2006: Buying Sex on the Net or Those Older Freedoms?
Laura Carlsen
Bad Blood on the Border: Killing Guillermo Martinez
James Brooks
Our Little Shop of Diplomatic Horrors
Mike Roselle
Hippies and Revolutionaries in Carcacas
John Holt
Black Gold, Black Death: Canada's Oil Sands Frenzy
Sarah Ferguson
Cops Suing Cops ... for Spying on Cops
William S.
Lind
Beware the Ides of March
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Price of Globalization: Free Trade or Free Speech?
Seth Sandronsky
The Color of Job Cuts in the Auto Industry
Derrick O'Keefe
Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy
Michael Donnelly
Hop on the Bus
Ron Jacobs
Religion and Political Power
Elisa Salasin
RSVP to Bush
St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week
Stew Albert
God's Curse: Selected Poems
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, LaMorticella and Engel
Website of
the Weekend
Killer
Tells All!
February 3,
2006
Toufic Haddad
A
Parliament of Prisoners
Heather Gray
Working with Coretta Scott King
Tim Wise
Racism,
Neo--------Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates
Conn Hallinan
Nuclear Proliferation: the Gathering Storm
Eva Golinger
Rumsfeld and Negroponte Amp Up Hositility Toward Venezuela
Daniel Ellsberg
The World Can't Wait: Invitation to a Demonstration
Dave Zirin
Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink
Robert Bryce
The
Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East
Website of
the Day
The Chavez Code
February 2,
2006
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Pentagon
Pork: How to Eliminate It
Stan Cox
Outsourcing
the Golden Years
Rachard Itani
Danes
(Finally) Apologize to Muslims (For the Wrong Reasons)
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan Five Years Later: Buildings Down, Heroin Up
Amira Hass
In
the Footsteps of Arafat: an Interview with Hamas' Ismail Haniya
Norman Solomon
When Praise is Desecration: Smothering King's Legacy with Kind
Words
Michael Simmons
Stew Lives!
Christopher
Reed
Japan's
Dirty Secret: One Million Korean Slaves
Website of the Day
State of Nature
February 1,
2006
Sharon Smith
The
Bluff and Bluster Dems: Alito and the Faux Filibuster
Jason Leopold
Enron and the Bush Administration
Cindy Sheehan
Getting
Busted at the State of the Union: What Really Happened
Joseph Grosso
Oprah
and Elie Wiesel: a Match Made in "Neutrality"
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Coretta Scott King was More Than Just Dr. King's Wife
Steven Higgs
Life After Roe. v. Wade
Robert Robideau
"God Given Rights": Palestine and Native America
R. Siddharth
Tales of Power: When Gandhi Rejected a Faustian Bargain with
Henry Ford
Jim Retherford
Remembering Stew Albert: the Quiet Genius
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
The Legacy of Coretta Scott King
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
True State of the Union
Website of
the Day
Candide's Notebooks
| February
16, 2006
Dancing Around Accountability
Dick Cheney's Fox
Trot
By NORMAN SOLOMON
When
Dick Cheney surfaced on Wednesday long enough for an interview with
Fox News eminence Brit Hume -- an event that CNN’s Jack Cafferty
promptly likened to “Bonnie interviewing Clyde” -- the
vice presidential spin emerged from a timeworn bag of political
tricks. Cheney took responsibility. Whatever that means.
The
New York Times website swiftly made its top headline “Cheney
Takes Full Responsibility for Shooting Hunter.” Just before
Fox News Channel aired interview segments at length, the summary
from anchor Hume told viewers that Cheney had accepted “full
responsibility for the incident.” Hours later, the Washington
Post’s front-page story led this way: “Vice President
Cheney accepted full responsibility yesterday...”
Ironically
-- while news outlets kept using the phrase “full responsibility”
-- the transcript of the interview posted on FoxNews.com shows that
Cheney never used any form of the word “responsibility.”
Whatever
their exact words, the politicians who can’t avoid acknowledging
culpability are often the beneficiaries of excessive media plaudits
for supposedly owning up to what they’ve done wrong. But those
politicians rarely do more than just what the spin doctor ordered.
It’s
not brave or even forthright for an official to express the contrition
that seems advisable from a public-relations standpoint. When a
convicted defendant voices remorse just before sentencing, the statement
is often viewed as little more than a ploy dictated by circumstance.
But when a politician ostensibly “takes responsibility”
in the court of public opinion, much of the media coverage attaches
great significance to an essentially hollow statement that is a
transparent effort to extinguish a scandal-fueled firestorm.
In
almost every instance when a politician “takes responsibility”
with great fanfare, there’s no penalty attached to the proclamation.
Across the terrain of political media, the I-take-responsibility
maneuver is the equivalent of a hit-and-run driver offering an over-the-shoulder
yell of “Sorry about that” while speeding away from
a grisly scene.
On
July 30, 2003 -- several months after the occupation of Iraq began
-- President Bush held a news conference while U.S. forces continued
to search in vain for weapons of mass destruction. High up in a
front-page story, the New York Times reported that Bush “took
responsibility for the first time for an assertion in his State
of the Union address about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program
that turned out to be based on questionable intelligence.”
Bush
told reporters: “I take personal responsibility for everything
I say, of course. I also take responsibility for making decisions
on war and peace. And I analyzed a thorough body of intelligence,
good, solid, sound intelligence that led me to come to the conclusion
that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”
In
that instance, as in so many others, the president’s declaration
about taking responsibility was nothing more than hot air for inflated
rhetoric -- a dodge to divert attention from indefensible actions
and evident deceptions.
Last
year, on Sept. 13 at the White House, the president said: “Katrina
exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels
of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn’t
fully do its job right, I take responsibility.” Policies during
the five months since then have compounded the administration’s
deadly negligence in response to Hurricane Katrina, underscoring
the diversionary significance of the I-take-responsibility scam.
When
Brit Hume and Dick Cheney did their Fox trot, they were performing
the kind of spectacle we’ve seen many times on television.
Network correspondents and powerful politicians know the boundaries
and the steps. Their footwork may look simple, but it’s fancy
and well-practiced. Contrary to pretense, the probing journalist
doesn’t probe too much, and the forthcoming politician merely
hunkers down with a new twist.
And
so it goes: Whether the media uproar has to do with a quail hunt,
or lethal negligence in connection with a hurricane, or chronic
deception for a war, top officials may finally opt to “take
responsibility.” But that’s nothing more than a propaganda
technique for those who view lying as an essential means of governance.
Norman Solomon’s latest book is “War
Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
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