Today's
Stories
June 7, 2006
Laura Ribeiro
The
Israeli Boycott of Palestinian Education
June 6, 2006
Diane Christian
Negatives:
Torture, Massacres and Denial
Paul Craig Roberts
Outsourcing
Smarts: the Death of US Engineering
Ralph Nader
The Battle for South Central Farm
Norman Solomon
The Urbanity of Evil: Tariq Aziz and Bush's Enablers
Darmont / Genovali
Wolf Sterilization Scheme Backfires
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
Blacks, Hispanics and Immigrant Bashing for Colonial Control
Subcomandante Marcos
The Other Campaign: a Plan for Action on June 11, 2006
Patrick Cockburn
Bloodbath
Beyond the Green Zone
Website of the Day
Greatest Music Video?
June 5, 2006
Bruce Jackson
Why
Haditha Happened
Chris Floyd
Return
to Ishaqi: the Pentagon's Shaky Self-Exoneration
Michael Neumann
Jewish
Opposition to Zionism
Heather Gray
War in the 20th Century: a Canadian Family's Experience
William Hughes
Bipartisan War Profiteers
David Swanson
Should We Stay or Should We Go Now?
Alexander Cockburn
Palestine:
It's All Over
Website of the Day
Klamath Spring
June 3 / 4, 2006
Weekend Edition
Robert Fisk
Liberators
as Murderers
James Petras
Is
Latin America Really Turning Left?
Rosemary Radford Ruether
"We Have No One to Talk To:" Israel's Targeted Assassination
Policy
Harry Clark
Truman and Israel: How It All Began
Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth
Ron Ridenour
Return to Cuba
Ron Jacobs
Hand Wringing and Warfare: What Do Owe Iraq
Fred Gardner
Dr. Tashkin Makes the News
Peter Montague
The System in Crisis
John Walsh
MoveOn Rigs Its Own Vote; Betrays Its Membership
Greg Moses
Eyes of Texas: Neocon Border with Mexico Begins Next Week
Sean Donahue
Atlantica: Mainer's Won't Be Fooled Again
Mike Whitney
Swan Song for the Greenback?
Dave Patten
Final Examination
Ali Khan
Story of the Two Kings
Robert Dotson,
MD
Couch Time for America
Hammond Guthrie
Revisiting Mondo Hollywood
St. Clair / D'Antoni
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Bina, Engel, Ford and Landau
Website of the
Day
Send Dr. Suzy Your Love
June 2, 2006
Kathy Kelly
Right
Livelihood
Alan Maass
"A
Mercenary Army": an Interview with Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater
in New Orleans
Mickey Z.
Haditha
Massacre was Inevitable
Dave Lindorff
Don't
Think Twice: Bush and Rumsfeld as Ethics Advisers
Chris Kutalik
Troqueros Flex Muscles at Long Beach
Sunsara Taylor
Countdown
to a Betrayal: Making Change Without Democrats
Sam Husseini
Can Pacifica Live Up to Its Promise?
Mike Ferner
More, Lots More
Website of the
Day
Free Daniel McGowan!
June 1, 2006
Brian Cloughley
Haditha
and the Farrago of Lies: War Crimes Start at the Top
David Peterson
Iran: a Manufactured Crisis
Lee Ballinger
Media
Myths About the South: What Backlash Against the Dixie Chicks?
Jonathan Cook
Olmbert
in DC: Bold Ideas and Ugly Intentions
Mike Whitney
Offers and Ultimatums: Endgaming Iran
Paul Rockwell
Smearing Ron Dellums
Clifton Ross
Millennium Blues
Kevin Zeese
Return of the Petri Dish Warriors: a New Biowar Arms Race Begins
in Maryland
Website of the
Day
The Monkees and Johnny Cash
May 31, 2006
Dave Lindorff
DNC
Death Wish 2006: the Do Nothing Party
Joshua Frank
Al
Gore, Environmental Titan?: Some Inconvenient Truths About the
Ozone Man
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Stop
Saying This is a Nation of Immigrants!
P. Sainath
Three Weddings and Funeral: Farmer Suicides in Vidharbha
Ramzy Baroud
On Palestinian Violence
Seth Sandronsky
The War on Nurses: a Joint Attack by US Senate and NLRB
Mickey Z.
