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Today's
Stories
January
27 / 28, 2007
Ralph Nader
Democracy
in Crisis
January
26, 2007
Charlotte Laws
Are
You the Terrorist Next Door?: AETA and the New Green Scare
Mike Ely /
Linda Flores
The
Workers at Smithfield
Joe DeRaymond
Paying
for Health Care and Not Getting It
Phil Donahue
Get Sarah Olson!
Zia Mian
The Three US Armies in Iraq: Grunts, Contractors and Laborers
Jeb Sprague
Haiti Struggles to Defend Justice
Evelyn Pringle
Eli Lilly, the Habitual Offender
Missy Beattie
Inside the Criminal Mind of George Bush: He Thinks; Therefore,
It is So
Martha Rosenberg
Cloned Food: From Designer Hens to the Transgenic Omega-3 Pig
Website of
the Day
Save Grand Canyon from Glen Canyon Dam!
January 25, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
What's
Really Going on in Baghdad
John Ross
Mexico
Under Calderon: Fake Left, Rule Right
Jeremy Scahill
Our Mercenaries: Blackwater, Inc and the Privatization of Bush's
War Machine
Frida Berrigan
"Hearts Ruptured with Sadness:" Protesting Gitmo
Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's State of Deception
Jason Yossef
Ben-Meir
Iraq Reconstruction Failure
Christopher Brauchli
Why Bush is Arming Fatah: When in Doubt, Start Another Civil
War
Holger W. Henke
Cuba at the Crossroads?
Dave Lindorff
Falling Dominos and Failing Presidencies
Julia Landau
From Your Young Cousin
Website of the Day
The Mighty Edwards Sisters
January
24, 2007
Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews:
a Filmed Interview with Jeffrey St. Clair
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Empire Turns Its Guns on the Citizenry
Lt. Gen. William Odom
What Can be Done in Iraq?
Sharon Smith
Health Care Reform for the Insurance Industry
Brian M. Downing
Two Americas: the Grunts and the War Profiteers
Heather Gray
Surviving War
Ron Jacobs
SOTUS Quo
James Brooks
Out of Europe, Out of Time
Robert Day
Translating Snow
Website of
the Day
Defend Sarah Olsen
January 23, 2007
Trish Schuh
Lebanon
on the Brink of Civil War, Again
Robert Bryce
The
Politics of Cheap Oil
Stephen Soldz
Aliens in an Alien Land
John Blair
King Coal's Latest Con Job: Clean Coal is Not Clean
Gloria La Riva
Miami: a Place of Refuge for Anti-Castro Terrorists
Joshua Frank
Turning Silence into Gold: Hillary and Israel Lobby
Patrick Cockburn
In Iraq, All Foreigners are Targets
Ralph Nader
Questions for Bush on Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Pelosi and Iraq: Blunder or Treason?
Uri Avnery
Israel and Apartheid
Website of the Day
Down By the River
January
22, 2007
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
China's
New Chip in Space War Poker
Jen Marlowe
Trapped
in Darfur: the Ordeal of Suleiman Jamous
George McGovern
War of the Belligerent Professors: Get Out of Iraq
Paul Craig
Roberts
Only Impeachment Can Save Us from More War
Norman Solomon
The Pentagon vs. Press Freedom
Amira Hass
Life Under Prohibition in Palestine
Mike Whitney
A Fool's Errand in Baghdad
Ramzy Baroud
The Things We Take for Granted
John Walsh
Support Jimmy Carter in Boston!
Website of
the Day
The Hagelian Dialectic
January
20/21 2007
Alexander Cockburn
First
Bomb Carter; Then Nuke Iran!
Gail Dines
I
Was Ambushed by Paula Zahn
Newton Garver
Evo
Morales' First Year
Gilad Atzmon
100
Years of Jewish Solitude
Seth Sandronksy
New
Push For Social Security "Reform"
Raphaelle Bail
Where
Nicaraguans Go to Work
Jim Goodman
Round
Up the Usual Experts: Make Them Live on a Dollar a Day
Larry Portis
Chouraki's
Oh Jerusalem
Website of
the Weekend
Press
Poodles Play it Safe
January
19, 2007
Jonathan Cook
Jimmy
Carter Doesn't Tell the Half of It
Glen Ford
Barack
Obama: The Mania and the Mirage
Dave Lindorff
Bush
Blinks on Illegal Spying - Don't let him off the hook
Larry Portis
Zionism
in the Cinema: Part Two
Website of
the Day
For
Whistleblowers
January
18, 2007
William Peace
Protest
From a Bad Cripple
Virginia Tilley
The
Steady March to War on Iran: What It Would Take to Stop It
Michael Donnelly
The
Real Reason I Can't Stand Obama
B.R. Gowani
Democracy:
Everywhere and Nowhere
Larry Portis
Zionism
in the Cinema: Part One
Jason Hribal
A
Horse is Worth More than Riches
Website of
the Day
Baghdad
Clampdown
January 17, 2007
Franklin Spinney
Why
Time is not on Bush's Side
John Ross
Oaxaca's
Rising: Vibrant as the Paint on the Walls
Susan George
Can
World Trade Ever Be Fair? Back to Keynes!
Paul Craig
Roberts
Attacking
Iran: What's In It For Bush
Joshua Frank
Obama
and the Middle East
David Lindorff
Towards
Oil at $200 a Barrel
January 16, 2007
Col. Sam Gardiner
Escalation
Against Iran
Marjorie Cohn
Stimson's
Outrageous Threat
Saul Landau
Gore
Vidal in Havana: Part 2
Ron Jacobs
Welcome
Back to 1965
Susan Block
From
Snowjob to Blowjob
Ken Couesbouck
Year
of the Pig
Website of
the Day
Amazon's
Hit on Jimmy Carter
January 15, 2007
Roger Morris
Another
War the Voters Hoped to End
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush
Must Go
Kathy Kelly
Umm
Heyder's Story
William Blum
The
Anti-Empire Report
Ralph Nader
The
Class War's New Map
Saul Landau
Gore
Vidal In Havana
January 12
/ 14, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
"21,500
More Troops": Will America Ever Leave Iraq?
