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Today's Stories February 8, 2007 John V. Walsh February 7, 2007 Daniel Wolff Tao Ruspoli Tony Swindell Sharon Smith Ken Couesbouc Jeff Cohen Col. Dan Smith Tom Kerr Joshua Frank Adam Elkus Stephen Fleischman Website of
the Day
February 6, 2007 Diana Johnstone Gregory Wilpert Norman Solomon Dave Lindorff William Blum Mike Ferner CP News Service Evelyn Pringle Christopher Brauchli Alan Cabal Website of the Day
Dave Zirin Uri Avnery Ron Jacobs Paul Craig Roberts Newton Garver Bruce Anderson Saul Landau Ralph Nader James T. Phillips Mike Whitney Kenneth Rexroth Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Tao Ruspoli Jeffrey St.
Clair Patrick Cockburn P. Sainath Sen. Russell Feingold Diane Christian Brian Cloughley Diana Barahona Timothy J. Freeman Conn Hallinan John Ross Greg Moses Missy Beattie Joshua Frank Evelyn Pringle Stephen Fleischman Muhammad Idrees Ahmad Poets' Basement Website of the Day
Chris Kutalik R. Gibson /
E. W. Ross Pam Martens John Feffer Daryll E. Ray Ronald Bruce
St. John Mitchel Cohen Website of
the Day
Diane Farsetta Marjorie Cohn Mark Scaramella Ranni Amiri Christopher Ketcham Winston Warfield Corporate Crime Reporter Thomas P. Healy Website of the Dau
January 31, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Jean Bricmont Tao Ruspoli James T. Phillips William Johnson Tim Wilkinson Evelyn Pringle Joshua Frank Ramzy Baroud Mickey Z. Website of the Day
Werther Kathy Kelly Uri Avnery Franklin Spinney William S. Lind Pariah Mike Whitney Rev. William
E. Alberts Fran Shor Anthony Arnove Website of the Day
Nurit Peled-Elhanan Patrick Cockburn JoAnn Wypijewski Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Reza Fiyouzat Pat Williams Website of the Day
January 27 / 28, 2007 Diana Johnstone Eliza Ernshire Patrick Cockburn David Rosen Greg Moses Bernard Chazelle Tao Ruspoli Hermán
Uribe Ralph Nader Paul Craig
Roberts Fred Gardner Brian Cloughley James Abourezk John V. Whitbeck Seth Sandronsky Alan Cabal Pam Martens Website of
the Weekend
Charlotte Laws Mike Ely /
Linda Flores Joe DeRaymond Phil Donahue Zia Mian Jeb Sprague Evelyn Pringle Missy Beattie Martha Rosenberg Website of
the Day
Patrick Cockburn John Ross Jeremy Scahill Frida Berrigan Paul Craig Roberts Jason Yossef
Ben-Meir Christopher Brauchli Holger W. Henke Dave Lindorff Julia Landau Website of the Day
January 24, 2007 Tao Ruspoli Paul Craig
Roberts Lt. Gen. William Odom Sharon Smith Brian M. Downing Heather Gray Ron Jacobs James Brooks Robert Day Website of
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Trish Schuh Robert Bryce
Stephen Soldz John Blair Gloria La Riva Joshua Frank Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Uri Avnery Website of the Day
January 22, 2007 Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Jen Marlowe George McGovern Paul Craig
Roberts Norman Solomon Amira Hass Mike Whitney Ramzy Baroud John Walsh Website of
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January 20/21 2007 Alexander Cockburn
Gail Dines
Newton Garver
Gilad Atzmon
Seth Sandronksy
Raphaelle Bail
Jim Goodman Larry Portis
Website of
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Jonathan Cook
Glen Ford Dave Lindorff
Larry Portis
Website of
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William Peace
Virginia Tilley
Michael Donnelly
B.R. Gowani
Larry Portis
Jason Hribal
Website of
the Day
Franklin Spinney John Ross Susan George Paul Craig
Roberts Joshua Frank David Lindorff
Col. Sam Gardiner
Marjorie Cohn
Saul Landau
Ron Jacobs
Susan Block Ken Couesbouck Website of
the Day
Roger Morris Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly William Blum Ralph Nader Saul Landau January 12 / 14, 2007 Patrick Cockburn David Rosen William S.