Scapegoating Mexicans is an American Tradition
Ralph Nader
Breakaway Bases: Keeping LIttle Leaguers Safe
Jeffrey St. Clair
Dirk's
Dirty Money: Gale Norton in Slacks
Website of the Day
Storm Cloud Over New Orleans
May 30, 2006
Lee Ballinger
The
Real Reason Rock the Vote is Falling Apart
Jonathan Cook
Shin
Bet and the Israeli Academy: Partners in Human Rights Abuses?
Gary Leupp
Now Introducing, the Office of Iranian Affairs
John Ross
Disappearing
the Disappeared
Robert Jensen
The Four Fundamentalisms
Michael Dickinson
Silencing the Peace Protester of Parliament Square
Michael Carmichael
Zionist Democrats: the DLC and Israel
Tim Wise
Of Immigrants and "Real Amurkans"
Harry Browne
Ken Loach's History Lesson
Website of the
Day
Louisiana
May 27 / 29,
2006
Weekend Edition
Paul Craig Roberts
The
Evil Within
Kathleen Christison
Surrender
vs. the Right to Exist
Kathy Kelly
Fear of Flowers in Iraq: a Report from Sulaymaniyah
Christopher
Reed
The Abominable Dr. Ishii: the Pentagon and the Japanese Mengele
Lawrence R. Velvel
The Moral Rot in Congress: a Constitutional Right to Graft?
Tom Barry
The Politics of Tom Tancredo
Gary Leupp
The Latest Neocon Lies About Iran
Col. Dan Smith
Freezing History: Iran and the Uses of "Preventive"
War
Ron Jacobs
Blocking Military Ports: One, Two, Three Many Olympians
Don Fitz
EPA Goes Lead Wild: Acceptable Levels of Poisoning
Fred Gardner
What's the Matter with Oregon?
Peter Montague
Radioactive Troika: Bush, the Nuclear Power Industry and the
New York Times
Raymond Garcia
Teens as Political Scapegoats
John Farley
Euston Manifesto: the Latest Gameplan from the Pro-Imperialist
Left
Seth Sandronsky
Mexico After NAFTA: the Washington Post's Trouble with Numbers
Tia Steele
A Gold Star Mother's Memorial Day Plea
Lenni Brenner
"Howl", 50 Years Later: Allen Ginsberg's Silly Liberal
Politics
Dr. Susan Block
God Has Sex, Makes Big Box Office
Scott Michael Perey
An Open Letter to Bono: Why are You Financing a Video Game Promoting
the Invasion of Venezuela?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: Please Help Hilton Ruiz
Poets' Basement
Davies, Smith-Ferri, Mickey Z,, Buknatski, and Engel
Recipe of the
Weekend
Impeach-Mint Punch
Website of the Weekend
Trojan Syndrome
May 26, 2006
Col. Douglas
MacGregor
Fire
the Generals!: the Failure of Military Leadership in Iraq
Brian J. Foley
Who Will Stand Up to Bush's Drive to Attack Iran?
Michael Dickinson
Mining Glaciers: Water or Gold?
Missy Comley Beattie
Stuck in a Cake-Walk War
Pierre Tristam
The Few, the Proud, the Murderers
Joe Allen
Put a Disclaimer on the Bible, Not the Da Vinci Code
Kona Lowell
Thank You, Fox News
Roger Burbach
Bush Targets Chavez and Morales
Website of the
Day
Women Resisting War from Within
May 25, 2006
Les AuCoin
Faith-Based
Missile Defense: the Folly of Star Wars
Jeff Halper
Countdown to Apartheid
Dave Lindorff
Bombing Without Regrets
Ron Jacobs
Voting Rights and Multilingual Ballots
Bob Wing
Finding
Common Ground in New Orleans: an Interview with Malik Rahim
Elise Gould
College Grads Face Weak Labor Market
Robert Bryce
Iraq's
Fuel Crisis
Website of the Day
Oh Lay!