David Rosen
Bush's Domestic Sex Policy: the Teen Abstinence-Only Crusade
William S.
Lind
Less Than Zero
Laith al-Saud
The
Ironies of Bush and Iraq
Paul Craig
Roberts
Surge and Mirrors: What Bush Really Said
John Ross
Celebrating the "Sum of the World" in Chiapas
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Case of Venezuela's RCTV: Not About Free Speech
Christopher Brauchli
How to Avoid an IRS Audit: Become a Millionaire!
Robert Buzzanco
Rogue State, Redux
Evelyn Pringle
The Secrets in Eli Lilly's Cabinet
Peter Rost,
MD.
Promises, Promises: Playing Politics with Drug Reimportation
Mike Whitney
Baghdad Crackdown
Yifat Susskind
Beyond the Surge: Demanding an End to Bush's Wars
Saul Cohen
Latin America's Real Mr. Danger: Negroponte's Latest Gig
Missy Beattie
A Day of Action and Questions
Stephen Lendman
Holiday Hypocrisy
Website of
the Weekend
Bruegel on Bush War Plan
January 11,
2007
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The
Profits of Escalation
Paul Craig
Roberts
Carter's Inconvenient Truths
Kathy Kelly
Refugee Dreams
Dave Lindorff
Blood for Face
Jeff Leys
The War Widens
Richard W.
Behan
Barrels and Bodies
Col. Douglas MacGregor
Surging Right Into Al-Sadr's Hands
Website of
the Day
An Explanation from Google
Speech of the Day
Is There Even One Politician Alive Who Could Give This Speech?
January 10, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
Walk in Oaxaca
Robert Fantina
Punishing
Deserters: Prosecution or Persecution?
Patrick Cockburn
Why Troop Escalation Won't Bring Peace to Iraq
Paul Craig Roberts
Distracting Congress: Troop Escalation and Iran
Col. Dan Smith
Why U.S. Policy is Failing
Ben Tripp
The Politics of Bad Karma
Evelyn Pringle
How the FDA Protects Big Pharma
Ron Jacobs
Coalition of the Lunatics: Trying to Create the Next World War
Mike Ferner
If Not Now, When?
Dave Zirin
Judgment of the Juiced: Why McGwire Wasn't Elected to the Hall
of Fame
Website of
the Day
Revolting Students!
Bootleg of the Day
Bob
Dylan: Live at Scotia Bank Place
January 9, 2007
R. T. Naylor
The
Somalian Labyrinth
Jonathan Cook
Israel's
Purging of Palestinian Christians
Mike Ely and Linda Flores
The Smithfield Strikers: No Longer
Hidden, No Longer Hiding
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: More Bellicose Than Bush
Norman Solomon
The Headless Horseman of the Apocalypse
Sen. Russell
Feingold
An Open Letter to President Bush: So Now You Want to Snoop Through
Our Mail?
Joe Allen
Justice for the Omaha Two: Black Power, Racism and COINTELPRO
in the Heartland
James T. Phillips
"Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'Intrate": The Hell
That is Iraq
Brian Concannon
Resolutions for Haiti
Leonard Peltier
When the Truth Doesn't Matter: 30 Years of FBI Harassment and
Misconduct
Website of the Day
Kick Out the Jams, MFers!: Meet the New RRC
January 8,
2007
Werther
Why
We Fight
Jeff Leys
The Occupation Project: a Campaign of Civil Disobedience to End
Iraq War Funding
Paul Craig Roberts
Nuking Iran
Shulamit Aloni
Israeli Apartheid: Sorry, This Road is For Jews Only
Dave Lindorff
The Party of Invertebrates Reverts to Form
Sunsara Taylor
The Democrats' First Day: Same As It Ever Was
Seth Sandronsky
Syndicated Error: George Will and the Minimum Wage
Dr. Susan Block
Baghdad Cockfight Ends in Snuff Film
Website of the Day
Watch CounterPuncher Sunsara Taylor Take on Bill O'Reilly!
January 6 / 7, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
The
War and the NYT
Franklin C.
Spinney
Stalingrad
on the Tigris
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Urge to Surge
Ralph Nader
Democrats in the Spotlight
Walden Bello
Globalization in Retreat?
Marleen Martin
The Needle and the Damage Done: Tortured in the Death Chamber
Brian Cloughley
We Do What We Like: Return Our Rapist or Else ...
Uri Avnery
The Kiss of Death
Saul Landau
Fidel Castro in the Fields
Ron Jacobs
From Cointelpro to the Patriot Act: a Legacy of Torture
Joseph Nevins
Crimes Against Humanity from Ford to Saddam
William S. Lind
A State Restored? Somalia and 4GW
Gary Leupp
Attention John Conyers: Impeach the President!
Elisa Salasin
Bringing Life to Numbers
George Ciccariello-Maher
Beyond
Chavistas and Anti-Chavistas: Deepening the Bolivarian Revolution
Stefan Wray
Confronting Recruiters: the Story of the Bush Street Raiders
Michael Leonardi
Toward an International Moratorium: Italy's Crusade Against the
Death Penalty
Richard Rhames
Reality TV: Triumph of the Thugs
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Barbara LaMorticella
Two Poems
Website of the Weekend
FBI Witch Hunts
Song of the
Weekend
End Times: a Soundtrack
January 5, 2007
Jorge Mariscal
Growing
the Military: Who Will Serve?
John Walsh
Clash of the Elites: Beltway Insiders vs. Neo-Cons!
Christopher Brauchli
The Great Relaxer: Bush and Federal Regulations
Travis Sharpe
No More New Nukes, Please
Tom Barry
Hawk for Hire: Roger Noriega's New Gig
Linda Schade
/ Kevin Zeese
Americans Voted for Peace: Has the New Congress Already Let Them
Down?