Lind Laith al-Saud Paul Craig
Roberts John Ross George Ciccariello-Maher Christopher Brauchli Robert Buzzanco Evelyn Pringle Peter Rost,
MD. Mike Whitney Yifat Susskind Saul Cohen Missy Beattie Stephen Lendman Website of
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January 11, 2007 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Dave Lindorff Jeff Leys Richard W.
Behan Col. Douglas MacGregor Website of
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Peter Linebaugh Robert Fantina Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Ben Tripp Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Mike Ferner Dave Zirin Website of
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R. T. Naylor Jonathan Cook Mike Ely and Linda Flores Joshua Frank Norman Solomon Sen. Russell
Feingold Joe Allen James T. Phillips Brian Concannon Leonard Peltier Website of the Day
January 8, 2007 Werther Jeff Leys Paul Craig Roberts Shulamit Aloni Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor Seth Sandronsky Dr. Susan Block Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Franklin C.
Spinney Paul Craig
Roberts Ralph Nader Walden Bello Marleen Martin Brian Cloughley Uri Avnery Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Joseph Nevins William S. Lind Gary Leupp Elisa Salasin George Ciccariello-Maher Beyond Chavistas and Anti-Chavistas: Deepening the Bolivarian Revolution Stefan Wray Michael Leonardi Richard Rhames Jeffrey St. Clair Barbara LaMorticella Website of the Weekend Song of the
Weekend
Jorge Mariscal John Walsh Christopher Brauchli Travis Sharpe Tom Barry Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese Tiffany Ten Eyck Mahmoud El-Yousseph Lucinda Marshall Website of
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Patrick Cockburn Winslow T.
Wheeler M. Shahid Alam Raed Jarrar Bert Sacks Kathy Rentenbach Stephen Fleischman George Bisharat Peter Rost, MD Evelyn Pringle Website of the Day
January 3, 2007 Kathy Kelly Paul Craig
Roberts William Johnson Stan Cox Trita Parsi Declan McKenna Joe Bageant Nicola Nasser Missy Beattie Website of
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Michael Watts Amina Mire James Brooks Alevtina Rea Al Krebs Peter Rost Niranjan Ramakrishnan John Stanton Website of the Day
January 1, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Uri Avnery Joshua Frank
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February 8, 2007 When Common Sense is NonsenseCountdown for IranBy RAMZY BAROUD The relationship between Iran and the United States is one of peculiar temperament: intense but accommodating at times, barefaced and seemingly self-destructive at others. Currently, the latter estimation rings truer: the US naval military build up in the east Mediterranean and the Gulf, conjoined with an intense and sinister propaganda campaign that is being drummed up at home, among other signals, are all pointing to one ill-fated conclusion: the Bush administration, entranced in its foolishness, has decided to discard, and in its entirety, the Baker-Hamilton recommendations; instead of engaging Iran politically, the US is opting to engage it militarily. Is it possible that the increasingly prevailing analyses are true, as fluently communicated in a recent commentary by Australian journalist John Pilger, that the Bush administration is gearing up for an attack against Iran as a way of "buying time for its disaster in Iraq"? Pilger suggests another motivating factor for Bush's new possible war: "As the American disaster in Iraq deepens and domestic and foreign opposition grows, neocon fanatics such as Vice-President Cheney believe their opportunity to control Iran's oil will pass unless they act no later than the spring." But how can attacking Iran buy the 'Bushites' time, if they, more than any one of us know the deeply entrenched Iranian presence and influence in Iraq, often directly over prominent elements of the pro-American Shia government: one of whom is the indestructible Abdel Aziz Al Hakim? "Al Hakim spent 20 years in Iran prior to the fall of Saddam and is clearly allied to the Mullahs," writers US commentator Mike Whitney. "His militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained by the Iranian Republican Guards (as well as the CIA) and is perhaps the most feared death squad in all of Iraq. Al Hakim's militia operates out of the Iraqi interior ministry and is deeply engaged in the purging of Sunnis from Baghdad." Isn't it rational to envisage that an attack on Iran would upset the cozy relations that the Americans have cultivated with al-Hakim and such disreputable characters, thus lead to further destabilisation of Iraq, to more of the same unmitigated violence, where well over 3,000 US soldiers, nearly 1,000 contractors have met their doom, not counting the 45 thousand who were evacuated due to injuries and other medical emergencies, as indicated by Iraqbodycount.org? US sources claim that innumerable Iraqis receive their salaries from Tehran (that is aside from the alleged 40,000 Iranian agents in Iraq, which the US media ceaselessly talks about), an indication of Iran's incessant efforts to obtain the loyalty of many of Iraq's Shia, and to dig into such valuable human reserves whenever needed, such as in the case of a war with the United States. Considering Iran's "natural affinity with the Shia majority of Iraq", as accurately depicted by Pilger, by provoking a military showdown