May 24, 2006
Michael Donnelly
Operation
Backfire: Criminalizing Eco-Dissent
Patrick Cockburn
Why
the US May Have to Quit Iraq Sooner Than It Planned
Lucinda Marshall
Involuntary Motherhood: the Cacophony Over RU 486
Dave Lindorff
A Winning Impeachment Argument
Shmuel Rosner
Israeli Advice on Wall-Building: Be Ruthless
Moshe Adler
The Promised Land: Immigration, Israeli Style
Heather Gray
Land Reform and American Agriculture
Pratyush Chandra
Angels and Demons in Nepal
Paul Craig Roberts
In Memoriam: Lloyd Bentsen
Floyd Rudmin
Why
Does the NSA Engage in Mass Surveillanc of Americans?
Website of the Day
Presentensing the Future
May 23, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
Paranoia
as Policy: How Bush Brewed the Iran Crisis
Sharon Smith
Shooting to Kill on the Border
Sunsara Taylor
Meet the New Christian Conquistadors: Ron Luce's Holy Warriors
Joel Whitney
The Most Tenacious Man on Capitol Hill?: an Interview with John
Conyers
Alice Cherbonnier
Total Information Awareness for Whom? FOIA, the Press and the
Spooks
Ron Jacobs
Optimism of the Will
Kristen Ess
The Crisis for Palestinian Political Prisoners
Patrick Cockburn
Which
is the Real Iraq?
Website of the
Day
Pearl Jam: Life Wasted
May 22, 2006
Alan Maass
Seeger, Springsteen and "We Shall Overcome": an Interview
with Dave Marsh
William Blum
But What About the Marshall Plan?
Elaine C. Hagopian
It's
Not Hamas Terror Israel Fears: the 1988 Compromise Revisited
Stan Cox
Eat Your Lawn!: Inside the Lawn Racket
Chris Floyd
Vexed
to Nightmare
Alexander Cockburn
Flying Here: the Red Flag, from Berlin to West Bengal
Website of the Day
Mass Graves at Maza-i-Sharif
May 20 / 21,
2006
Patrick Cockburn
iraq
is Disintegrating
Kathy Kelly
Back to Iraq
Ralph Nader
Coerced Confessions
Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Chavez Takes London
Greg Grandin
The New York Times Versus Chavez
P. Sainath
What Exactly is "Development"?
Greg Moses
A Little Fascism Goes a Long Way
Stephen Philion
"Illegal": Lou Dobbs, Do You Really Wanna Go There?
Landau / Hassen
"United 93": Exposing Military Incompetence
Fred Gardner
The Humiliation of Clifford Robinson
Missy Comley
Beattie
Handling the Truth
Michael Dickinson
Headscarf: Uproar in Turkey Over the Hijab
Seth Sandronsky
Social Security and Medicare: When Journalists Manufacture a
Crisis
Luke Young
Inside Cambodia
John Zavesky
Praise the Lord and Pass the Joystick
Ben Tripp
Love It or Leave it
Jeffrey St. Clair
CounterPunch Playlist: a Short History of Funk
Poets' Basement
Landau, Davies, Orloski and Ford
May 19, 2006
Winslow T. Wheeler
Democrats
and the Defense Budget: Just as Ruinous as the Republicans
José Pertierra
Posada
Carriles: Extradite or Prosecute, There's No Other Option
John Ross
The Marcos Factor: Mexico's Electoral Wildcard
Dave Lindorff
Virtual America
Jeff Juel
Ecological Extortion in the National Forests?
Alan Farago
Defanging the Endangered Species Act
Eric Johnson-DeBaufre
Building a New Sanctuary Movement
José Martî
Letter to Manuel Mercado: "The Revolution Desires Complete
Freedom"
Jonathan Cook
Marriage
Ban Closes the Gates to Palestinians
Website of the
Day
Fix the Movie and Revolutionize the Movie Industry!
May 18, 2006
Bill Simpich
Building
a Movement that will be Stronger After the US is Out of Iraq:
Lessons from the 1970 Student Strike
Patrick Cockburn
The
Carnage in Basra
Christopher Brauchli
The Needle and the Damage Done: the Death Penalty's Ministers
Nora Barrows-Friedman
The Nakba in Palestine
Victoria Buch
In the Name of Israel's State Security
Eric Ruder
Nuclear Hypocrites
George Wuerthner
The Ice Cream Wilderness?