Tiffany Ten Eyck
Workers' Centers and Unions: a New Alliance
Mahmoud El-Yousseph
A Challenge to Pelosi
Lucinda Marshall
3003 Funerals: "And They're Still Burying Ford!"
Website of
the Day
Van the Man: Warm Love
January 4, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
The
Martyrdom of Saddam Hussein
Winslow T.
Wheeler
A Guide to Earmarks: Will the Democrats' Reforms Do Anything
to Curb Pork Barrel Spending?
M. Shahid Alam
Has Regime Change Boomeranged?
Raed Jarrar
So This is Plan B? The US Attack on Saleh Al-Mutlaq's Headquarters
Bert Sacks
Can the US Legally Kill Iraqi Children?: a Challenge to the Supreme
Court
Kathy Rentenbach
Report from Oaxaca
Stephen Fleischman
The Rain of Riches: Bonuses, Then and Now
George Bisharat
Carter's Truths
Peter Rost, MD
Hail the Hangman, Jail the Cameraman!
Evelyn Pringle
Can Eli Lilly be Held Criminally Liable for Zyprexa?
Website of the Day
Courage to Resist
January 3,
2007
Kathy Kelly
Wrapped
Around a Bullet
Paul Craig
Roberts
His Last Hurrah: Bush Cuts and Runs from Reason
William Johnson
No Worker is Illegal: SEIU Members Push Their Union to Change
Its Policy on Immigration
Stan Cox
Under a Brown Cloud: Money vs. the Monsoon
Trita Parsi
A Lose-Lose Situation with Iran
Declan McKenna
Ireland's Slavish Hostility Toward Cuba
Joe Bageant
Dispatch from the Chinese Landfill
Nicola Nasser
Somalia: New Hotbed of Anti-Americanism
Missy Beattie
Dead Wrong
Website of
the Day
Pharmed Out
January 2, 2007
Michael Watts
Oil
Inferno
Amina Mire
Return of the Warlords: Death and Destruction for Somalis
James Brooks
Pushing the Wedge in Palestine
Alevtina Rea
The Tyrant is Dead! Long Live ... ?
Al Krebs
Global Food Security: a Call to Action
Peter Rost
Invitation to a Hanging: the Saddam Hussein Execution Video
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
A Deadly December
John Stanton
Appetites for Destruction
Website of the Day
Out Now: Petition
January 1,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Iron
Man, Tin God: the Meaning of Saddam Hussein
Uri Avnery
What
Makes Sammy Run?
Joshua Frank
Eliot Spitzer's Constitutional Hang Up: Architect of New York's
Patriot Act
December 30
/ 31, 2006
Weekend Edition
Alexander Cockburn
2006,
Hard to Call It Vintage, But 2007 Could Finally Be Bobby Byrd's
Year
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq
2006: a Nation Soaked in Blood Tears Itself Apart
Paul Wolf
Dying for Our Sins: A Lawyer for Saddam Describes How His Execution
on the First of Eid May Transform Him Into a Martyr
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
Executing
Saddam, Protecting the Rackets
Tariq Ali
Saddam
at the End of a Rope
Paul Craig Roberts
The New Dark Age: Official Lies, Dogma and Unaccountable Power
Douglas Valentine
At the End of My Rope: Hanging With Saddam
Brian M. Downing
The New Iraq Policy: Escalation
Michael Donnelly
Injustice in Black and White: the Duke Non-Rape Case
Stephen Lendman
Did Sharon Order the Assassination of Arafat? The Revelations
of Uri Dan
Fred Gardner
Comes Now the Ghost of "Decrim:" Nixon and Marijuana
Bailly / Caudron / Lambert
Who Owns Ikea?: the Opaque Legacy of Ingvar Kamprad
Ralph Nader
The Prospects for Progressive Politics
Nick Dearden
The War on Terror Hits Africa
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
The Third Degree: an Interview with AC Thompson on the Origins
of the CIA's Secret Rendition Flights
Missy Beattie
In Harm's Way: How Our National Coward Describes War
Ron Jacobs
Sigh of the Oppressed: Religion and Politics
Dan La Botz
Defend Illegal Immigrants: Help Them! Harbor Them!
Andrew Wimmer
An Act of Contrition: the Peace Movement in 2007
Dr. Carol Wolman, MD
Psychiatrist: Impeach Bush for Good of Country
Martha Rosenberg
New Year's Resolutions for Big Pharma
Dick J. Reavis
News Before It Happens: Bush's 2007 MLK Day Speech
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Listening to James Brown and His Followers
Poets' Basement
Grima, Curtis, Davies, Orloski and Engel
Website of
the Weekend
Charlie Fowler's Photolog: a Life at Altitude
Music Video of the Weekend
"We're Winning the War on Drugs!"
December 29, 2006
Bill Quigley
A
Tale of Two Sisters: Why is HUD Spending Tens of Millions in
Katrina Money to Bulldoze 4,534 Public Housing Apartments in
New Orleans?
Norman Finkelstein
The Dershowitz Treatment
John Borowski
Curb Your Environmentalism: Laurie David and Me
Abid Mustafa
The Re-Talibanization of Afghanistan
Greg Moses
World Responds to Palestinian Family's Jailing Despite Media
Blackout
Uri Cohen
Stand Up for Herod: a Seasonal Story of Ancient Palestine
Bailly / Caudron
/ Lambert
The
Secrets in Ikea's Closet
Website of
the Day
Justice for New Orleans
December 28,
2006
Norman Finkelstein
The
Ludicrous Attacks on Jimmy Carter's Book
Anthony Cowell
Highway Robbery: Privatizing New Jersey's Toll Roads
John Ross
Gateway to the Next Mexican Revolution?
Hilaria Cruz
I'm Going to Stay Right Here: Story of a Oaxacan Prisoner
Greg Moses
Palestinian Immigrant Jailings in Texas
Brittany Bond
The Blood Trail of Luis Posada Carriles, Washington's Preferred
Terrorist
Website of
the Day
Godfather of Soul and Father of Funk
December 27,
2006
Alexander Cockburn
Farewell
to Our Greatest President: Adieu, Gerald Ford
Faruq Ziada
Is
There a Sunni Majority in Iraq?