with Iran, the US is condemned to broaden its military confrontation in Iraq, which would then include Shia as well as Sunni, in a most imprudent barter to achieve an impossible military mission in Iran. Since airpower and commando style 'surgical' operations inside Iranian territories -- that would most likely involve some Israeli special army units -- are all that the US can conjure up at the moment, for ground troops are no longer a palpable option (half of the recently announced US military surge of 21,000 troops in Iraq will constitute from the same soldiers who are already serving in the country, simply by prolonging their tours and cancelling some vacations) one can safely conclude that any US military adventure in Iran will bring an indecisive outcome, at best, if not a wholesale disaster, a most likely possibility. How about the other suggestion, that neocon fanatics believe their opportunity to control Iran's oil will pass unless they act no later than the spring? This suggestion would also seem doubtful, for the neocon's war architects are still scrambling to avoid the blame of the Iraq fiasco and are at odds with Bush himself and his war generals, using their wide sway over US mainstream media to blame the president for all the ills that have befallen the country -- ills that were born mostly from their own ominous war stratagems and their unwarranted commitment to Israel's security at the expense of their country's own. How can such a group of intellectuals still effectively hold sufficient clout to lead the US into another ill-advised war? Moreover, how can Cheney and his discredited ilk even contemplate the seizure of Iran's oil if Iraq's oil industry is still in shambles and has proven ineffective to settle the heavy bill of war, which is moving its way toward the half trillion dollar mark? Considering these difficult questions, one must assume that any attack on Iraq is both irrational from a military viewpoint and self-defeating from a political one. However, the quandary with any political analysis of this subject that consults reason or even Machiavellian realpolitik is that it fails to consider history, and in this case, recent history which taught us that the Bush administration functions in a vacuum, separate from commonsense or any other kind of sense. It was around this time, some four years ago, that many hoped that the American military buildup in the Gulf region was aimed at strengthening the US political position against Iraq, to simply convey to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the US 'means business'. It was clear from the outset to any even-headed observer that a war against Iraq would destabilise the region and harm the United States' overall interests in the Middle East. I stated that numerous times on American radio programmes, receiving all sorts of censure for being anti-American and unpatriotic. Now, we stand at the same critical junction, four years later, as US news networks are readying for another awesome fireworks show, this time over Tehran; dehumanisation of the Iranians has already begun; the public is being fed with all kinds of half-truths and all sorts of rubbish about the Islamic Republic and its people; insanity has returned and the voices of reasons are again, labelled, shunned and marginalised. But for obvious reasons, this time around, war is an evident mistake, a fact that should irk and make every sensible American, every Congressman, every commentator question the wisdom of a new war while the country is on the verge of defeat in another. Such a reality suggests that the Bush administration is working against the interests of his own people and makes Pilger's analysis the more poignant; indeed, as irrational as it may seem, the US could very much be on its way to war with Iran. But as explained by Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998-2005, "getting into Iraq and defeating Saddam was easy. But today, America is stuck there and knows neither how to win, nor how to get out." Fischer writes: "A mistake is not corrected by repeating it over and over again. Perseverance in error does not correct the error; it merely exacerbates it." But this is exactly the key trait that has defined the current Bush administration since its early years in office. It's committed to duplicating failures; instead of abandoning the Iraqi ship, it insists on setting sale in the same tumultuous sea, another defected one. Indeed, the US is again back on the same self-destruct mode, in the name of national security, regional stability, staying the course, and all the rest. Reality cannot be any further from the truth, however. A war against Iran will further exasperate the instability of the region and compromise the security of the United States, at home and abroad. It might also be the end of American military adventurism in the region for some time, but at a price so heavy, so unbearable. If Iraq's cakewalk has cost the lives of 650,000 Iraqis, how many more must die in broader war before Bush bows to commonsense and brings the grinding wheel of war to a halt? Ramzy Baroud teaches mass communication at Curtin
University of Technology and is the author of The
Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle.
He is also the editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com. He
can be contacted at: editor@palestinechronicle.com
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