Juan Santos
The
Border War Comes Home
Website of the Day
Help Stop Animal Torture at Devore
May 17, 2006
Lenni Brenner
The
Lobby and the Great Protestant Crusader
Carlos Villarreal
Immigrant Scapegoats and the Manufacturing of a Crisis
Larry Everest
Catching
Rumsfeld Red-Handed: an Interview with Ray McGovern
CounterPunch News Service
Hugo Chavez: the London Sessions
Lee Sustar
Compromise
and Conquer? Inside the Senate Immigration Bill
Anthony Papa
Dealing
with the Rockefeller Drug Laws: a Tale of Two DAs
William S. Lind
Ink Blots and Super Fortresses: More Contradictions from Iraq
War
Bruce K. Gagnon
Where are the Real Leaders?
JoAnn Wypijewski
Has
Anything Really Changed at Fort Sill?
Website of the Day
The Pacific Northwest:
Animated
May 16, 2006
Ward Churchill
Punishing
Free Speech
Ted Honderich
The
Moral Barbarism of Blair and Bush
Paul Craig Roberts
Ministry
of Fear
Annie Nocenti
"Jesus was a Zombie?": Letter from Haiti
Charles V. Peña
Regime Change Redux: US Plans for Iran Go Far Beyond Nuclear
Efforts
Ron Jacobs
Circling the Wagons and Building Walls: Bush and Co.'s Immigration
Policy
Norman Solomon
A Sick, Hungry Well-Armed Nation
Harvey Wasserman
Why the Fundamentalists Are Freaking Out Over the Da Vinci Code
Michael George
Smith
Bush, Immigration and the Democrats
Harry Browne
New
Frontiers of Shamelessness: Bono's Independent
Website of the
Day
Seeger: "Bring Them Home"
May 15, 2006
Alexander Cockburn
Abe
Rosenthal's Times
William Blum
Appealing to the US is Not Very Appealing
Tanya Golash-Boza
and Douglas A. Parker
Dehumanizing the Undocumented: an Immigration Policy Statement
by Sociologists Without Borders
Dave Lindorff
Gen. Hayden's Sedition Against the Consitution
Debra Schaffer
Hubert
The Battle Cry of G.I. Jesus: Capital Punishment for Gays?
Patrick Cockburn
Now It's Shia Troops Versus Kurdish Troops in Iraq
Tom Turnipseed
The Messianic Presidency
Ken Livingstone
Welcome to London, President Chavez!
Gideon Levy
Game Theory: Hamas is Winning
Mickey Z.
Is Impeachment Too Good for Bush?
Jeff Faux
What Bush's Speech Will Miss: Immigration and the Desperate Mexican
Economy
Website of the Day
Iraq War
Images Uncensored
May 13 / 14,
2006
Vijay Prashad
The
Indian Road: Left Triumph
Joan Roelofs
Why
They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too
Kathy Kelly
Imagining
Survival
Michael Neumann
On the Value and Stability of Israel
Dr. Susan Block
Hookergate
Daniel Cassidy
How the Irish Invented Poker
Christopher Reed
Rebel Journalist: the Memoirs of Wilfred Burchett
Mike Roselle
The Fallacies of Greenpeace
Saul Landau
Up the Mekong to Cambodia
Robert Fisk
The Inescapable Beat: US Military Bases in Brazil
Ralph Nader
Sally Mae and the Student Loan Swindle
Evelyn Pringle
Rove and Fitzgerald Play Monopoly
Fred Gardner
The Marketing of "Cannabis Americana"
Stanley Heller
Is Another Mass Murder of Arabs in the Offing?
Conn Hallinan
China: a Troubled Dragon
Valentina Palma Novoa
"They Ordered Me to Lay My Head in a Pool of Blood"
David Krieger
Why Nuclear Weapons Should Matter
Col. Dan Smith
The Senate's Peace Quilt
Christopher Brauchli
Mister Bush and Mister Zarqawi: Video Stars
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Davies, Ford, Engel, Guthrie, Orloski and Louise
Website of the Weekend
Not Your Soldier!
May 12, 2006
Michael Snedeker
Death
by Snitch: the Attempted Murder of Michael Morales
Dave Lindorff
What Fourth Amendment?
Leah Fishbein
/ RJ Schinner
Santorum
vs. Santorum-Lite: In Pennsylvania, Abortion is Absent from the
Debate
Brian Kwoba
The Immigrant Rights Movement: Birth of a New New Left?