Christopher Brauchli
Burning EPA's Books: What They Don't Want You to Read Might Save
Your Life
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Journey to Vietnam: Dare We Not Say Genocide?
Nikolas Kozloff
Saving
Caracas
Mark Schneider
Why Hope? Reasons for Optimism
December 26, 2006
Peter Stone
Brown
James
Brown: Please Don't Go
Tito Tricot
Chile: the Ghosts of Torture
Gary Leupp
Cowboys Differ on Iran Attack: Cheney/Bush vs. the Baker Commission
John V. Walsh
Dershowitz vs. Carter in Beantown: Peace Movement AWOL, Again
Reza Fiyouzat
Red Christmas: Why Santa Was Hot in China This Year
Ron Jacobs
The Golem: a Conversation with Marc Estrin
Website of
the Day
JB:
Prisoner of Love
December 25, 2006
Saul Landau
A
Jeep Trip with Fidel
Lang / McGovern
To
Surge or Not to Surge?
Michael Dickinson
Should Stupid Thoughts Be Crimes?: Deny Santa If You Will, But
...
Website of
the Day
James Brown, RIP
December 23 / 24, 2006
Marjorie Cohn
What's
Going On?
Jeffrey L.
Gould
The Capital of Salvadoran Memory: El Mozote After 25 Years
Diane Christian
The Rape of Iraq
William Loren
Katz
From the Raid on "Fort Negro" to Iraq: Lessons from
the First US Invasion
Greg Moses
This War Can't be Made Right by Winning
M. Shahid Alam
An Islamic Civil War: Chaos by Design?
Fred Gardner
Exposé as Inoculant: HRT, Zyprexa, Lilly and the Press
Dave Lindorff
Crime of the Century
Azmi Bishara
Ways of Denial
Ralph Nader
The BCS: a Monopoly on College Football
Seth Sandronsky
Fiscally Imperiled Social Security?
William Hughes
Cop Assaults Activists at Lockheed Protest
Ron Jacobs
Making Stones Weep
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to on New Year's Eve
December 22,
2006
David Rosen
Bush's
Foreign Sex Policy: Imperialism's Second Front
Christopher
Brauchli
When the Secret is the Question: Secret Prisons, Top Secret Interrogations
John Ross
Flashlights
in the Tunnel of Hate
J.L. Chestnut,
Jr.
Political
Sell-Outs in Black and White
Rahul Mahajan
Dennis Kucinich: Maverick or Stalking Horse?
Arthur Neslen
Provoking Civil War in the Occupied Territories
Peter Rost, MD
The Secrets of His Success: Fired Pfizer CEO Walks Away with
$198 Million
Website of
the Day
10 Ways to Change the World in 2007
December 21, 2006
Rosa Mariam
Elizalde
An
Interview with Gore Vidal: "I am Jealous of Cuba"
Arundhati Roy
Breaking the News
Brian Cloughley
Poppies Rising: Afghanistan's Drug Catastrophe
Daniel White
Jimmy Carter in Austin: Time to Come Clean on the Shoot Down
of That Itavia DC-9
John V. Whitbeck
On Israel's Right to Exist
Sam Smith
Still Smearing Ralph Nader for 2000
Paris Reidhead
GM Ice Cream: Something's Fishy in Your Good Humor Bar
Kevin Wehr
Denying Disaster: Katrina and the Case for Impeachment
Website of the Day
Pesticides and Amphibians: a Vital New Database
December 20, 2006
Gabriel Kolko
Rumsfeld
and the American Way of War
Winslow T.
Wheeler
The Pentagon Measures the Chaos in Iraq
Tariq Ali
The War is Lost
Saree Makdisi
Israel, Apartheid and Jimmy Carter
Bruce Jackson
Saying "Oh!": John Mohawk and the Power to Make Peace
Dave Lindorff
Democrats Walk Into a Bush Trap on Iraq
Leslie Radford
The Winter Harvest of the South Central Farmers
Dave Jansson
Divided We Stand, United We Fall: Secessionists Confront the
Empire
Johnny Barber
Jesus is a Terrorist
Website of
the Day
Is It for Freedom?
December 19, 2006
Alexander Cockburn
Democrats
Prepare to Fund Longer War
Jonathan Cook
End
of the Strongmen
Greg Moses
Globalized Gulag: Palestinian Refugees and Children Held in Hutto,
TX Jail
Sean Penn
Georgie,
There's a Crowd Downstairs
Dave Lindorff
Innocents Abroad: Cracking Down on Gitmo Detainees Despite Overwhelming
Evidence Most Are Not Terrorists
Ralph Nader
Going
Postal
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Pink Tide?
Carlos Villarreal
The
Well is Poisoned: Victory Requires an Immediate Pull-Out
Website of
the Day
Chuck Spinney on the Pentagon
December 18, 2006
Luis J. Rodriguez
En
Lak Ech: Chicanos, Mayans and Mel Gibson
Norman Solomon
Washington Refuses to End the War: Powell, Baker, Hamilton--Thanks
for Nothing!
Uri Avnery
Lebanon: War Without a Plan
Ron Jacobs
More Troops, More Body Bags
Phil Gasper
Afghanistan: Bush's Other War Unravels
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Iran's Elections: The World Isn't Florida and Bush Isn't Its
Supreme Leader
William Blum
The United States of Punishment
Jim Goodman
So What's the Big Deal If Wal-Mart Makes a Mistake?
