Today's
Stories
April 19, 2006
Christopher Reed
Secrets of the Garden of Bliss
April 18, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
How Safe is Your Job?
Eric
Wingerter
Washington Post vs. Venezuela
Juan Santos
What Immigrants Need to Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement
Greg
Weiher
The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited
Sam Bahour
Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
In the Gaze of New Orleans
Website of
the Day
The
FBI and the Jack Anderson Files
April 17, 2006
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with the First Arab-American
Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity
Uri Avnery
Olmert the Fox
Norman Solomon
Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing
of Iran?
John Ross
A Real Day Without Mexicans?
Laila al-Haddad
The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch
from Gaza
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Tale of Two Members of Congress
and the Capitol Hill Police
Website of the Day
Dixie
Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down
April
15 / 16, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How Star Wars Came to the Arctic
Ralph
Nader
Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin
Thaddeus
Hoffmeister
The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for
Being Right
Kevin Prosen
/ Dave Zirin
Privilege Meets Protest at Duke
Thomas
P. Healy
Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell
Berry
Kristoffer
Larsson
Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical
Flim-Flam
Fred
Gardner
Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education
Edwin Krales
New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the
Poor
Brian
Cloughley
Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback
John Holt
Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son
Seth
Sandronsky
What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and
the Privatization of Public Schools
Rafael Renteria
Making It Plain About New Orleans
Michael
Ortiz Hill
In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation
William A.
Cook
An Israel Accountability Act
Gideon
Levy
Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl
Andrew Wimmer
Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign
Madis
Senner
Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush
Michael Kuehl
The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"?
Mark
Scaramella
When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm
of Mark Twain
Nate Mezmer
187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop
Jesse
Walker
Playlist
Poets' Basement
Engel, Laymon and Subiet
Website
of the Weekend
Pink Serenades Bush
April
14, 2006
Col.
Dan Smith
Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials
Resign on Principle
Saul Landau
Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets
Stan
Cox
The Real Death Tax
Kevin Zeese
Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe?
Brian
McKinlay
Bad Times for Bush's Buddies
Howard Meyers
Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ
Ishmael
Reed
The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks
to Chastize Blacks
Website of
the Day
Asshole: a Film Strip
April
13, 2006
CounterPunch
News Service
Powell's "Bitch"?
Norman
Solomon
The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Stanley Heller
Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement
Jeff
Birkenstein
Bush and Freedom of Speech
Evelyn J.
Pringle
Not So Fast, Mr. Powell
Michael
Donnelly
The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart
Kamran Matin
Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran?
Website
of the Day
"Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"
April
12, 2006
Vijay Prashad
Resisting Fences
Alan
Maass
The Suicide of Anthony Soltero
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked,
You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast
Ron
Jacobs
Resistance: the Remedy for Fear
Ramzy Baroud
The Imminent Decline of the American Empire?
Randall
Dodd
How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!"
P. Sainath
The Corporate Hijack of India's Water
Website of
the Day
"The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"
April
11, 2006
Al
Krebs
Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration
and a History of Greed
Lawrence
R. Velvel
The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight
Sonia Nettinin
Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation
Willliam
S. Lind
The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors
Robert Ovetz
Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish
Pratyush
Chandra
Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!"
Grant F.
Smith
The Bush Administration's Final Surprise?
Laray
Polk
Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights
Francis Boyle
O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home
Turf
José
Pertierra
A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando
Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455
Website of
the Day
The Dead Emcee Scrolls
April
10, 2006
Ralph
Nader
Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats
Heather Gray
Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Uri
Avnery
The Big Wink
Joshua Frank
Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers
Seth
Sandronsky
Immigration and Occupations
Michael Leonardi
The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important"
Evelyn
Pringle
Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald?
Tom Kerr
FoxNews Does Ward Churchill
Lucinda
Marshall
The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney
Website of
the Day
Brown Berets
April
7 -9, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile
Technology to China
Patrick
Cockburn
The War Gets Grimmer Every Day
David Vest
The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney
Dave
Lindorff
The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward
Gary Leupp
"Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean?
Elaine
Cassel
The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This?
Saul Landau
Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules
James
Ridgeway
"This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film
Ron Jacobs
Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money
John
Walsh
Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late
Ramzy Baroud
The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits
Todd Chretien
What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America
Jonathan
Scott
Javelins at the Head of the Monolith
John Bomar
What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas
Michele
Brand
Iran, the US and the EU
Ronan Sheehan
Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese?