Chris Kromm
Why
Southern Progressives Should Support an Estate Tax
Kai Diekmann
45
Minutes with Bush: the BILD Interview
David Swanson
Bush Tops Nixon: the Most Despised President in History
Virginia Tilley
Hamas
and Israel's "Right to Exist"
Website of the
Day
The CounterPunch Story That Made the Front Page of the NYT Today
May 11, 2006
Sunsara Taylor
Battle
Cry for Theocracy: Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Youth
Jonathan Cook
A
Short History of Unilateral Separation
Tariq Ali
High-Octane Rocket-Rattling Against Iran Won't Work
Wayne S. Smith
Recycled Non Sequiturs: State Dept. Presents No Evidence Cuba
is a "Terrorist State"
Mike Whitney
Secretary of Lies
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Nepalese Army and the Imperialist Agency
Joshua Frank
Save Darfur? Not So Fast
Mickey Z.
Does Property Destruction Equal Eco-Terrorism?
Francis Boyle
Abe Rosenthal Stole My Kill Fee!
Edward S. Herman
/ David Peterson
US
Aggression-Time Once Again: Target Iran
Website of the
Day
The Missing Papers of John Roberts
May 10, 2006
Werther
Axiom
of Evil
Larry Birns / Michael Lettieri
Is Venezuela the New Niger?: the Bush Administration is Trying
to Link Hugo Chavez to Iran's Nuclear Program
Ramzy Baroud
Iran and the US: Nuclear Standoff or Realpolitik?
Kevin Zeese
The Corporate Takeover of Iraq's Economy
Evelyn Pringle
Peter Rost vs. Goliath: an Ex-Pfizer VP Takes on Big Pharma
Amira Hass
Hungry and Shell-Shocked
Michael Donnelly
Nature Loses a Champion
Ron Jacobs
Singers in a Dangerous Time: Dylan and Haggard Take the Stage
Sharon Smith
Abstinence
Backfires
Website of the Day
Camp In with Ray and Cindy
May 9, 2006
Ray McGovern
My
Encounter with Rumsfeld
M. Shahid Alam
The
Muslims America Loves
Moshe Adler
Mayor Bloomberg: Even Worse Than Giuliani
Walter MIgnolo
Beyond Populism: Natural Gas and Decolonization of the Bolivian
Economy
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Blacks, Latinos and the New Civil Rights Movement
William S. Lind
The Other War Heats Up: Fighting on Afghan Time
Todd Chretien
Does It Really Matter Who Runs the CIA?
Dave Lindorff
Pelosi is in for a Big Surprise in November
Ishmael Reed
Furor
Over the "Colored Mind Doubles"
Website of the
Day
Two Years for One Joint
May 8, 2006
Kate McCabe
"No
Less Courage": Political Prisoners' Resistance from Ireland
to Gitmo
Paul Craig Roberts
A
Nation of Waitresses and Bartenders
Col. Dan Smith
Privatizing
West Point: "Duty, Honor, Trademarks..."
Norman Solomon
Gag and Smear: the Misuses of "Anti-Semitism"
Ingmar Lee
Bush's Destabilizing Nuke Deal with India
Robert Jensen
"Covering" and the Law
Ricardo Alarcon
The Struggle for Immigrant Rights in a Neo-Liberal Economy
Will Youmans / M. Kay Siblani
The Danders of Misunderstanding Sudan
Alexander Cockburn
The
Row Over the Israel Lobby
Website of the
Day
Labelle Does The Who: We Don't Get Fooled Again
May 6 / 7, 2006
Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Rise and Possible Fall of Richard Pombo
Ariel Dorfman
Mission Akkomplished: the Secret History of George W. Bush
Joe Allen
Death Row at the "Castle": Inside the Military's Judicial
System
Fred Gardner
From Ritalin to Cocaine: Steve Howe's Untold Story
Jeff Taylor
Democratic Masqueraders: Plutocracy and the Party of the People
Saul Landau
The Immigration Malaise
Stephen Philion
Lessons from the Fordham 9: Challenging CIA and Military Recruiters
on Campus
Trish Schuh
Islamophobia, a Retrospective
Ralph Nader
The Tragedy of False Confessions
Robert Fisk
Through a Syrian Lens: Is the US Provoking Civil War in Iraq?