James Brooks
Talking Surge: Let's Kill Some More Before We Go
Maria C. Khoury
Walking Into the Art World: Designing a Palestinian Academy for
the Arts
Website of the Day
Got Powell
December 16 / 17, 2006
Weekend Edition
Vijay Prashad
A
Perilous Way to Socialism
Saul Landau
Filming Fidel
Anthony Arnove
The US Occupation of Iraq: Act III of a Tragedy of Many Parts
Paul Cantor
The Puppet and the Puppeteer: Pinochet and Kissinger
Annie Nocenti
Baluchistan's Fight: The Khan of Kalat Gathers the Tribes
Nicole Colson
Hard Times on the Killing Floor: Smithfield's Rotten Record
Stephen Gowans
Tehran's Holocaust Conference
Jordan Flaherty
A Catastrophic Failure: Foundations, Nonprofits and the Second
Looting of New Orleans
Fred Gardner
Dustin Costa Faces 15 to Life
P. Sainath
There's No Such Thing as a Free Cow
Seth Sandronsky
The Democrats and Social Security: Watch What the Party Says
and Does
Nadia Hijab
An AIPAC Shot Across Baker's Bow?
Deb Reich
Dear Santa, (Or Someone): Greetings from the Occupied Holy Lands
Susie Day
Cops Shoot Another Rich White Man!
Albert Wan
Why Does It Take 50 Bullets?
Missy Beattie
Will the Next Leader Stand Up? Please!
Martha Rosenberg
Kicking the Wyeth Habit Saves Women's Lives
Lee Ballinger
The Devil's Highway: Clinton, Border Checkpoints and the Deaths
of the Yuma 14
Michael Dickinson
Kingdom of Fear
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Live/Evil: Listening to Miles Davis
Poets' Basement
Davies, Buknatski and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
"I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
December 15,
2006
Eliza Ernshire
Palestinian
"Civil War" and the Israeli Chocolate Ration
Virginia Tilley
What
Are You Going to Do Now, Israel?
Mike Ferner
Roll Call for the Choir: If They Vote for War, Occupy 'Em!
John Ross
Mad Mel's Mayan Apocalypse
Fred Wilhelms
The Flip Side of Ahmet Ertegun: Where Did You Get Those Shoes?
Kevin Zeese
Dennis Kucinich's Strange Mission: Can You Be a Real Anti-War
Candidate in a Pro-War Party?
David Severn
Social Engineering Begins at Home: Jeffrey Skoll, Billionaire
Philantropist
Dave Lindorff
Sen. Tim Johnson Death Watch: Senate Gridlock May Be Best Outcome
Sunsara Taylor
As American as Shopping and Torture
Website of
the Day
June 2, 2004: When Iraq Was There For The Looting
December 14,
2006
Jonathan Cook
The
Recognition Trap
Riz Khan
An Interview with Jimmy Carter
Jason Hribal
Kasatka, the Sea World Orca
Pennick / Gray
The Plight of Black Farmers: Racism in the US Farm Program
Richard Levins
That Embezzled Anti-Castro Money
Pat Williams
The College Crisis: Universal Access, Student Loan Debts and
Pell Grants
Peter Rost, MD
Simply Irresistible: Do Women Prefer Bad Boys?
Website of
the Day
The Sound of Rummy
December 13,
2006
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq
is Beyond Repair
Greg Moses
The Dixie Chicks Come Home to Roost
Elizabeth Schulte
Hungry for the Holidays
Joshua Frank
Death By Coke
Debra Eschmeyer
Corporations Control Your Dinner
Leon Hadar
Baker's Rescue Mission: Too Little, Too Late
Peter Rost, MD
I've Been a Very Bad Boy
Margaret Knapke
Mow bé and Malachi, Presenté!
Reza Fiyouzat
Are Cows Free?
Fred Wilhelms
A Last Minute Appeal: If You Know One of These Musicians Let
Them Know They Are Owed Money--By Friday!
Website of
the Day
The Crimes of Augusto Pinochet
December 12, 2006
Fernando A.
Torres
The
Last Man of the Junta: an Open Letter to Kissinger from One of
Pinochet's Political Prisoners
Paul Craig
Roberts
America's
Injustice System is Criminal
Stephen Soldz
Abusive Interrogations
Uri Avnery
Baker's Cake
William S. Lind
Knocking Opportunity: From Vulcans to Vultures in Iraq
Missy Beattie
Convicted for Our Convictions: Trespassing for Truth at the UN
Dave Lindorff
The 35-Year Long Scream: Torture, Impeachment and a Vietnam Vet's
Tears
George Pyle
Our Perverse Farm Plan: Where Christmas Comes Every Five Years
Norman Solomon
Is the USA the Center of the World?
Website of
the Day
Citizens' War Tribunal
December 11,
2006
Virginia Tilley
Banning
Mandela
Roger Burbach
The Condor Model: the Atrocities of Pinochet and the US
Col. Douglas MacGregor
There's Only One Option Left: Leave!
Fawwas Traboulsi
Lebanon on the Brink
Ron Jacobs
Death of a Pig: Poetic Justice for Pinochet
Gideon Levy
The Cruel Line into Gaza: Elbow to Elbow, Like Cattle
Mary McGrane
Burning Books at Harvard Law
Bernardo Ruiz
The Disappeared of Oaxaca: a Message from One of the Actors in
Apocalypto
Website of the Day
La Cancion de la Unidad
Video of the
Day
Killing
Castro: Congresswoman as Contract Killer?
December 9
/ 10, 2006
Weekend Edition
Alexander Cockburn
Liberal
Consensus for More Troops in Iraq
Sen. Gordon Smith
Out of Iraq: Cut and Run or Cut and Walk
Greg Grandin
Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Mid-Wife of the Neo-Cons
Paul Craig Roberts
How Many More Will Die for Bush's Ego?
Col. Dan Smith
The Vietnamization of Iraq: Inside the Military Training Program
Ralph Nader
The Man from NAM: John Engler's Trail of Destruction
Behrooz Ghamari
The Donkey and the Date: Iran's Upcoming Municipal Elections
Rev. Willliam Alberts
Doing Unto Others: Pastor Haggard and President Bush
James T. Phillips
The James Gang: "Did You Kill Her?"