Mickey
Z.
Let Us Now Praise OIL
Don Monkerud
March of the Bunglers
Michael
Dickinson
The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play
Website
of the Weekend
The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast
| April
19 , 2006
Bait-and-Switch on Iran
When "Diplomacy"
Means War
By NORMAN SOLOMON
One
of the nation’s leading pollsters, Andrew Kohut of the Pew
Research Center, wrote a few weeks ago that among Americans “there
is little potential support for the use of force against Iran.”
This month the White House has continued to emphasize that it is
committed to seeking a diplomatic solution. Yet the U.S. government
is very likely to launch a military attack on Iran within the next
year. How can that be?
In
the run-up to war, appearances are often deceiving. Official events
may seem to be moving in one direction while policymakers are actually
headed in another. On their own timetable, White House strategists
implement a siege of public opinion that relies on escalating media
spin. One administration after another has gone through the motions
of staying on a diplomatic track while laying down flagstones on
a path to war.
Several
days ago President Bush said that “the doctrine of prevention
is to work together to prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear
weapon” -- and he quickly added that “in this case,
it means diplomacy.” On April 12 the Secretary of State, Condoleezza
Rice, urged the U.N. Security Council to take “strong steps”
in response to Iran’s announcement of progress toward enriching
uranium. Bush and Rice were engaged in a timeworn ritual that involves
playacting diplomacy before taking military action.
Seven
years ago, President Clinton proclaimed that a U.S.-led NATO air
war on Yugoslavia was starting because all peaceful avenues for
dealing with the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, had reached
dead ends. The Clinton administration and the major U.S. media outlets
failed to mention that Washington had handed Milosevic a poison-pill
ultimatum in the fine print of the proposed Rambouillet accords
-- with Appendix B stipulating that NATO troops would have nearly
unlimited run of the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Recent
decades of American history are filled with such faux statesmanship:
greasing the media wheels and political machinery for military interventions
in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, Central America and the Middle
East. But the current administration’s eagerness to use “diplomacy”
as a prop for going to war has been unusually brazen.
On
Jan. 31, 2003 -- five days before the ballyhooed speech by then-Secretary
of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council -- the president
held a private Oval Office meeting with Tony Blair. Summing up the
discussion, which occurred nearly two months before the invasion
of Iraq, the British prime minister’s chief foreign policy
adviser David Manning noted in a memo: “Our diplomatic strategy
had to be arranged around the military planning.” Meanwhile,
President Bush and his top aides were still telling the public that
they were pursuing all diplomatic channels in hopes of preventing
war.
Pundits
have often advised presidents to use diplomatic maneuvers as virtual
shams in order to legitimize the coming warfare. Charles Krauthammer
blew his stack in mid-November 1998 when U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan seemed to make progress in averting a U.S. missile strike
against Iraq. “It is perfectly fine for an American president
to mouth the usual pieties about international consensus and some
such,” Krauthammer wrote in Time magazine. “But when
he starts believing them, he turns the Oval Office over to Kofi
Annan and friends.”
In
late summer 2002, with momentum quickening toward an Iraq invasion,
Newsweek foreign affairs columnist Fareed Zakaria urged the Bush
administration to recognize the public-relations value of allowing
U.N. weapons inspectors to spend some time in Iraq. “Even
if the inspections do not produce the perfect crisis,” he
wrote optimistically, “Washington will still be better off
for having tried because it would be seen to have made every effort
to avoid war.”
When
reality can’t hold a candle to perception, then reality is
apt to become imperceptible. And in matters of war and peace, when
powerful policy wonks in Washington effectively strive for appearances
to be deceiving, the result is a pantomime of diplomacy that’s
scarcely like the real thing. When the actual goal is war, the PR
task is to make a show of leaving no diplomatic stone unturned.
That
kind of macabre ritual was underway on April 10 when the White House
press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters: “The president
has made it very clear that we’re working with the international
community to find a diplomatic solution when it comes to the Iranian
regime and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.” The quote appeared
the next morning in a New York Times news article under a headline
that must have pleased the war planners at the White House: “Bush
Insists on Diplomacy in Confronting a Nuclear Iran.”
Ambrose
Bierce defined diplomacy as “the patriotic act of lying for
one’s country.” But there is nothing less patriotic
than lying to one’s country -- especially when the result
is a war that could have been avoided if honesty had substituted
for mendacity.
Norman
Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy (www.accuracy.org)
and author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep
Spinning Us to Death”.
|