Paul Cantor
Parody of a Protest: We Came, We Marched, And ... ?
John Holt
"This Goddamn Place Looks Like Hell"
James Ryan
When is a West Point Grad, No Longer a West Point Grad?
Lawrence R. Velvel
Harvard and Its Presidents: Plagiarism, Ghostwriting, and the
Character of Larry Summers
Greg Moses
Canto for a Cinco de Mayo Weekend
Laray Polk
Homeland Security Spending: a Dallas Case Study
Ron Jacobs
Subterranean Fire: a Review
Ben Tripp
No News is Good News
Mickey Z.
9/11 Movies, Anti-War Protests and "Illegal" Humans
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: My Own Private, Springsteen-Free JazzFest (Week Two)
Poets' Basement
Kirbach, Landau, Davies, Engel, Buknatski, Subiet, Ford and Thoreau
Website of the Week
Lawrence Welk Meets the Velvet Underground
May 5, 2006
Vijay Prashad
The
Charmless Inconveniences of the Bourgeoisie
Robert Fisk
Sy Hersh versus the Bush Administration (and the DC Press Corps)
David Swanson
Washington Post Writer Rushes to Rummy's Defense Against Ray
McGovern
Mearsheimer / Walt
The Storm Over "the Israel Lobby"
Dave Lindorff
They're Back!: The Looters of Social Security
Sarah Ferguson
A Day Without Gringos: Immigrants Flooded the Streets of NYC
on May, But Where Were the White Peaceniks?
CounterPunch
News Service
Costs
of US Wars: Bush's GWOT Now Fifth Most Expensive in US History
Corporate Crime Reporter
David Sirota: Still Shackled to the Democrats
Website of the
Day
Watch Ray KO Rummy
May 4, 2006
John F. Sugg
Sami
al-Arian's Final Persecution
Will Potter
Green is the New Red: How the Bush Administration is Using Terror
Laws to Prosecute Nonviolent Environmental Activists
Jonathan Cook
The
Long Path Back to Umm al-Zinat
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Radical Realignment
Chris Dols
Colbert's
Moment (And Why the Beltway Gang Didn't Get It)
Christopher Brauchli
Sen. Frist Without Clothes
Tony Swindell
"Our
Descent into Hell has Begun"
Website of the Day
The
Two Lobbies
May 3, 2006
Robert Bryce
The
Self-Locking F-22
Paul Craig Roberts
John
Kenneth Galbraith, a Great American
James Petras
The
Rise of the Migrant Workers' Movement
Lee Sustar
Democrats and Immigrants: the Grand Evasion
David Bolton
The War on Drugs is a War on Ourselves
Joshua Frank
Challenging Hillary
Jeffery R. Webber
Evo
Morales' Historic May Day: Bolivia Nationalizes Gas!
Website of the
Day
Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger!
May 2, 2006
Evelyn Pringle
Gouge
and Profit: Will Big Oil Destroy
Tariq Ali
On the Death of Pramoedya Ananta Toer: Indonesia's Greatest Writerthe US Economy?
Saul Landau
Life
in the Mekong Delta
Paul Craig Roberts
Endgame for the Constitution
Gary Leupp
"Out
of Iraq, Into Darfur?"
Ron Jacobs
May
Day in Asheville
Sen. Russell
Feingold
Our Presence is Destabilizing Iraq
Anthony Papa
Rush Limbaugh and the Politics of Drug Addiction
Website of the
Day
Rainbow Books
May Day, 2006
Norman Finkelstein
The
Israel Lobby: It's Not Either / Or
Christopher Reed
Mercury's
Message, 50 Years On
Michael Donnelly
Rummy's Not the Only One Who Should Go: What About the War's
Liberal Enablers?
Dave Zirin
A Day Without Pujols
Mike Whitney
The "N' Word: Take Back the Oil Companies!
Gilad Atzmon
Self-Haters Unite!