Bennis / Leaver
A Bi-Partisan Occupation
Dave Lindorff
A Congress of Hucksters and Pipsqueaks
Nikolas Kozloff
Robert Gates and Venezuela: Another Saber Rattler in Latin America
Seth Sandronsky
Activating White Racism
Lucinda Marshall
McKinney and Karpinsky: Silenced for Telling the Truth
Mike Whitney
Something's Gotta Give: James Baker vs. the Lobby
John V. Whitbeck
Recommendation No. 80
Faisal Kutty
Is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Merely a Western
Construct?
Hugh Sansom
Smearing Jimmy Carter: an Open Letter to the New York Times
Robert Gold
My South American Journey: Impunity in Colombia
Boots Riley
Crash and Burn: an Urgent Message from The Coup
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Engel & Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Alive in Mexico
December 8, 2006
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Study Group's Cautious Appraisal
Leutisha Stills
Just
How Progressive is the Congressional Black Caucus?
Norman Finkelstein
The Media Lynching of Jimmy Carter
Will Youmans
Mr. Lieberman Comes to Washington: Brookings Hosts an Ethnic
Cleanser
Peter Rost, MD
What Went Wrong at Pfizer?
Jonathan Demme
My Friend Bruce Langhorne: a Great Musician Needs Your Help!
Ray McGovern
Senate Democrats Give Gates a Free Pass
Lucinda Marshall
What She Wore
Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn
The Lost John Lennon Interview
Website of
the Day
John Lennon's FBI Files
December 7,
2006
Alex Friedman
Rev.
Phelps' Hate-Fueled Fanatics Find a Home in the Kansas Prison
Industry
Maureen Webb
Risk Scoring and the National Insecurity State
Paul Craig Roberts
Catastrophe Still Awaits
Dave Lindorff
Prosecutor Admits: Mumia Abu-Jamal Had "No True Defense"
Matt Vidal
Drug Pushers, Inc.: Power and Profit in the Legal Drug Trade
Yifat Susskind
Looking for a Few Good Principles: What Should be Done in Iraq
Rodriguez / Jones
NYPD's Death Squads: From Diallo to Sean Bell
Website of
the Day
2006, Remixed
December 6, 2006
Robert Bryce
Omitting
the Obvious with James Baker: From the S&L Crisis to the
Iraq Study Group
William S. Lind
The Boomerang Effect: When Will the First IED Strike Cincy?
Zoe Blunt
The Clearcut Truth About the Great Bear Rainforest
Corporate Crime Reporter
The New Conventional Wisdom: Prosecute Individuals, Not Corporations
Amira Hass
A Regrettable Indifference: Israel's Treatment of Palestinian
Prisoners
Richard W. Behan
The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War
Sophie McNeill
Why Hezbollah is Broadcasting Sunday Mass
December 5, 2006
Virginia Tilley
Apartheid
Israel: a Beacon of Hope?
Sharon Smith
The New Washington Consensus: Blame the Victims in Iraq
Joe Bageant
Somewhere a Banker Smiles
Ron Jacobs
A War Washington Can't Win
Norman Solomon
Media Consensus, Stay in Iraq!
Mike Whitney
Rumsfeld's Final Snowflake: "I Was Just About to Change
Everything ... "
Derrick O'Keefe
Regimes Unchanged: Chavez's Victory Strengthen's Cuba
Julian Assange
The Road to Hanoi
Missy Beattie
Bush, the Unhappy Helmsman
Website of
the Day
Lessons of Suez and Iraq
December 4,
2006
Alexander Cockburn
Gaza
and Darfur
George Ciccariello-Maher
Tears of the Escualidos: Election Diary, Venezuela
Ray McGovern
Lame Ducks, Hold That Nomination!: a CIA Insider's Take on Gates
John Ross
Repression on the Menu in Mexico
Walden Bello
Hurricane Milton: Friedman, Bayonets and Markets
Peter Rost,
MD
Pfizer's Clueless Executives
Stephen Lendman
The Withering of the Bush Dynasty
Gideon Levy
This Ceasefire will Go Up in Flames
Website of the Day
The "Babes" of Hizbullah?
December 2
/ 3, 2006
Weekend Edition
Barucha Calamity
Peller
The
Dirty War of Oaxaca
Paul Craig
Roberts
Is Bush Sane?: When Denial Goes Pathological
Ralph Nader
The Big Boys of Financial Crime
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Committee of Enablers: Is Gates Fit to Serve? Are the Senators?
Amira Hass
The Checkpoint Generation
Maymanah Farhat
Depoliticizing Arab Art: Christie's and the Rush to "Discover"
the Arab World
Dave Lindorff
Fighting the Iraq War--At Home
Fred Gardner
Dr. Jimenez Defends His Practice Methods
Col. Dan Smith
The Semantics of Civil War
Raed Jarrar
Maliki's Monopoly of Power
Seth Sandronsky
US Prison Nation: Locking Up Surplus Labor
K.-Y. Taylor
The Bride Wore Black: the Shooting of Sean Bell and the Resurgence
of American Racism
Yifat Susskind
Greed, Dogma and AIDS
David Rosen
Made in China: the Global Trade in Sex Toys
Ron Jacobs
All Hands on Deck!: the New Pirates of the Caribbean
Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Prepares to Vote
Talli Nauman
Fighting La Choya: the Secret Toxic Dump on the Border
Alan Gregory
Shadow Trout: Why Hatchery Fish Aren't Real
Joe Allen
RFK and Hollywood Mythmaking: Emilio Estevez's Beatification
of Bobby Kennedy
St. Clair /
D'Antoni
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Davies, Engel, Ford and Orloski
Website of
the Day
Demo for Oaxaca
December 1,
2006
Greg Grandin
Midnight
in Mexico: Calderón's Inauguration Behind Closed Doors
Linn Washington,
Jr.
The
Mumia Case After 25 Years: Still More Keystone Kops Antics
George Ciccariello-Maher
Sleeping with the Enemy: At Home with the Anti-Chavistas
Brian J. Foley
Taking Responsibility for Iraq
Dave Zirin
Rebel Athletes: Organizing the Jocks for Justice
Joshua Frank
The Montana Formula: Jon Tester's Neopopulism
Chris Floyd
Hideous Kinky: Thomas Friedman Comes Undone
Ingmar Lee
Atomic Porker Strikes Indian Point Nuke Plant
Manuel Garcia,
Jr.
Dark Fire: the Fall of WTC 7
Website of the Day
No Gun Ri Revisited
Video of the
Day
Drunken Hack Goes Ape at Aussie "Pulitzers"
|
Weekend
Edition
January 27 / 28, 2007
The Timid Chorus and the Mad Marchers
Bush
the Empire Slayer
By BERNARD CHAZELLE
If you fancy losing an argument, try
shooting down my contention that Mikhail Gorbachev is the leading
historical figure of our time. Not one to miss a shooting opportunity,
Dick Cheney tried. To my surprise, he won.
Westerners fondly remember
Gorbachev for finishing off an ailing Soviet empire left bleeding
from its Afghan travails. Defusing half a century of nuclear
tension can leave a mark on impressionable minds. On Cheney's-not
so much. The former Defense Secretary had a tender spot for the
Cold War and never forgave Gorbachev for ending it with not even
a kind word for defense contractors. Cheney is the quintessential
warrior, with plenty of dead quails and birdshot-peppered lawyers
to prove it. He is the gallant hussar-one day greenlighting "Shock
and Awe" to give Guernica a second chance; the next day
apprising US Senator Pat Leahy of his favorite sexual technique:
"Fuck yourself ! " (1) Quite the martial wag,
the man Maureen Dowd calls Big-Time Dick saluted the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 by persuading his boss to invade Panama
(for reasons no one seems able to remember). And today it is
anybody's guess which Caribbean island the United States will
invade to celebrate its victory in Iraq.
Dick Cheney is a man of war,
and a man on a mission: a crusader who won't rest until the name
Bush Jr is etched in the history books-not lost in the microscopic
print of the endnotes section, mind you, as is destined to be
Senior's fate, but glowing in the radiant typeface of a chapter
heading. That mission, for once, is all but accomplished. In
January of 2001, George W. Bush took-er, grabbed-the reins of
an American Empire at its zenith. He will soon hand back a smoldering
wreckage of broken lives, enduring hatred, and vanished influence.
Michael Ignatieff has called Pax Americana Empire Lite.
(2) A better phrase would be Empire Short-Lived, or,
if you're William F. Buckley Jr and the vernacular ruffles your
literary feathers, Imperium Brevissimum. At a recent ceremony
for his son Jeb, George H. W. Bush was caught on national television
sobbing uncontrollably. Pity the man who stands one short letter
away from the worst president in US history. The letter is H,
as in H for hubris.
"We're winning! "
exulted Bush last October. (3) Well... actually, "We're
not winning," he clarified a few weeks later, but "We're
not losing" either. (4) So "We're wosing,"
quipped the Guardian's cartoonist Steve Bell. Indeed, we are;
and for you, Mr President, I shall count the wosing ways.
*
* *
Somewhere, deep in the cold,
worm-infested soil that a mother will keep watered by tears,
lies one of 3,000 young Americans. (5) Dispersed across the
land, thousands more will forever carry the scars of war in their
battered bodies and hollowed souls, mutants battling hellish
shadows and silent phantoms. And the Iraqis, yes those,
Mr President, see them spiral into Dante's lower rings of hell,
as they join the fastest-growing sect in the land: the dead-hundreds
of thousands strong. (6) Watch the White Man's Burden devolve
into an orgy of torture and mayhem. (Has it ever devolved into
anything else?)
The words Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo,
detainee bill, and extraordinary rendition are seared in the
world's consciousness as the badges of shame of a democracy gone
mad. According to Pew's most recent "Global Opinion"
survey, "anti-Americanism is deeper and broader now than
at any time in modern history." (7) The war effort's
claim on the US treasury will soon exceed $600 billion: more
than Vietnam; (4) more than all the money ever spent on cancer
research; (8) more than enough to "race for the cure"
all the way to Alpha Centauri. We're wosing big, Mr President.
Historians will ponder how
one gangly caveman and nineteen scrawny associates turned America
into the land of the kind-of-free (53rd freest press in the world,
tied with Botswana (9)) and the home of the petrified. The sons
and daughters of the nation that stood up to Hitler and Tojo
now file through airport security barefoot, much as they would
walk, shoeless, into a mosque-a mosque, they pray, empty of Muslims.
Cravenness is bigotry's favorite
nourishment, and cynics might expect the political class to gorge
on it by blaming our imperial agony on the natives. In America,
today, cynics rarely go wrong; and the air, indeed, is thick
with talk of fainthearted hordes of Mesopotamian ingrates, who
quail at the latest bombing and wail at the moon in exotic garb.
Not long ago, the achingly
earnest Nicholas D. Kristof, a New York Times columnist whose
only sin is to be more virtuous than you-and keep you informed
of this in each and every one of his bromidic columns-reassured
his readers that the trouble is not with the Muslims but with
the Arabs. They are too violent and they give Islam a bad name.
(10) Well, that settles that. Funny, though, that in the last
twenty years Americans have outkilled Arabs in a ratio in excess
of one hundred to one. But there I go again, nitpicking, while
Saint Kristof is back in Cambodia, rescuing teenage prostitutes
one Pulitzer prize at a time.
Not to be undone, The Times'
resident flat-earther, Thomas L. Friedman, never tires of recycling
Golda Meir's racist rant about hateful Arabs. He writes:
"We can't keep asking
Americans to sacrifice their children for people who hate each
other more than they love their own children." (11)
The hate-lovers never asked
for anybody's sacrifice, Mr Friedman. To steal a thought from
the heroic Robert Fisk, all they ever craved was the one freedom
you've always refused to grant them: freedom from you! The Washington
Post columnist Richard Cohen, a man who's never met a heap of
moral compost he did not want to climb, wrote recently that "the
prudent use of violence [against Muslims] could be therapeutic."
(12) Being a kind soul, I'll assume that Cohen is unaware of
the ideological pedigree of that phrase and that he doesn't read
what he writes-apparently, a skill highly prized in American
punditry.