Missy Comley Beattie
Marching for Peace
Alexander Cockburn
The
War on Terror on the Lodi Front
Website of the
Day
In
Your Face, Mr President
April 29 / 30,
2006
Peter Linebaugh
May
Day with Heart
Ralph Nader
Break Up the Big Oil Cartel
Robert Bryce
The Scandal of the V-22: It Kills, It Crashes, But It Won't Die
Rev. William
Alberts
Praying for Peace or Preying on Peace? Time for People of Faith
to Censure Bush
Lee Sustar
Opening a New Movement
John Chuckman
Xenophobia in a Land of Immigrants
Eric Ruder
An Interview with Camilo Meija on the War and Immigrants
Seth Sandronsky
Securing the Homeland for Whom
Ron Jacobs
Neil Young's Call to Arms
Ben Tripp
A Fork in the American Road
Fred Gardner
Forgotten Memories: Personal and Political
Don Monkerud
Corruption Reform in the Age of Abramoff: Not a Roar, But a Whimper
Tommy Stevenson
JazzFest, Tears and the Renewal of New Orleans
Lettrist International
Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris
Contratiempo
Back to the Back of the Yards: the Jungle, 100 Years Later
St. Clair, Vest
and D'Antoni
CounterPunch Playlist: What We're LIstening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Engel, Orloski and Guthrie
Website of the
Weekend
Survival
of the Fattest
April 28, 2006
James Ridgeway
What
You Won't See in Flight 93, the Film
Ramzy Baroud
Hamas'
Impossible Mission
Sarah Knopp
An
Interview with Nativo Lopez on the May Day Protests
William S. Lind
Off
With His Head!: But Rumsfeld's Should Not be the Only One That
Rolls
Werther
Operation
Canned Meat and Its Derivatives
April 27, 2006
Winslow T. Wheeler
How
Much is the War Costing? How Many US Troops are Really in Iraq?
Robert Fisk
The
United States of Israel?
Juan Santos
Immigration
Endgame
Robert Jensen
Why
Leftists Distrust Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Making
America Safer: One Released War Crime Victim at a Time
Jose Pertierra
Honor
and Injustice:the Case of the Cuban Five
April 26,2006
Robin Philpot
The
Rich Life of Jane Jacobs
Sherry Wolf
Democrats,
Their Apologists and Abortion: the Jig is Up
Pratyush Chandra
Nepal:
a Saga of Compromise and Struggle
Joshua Frank
Zig-Zagging
Through the War With John Kerry
Gary
Leupp
The Neo-Cons and Iran: No Negotiations
Bill
Quigley
Katrina: Eight Months Later
April
25, 2006
Gary
Leupp
Wilkinson Speaks Out About the Coming
War on Iran
Paul
Craig Roberts
The World is Uniting Against the Bush Imperium
Linda
S. Heard
Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?: the Prophecy of Oded Yinon
Ralph
Nader
Political Science: Gingrich, "Futurism" and the Abolition
of the OTA
Mike
Whitney
Preparing for the Economic Typhoon
Michael
Donnelly
Lutherans Betray Michigan's Loon Lake Wetlands for Pieces of
Silver
Sharon
Smith
Breathing New Life Into May Day
Website
of the Day
SDS Ver. 2
April
24, 2006
Tim
Wise
What Kind of Card is Race?
John
Stanton
Strike Iran, Watch Pakistan and Turkey Fall
Dave
Lindorff
Dangerous Times Ahead
Steve
Shore
Berlusconi Defeated: The Long Wait is Over ... Or Is It?
Amadou
Deme
Hotel Rwanda: Setting the Record Straight
Mickey
Z.
15 Minutes of Radical Fame: America Meets Bill Blum and Ward
Churchill
Ralph Nader
Lee
Raymond's Unconscionable Platinum Parachute
Alexander
Cockburn
Obama's Game
Website
of the Day
Too Stupid to Be President?
June
7, 2006
The Case of the
Missing $21 Billion
Who's
Following the Iraq Money?
By DAVE LINDORFF
D uring the days of the Nixon Watergate
scandal investigation, reporter Bob Woodword was famously advised
by his mysterious source, Deep Throat, to "follow the money"
as a way of cracking the story.
Well, there is a lot of money
to follow in the current scandal that can be best described as
the Bush/Cheney administration, and so far, nobody's doing it.
My bet for the place that needs
the most following is the more than $9 billion that has gone
missing without a trace in Iraq--as well as $12 billion in cash
that the Pentagon flew into Iraq straight from Federal Reserve
vaults via military transports, and for which there has been
little or no accounting.
When word of the missing money
first surfaced in 2004, Congress passed legislation creating
an office of Special Inspector General, assuming that this new
agency would root out the problem and figure why all that taxpayer
money had disappeared, and why only minimal reconstruction was
going on in destroyed Iraq, instead of a massive rebuilding program
as intended.
The new inspector general,
an affable attorney named Stuart Bowen, went to work and came
up with a report in early 2006 that sounded scathing enough.
Bowen found cases of double billing by contractors, of payments
for work that was never done, and other scandals. But he never
came up with more than $1 billion or so worth of problems.
Now we know why.
It turns out that Bowen was
never really looking very hard.
When the Boston Globe, this
past April, broke the story that President Bush has been quietly
setting aside over 750 acts passed by Congress, claiming he has
the authority as "unitary executive" and as commander
in chief to ignore such laws, it turned out that one of the laws
the president chose to ignore was the one establishing the special
inspector general post for Iraq. What the president did was
write a so-called "signing statement" on the side (unpublicized
of course), saying that the new inspector general would have
no authority to investigate any contracts or corruption issues
involving the Pentagon.
Well, since most of the missing
money has been going to the military in Iraq, that pretty much
meant nothing of consequence would be discovered by the inspector
general.
You might think that the inspector
general himself would have complained about such a restriction
on his authority to do the job that Congress had intended, but
Bush took care of that. In his role as Chief Executive, he appointed
Bowen to the post, a man who has a long history of working as
a loyal manservant to the president. Bowen was a deputy general
counsel for Governor Bush (meaning he was an assistant to the
ever solicitous solicitor Alberto Gonzales). He did yeoman service
to Bush as a member of the term that handled the famous vote
count atrocity in Florida in the November 2000 election, and
then worked under Gonzales again in the White House during Bush's
first term, before returning briefly to private practice.
Bowen simply never mentioned
to anyone that, courtesy of a secretive and unconstitutional
order from the president, he was not doing the job that Congress
had intended.
The deception was far-reaching.
When Thomas Gimble, the acting inspector general of the Pentagon,
was asked in 2005 during a congressional hearing by Christopher
Shays (R-CT), chair of the House government reform subcommittee,
why the Pentagon had no audit team in Iraq to look for fraud,
Gimble facilely replied that such a team was "not needed"
because Congress had set up the special inspector general unit
to do that. He didn't mention that the president had barred the
special inspector general from investigating Pentagon scandals.
This would all be pretty funny
except for two things.
First of all, Americans and
Iraqis are dying in droves because of the chaos that the U.S.
invasion and occupation have created in Iraq-a problem that that
$9 billion in missing Congressionally-allocated funds, and the
bales of US dollars, were supposed to have solved.
Second, and I admit this is
pretty speculative on my part, money being like water, it tends
to flow to the lowest level, which, from a moral and ethical
standpoint, would be the Bush/Cheney administration and the Republican
Party machine that put them, and the do-nothing Congress that
covers up for them, into office.
My guess is that a fair piece
of those many billions of dollars is sloshing around back in
the U.S. paying for things like Republican Party electoral dirty
tricks, vote theft, bribing of Democratic members of Congress,
and god knows what else.
If this seems far-fetched to
anyone, remember that this administration has included a number
of people who were linked to the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal,
when the creative-and criminal-idea was conceived of secretly
selling Pentagon stocks of shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft
missiles to Iran, and using the proceeds to secretly fund the
U.S.-trained and organized Contra fighters who were fighting
to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (Congress had
inconveniently banned any U.S. aid to the Contras).
It seems to me inconceivable
that this corrupt and obsessively power-mad administration would
have passed up an opportunity to get its hands on some of the
easy money flowing into Iraq over the course of the last three
years.
Given all this, it seems almost
unfathomable that Democratic Party leaders would be insisting,
as have Rep. Nancy Pelosi (R-CA) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV),
Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, that there would
be no impeachment hearings in Congress if Democrats were to succeed
in winning back Congress this November.
What better way to follow that
money than an impeachment hearing into why the president unconstitutionally
subverted the intent of Congress in establishing an office of
special inspector general for corruption in Iraq?
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal . His new
book of CounterPunch columns titled "This
Can't be Happening! " is published by Common Courage
Press. Lindorff's new book is "The
Case for Impeachment ",
co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
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