To talk the neocolonial talk
from the plush comfort of the imperial capital is easy. To walk
the walk is not. US military expenditures exceed those of all
nations on earth combined. And yet battling a ragtag band
of lightly armed insurgents was more than the world's mightiest
army could take. It is "about broken," laments
Colin Powell-and, by the way, "We are losing."
(13) A recent Marine Corps memo concedes that Coalition Forces"are
no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar.
" (14) Last summer's stabilization push in Baghdad,
Operation Together Forward II, proved a dismal failure: the violence
actually rose by 43 percent! (15)
The US military has been fighting
in Iraq longer than it did in World War II. What does it have
to show for it? Not much. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is a country-wide
killing field, one giant Sniper Alley where sporting the Stars
and Stripes can get you killed any time, anywhere. Not a square
inch of Iraqi soil is safe for the Americans outside the high
walls of their fortresses. To borrow from Cheney's vast repertoire
of bons mots, the US counterinsurgency is in its last
throes; hence the "surge" and kindred shows of desperation.
Israel's finest military historian, Martin van Creveld, does
not mince words: "The American military have proved totally
incompetent." (16) In Iraq, the world's sole superpower
has been the world's serial superbungler. (I've always wondered
if the trope of the "sole superpower" serves any purpose
other than teaching us how thin the line is between the sublime
and the farcical.)
Whose fault? (The wrong question
for a moral perspective-starting the war was the sin, not losing
it-but the right one here.) Breathtaking as they were, the majestic
vistas of Rumsfeld's ineptitude were little more than a convenient
excuse for war advocates with egg on their faces. The grand whining
parade has already begun, and mealy-mouthed apologists are being
wheeled in on bloated floats to proffer lame excuses about inadequate
troop levels, insufficient 4GW training, political fecklessness,
etc. Eventually, the chest beating will die down as it always
does, with the blame for the debacle pinned on the dirty antiwar
hippies.
But hippies don't fight wars.
The Pentagon does. It did, and it lost. One reason-not even the
most important-is the military's endemic inability to win hearts
and minds. Early in the war, the Guardian sounded the alarm:
"Senior British military
officers on the ground are making it clear they are dismayed
by the failure of US troops to try to fight the battle for hearts
and minds. They also made plain they are appalled by reports
over the weekend that US marines killed Iraqi civilians, including
women and children, as they seized bridges outside Nassiriya
in southern Iraq." (17)
The emphasis on force protection
is a far cry from past imperial practices. The Romans, Spaniards,
British, French, and conquerors of yore seldom agonized over
their own casualties. To their credit, Americans do. But this
comes at a moral cost: US soldiers are brave but the casualty-averse
military doctrine of their commanders is cowardly. That, in essence,
is what Susan Sontag, Arundhati Roy, and Bill Maher said-right
before the lynching began. (18-20) In a similar show of disgust
diplomatically stripped of the C-word, this British officer echoed
the sentiment:
"US troops have the attitude
of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take
any risk... Unfortunately, when we explained our rules of engagement
which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US
troops just laughed." (21)
Lebanon and Somalia notwithstanding,
the United States rarely cuts and runs. It did not in Vietnam.
It fought to the death-of the other guy-and then cut and walked
when victory proved elusive. Iraq is too central to US hegemonic
fantasies to allow a speedy retreat: it'll be done cut-and-crawl
style, with enough pit stops to admire the fireworks over Iran.
Bush's playbook: (1) run out the clock; (2) anoint successor
as "the dope who snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory
and handed Iran the victor's crown"; (3) let the etching
in the history books begin.
Could the invasion have succeeded?
Not a chance. All the grousing about incompetent planning is
the age-old excuse-making prattle of losers. Leave aside the
not-so-trifling fact that the United States never had the proper
DNA for empire (lite or otherwise). It is the incontrovertible
reality of the 21st century that the time for the White Man's
Burden has passed. Not only is the era of empire gone, but the
days of the so-called liberal hegemonic order are numbered. Even
before 9/11, the cumulative impact of European integration, the
rise of Asian powers, and the resurgence of Muslim identity sounded
the death knell for American hegemony. To hasten the burial will
be one of Bush's legacies. Alas, incalculable misery in the Middle
East, enduring anti-American hatred, and future terrorist attacks
in London, Paris, and Seattle will be another one.
The same Madeleine Albright
who called the United States "the indispensable nation"-presumably
to avoid confusion with the dispensable ones-taunted Colin Powell
with the wickedest double-entendre since Mae West: "What's
the point of having this superb military you're always talking
about if we can't use it? " (22) To paraphrase an old
line, it is better for a big country to keep its superb army
idle and let the world think it's not much of a superpower than
to use it and remove all doubt.
Bush's neoconservative doctrine
seeks to apply Straussian philosophy to the unfettered pursuit
of US energy interests. Its unspoken motto: "perpetual war
for perpetual peace." The rough idea-and the idea is, indeed,
rough-is to play this century's Great Game (first prize: control
of Mideast oil supply) under the banner of national security.
Until we whacked them on the head, Iraqis had never expressed
much desire to attack us. To the lesser minds, therefore, the
idea of fighting them there so we wouldn't have to fight them
here always teetered on the edge of insanity. To the neocons'
delight, 9/11 came to cleanse the public discourse of the yelpings
of lesser minds.
And so, today, we gather to
honor the superior minds, all of these men (they are mostly men)
who so decisively turned out the lights on the American empire.
Heading the roll call is none other than the Decider himself.
If you're among the wise who chose to sit out the Bush years
at the bottom of a well, you need to know only two things about
the man: the first is that he is President of the United States;
the second is that he said:
"One of the hardest parts
of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." (23)
To connect it to the war for
terror would indeed be easier. A self-declared uniter, Bush is
beginning to unite the country around the belief that he is the
worst president in US history. (24) Whether his reelection,
ipso facto, makes the electorate the dumbest ever is a logical
inference that a political culture drunk with self-admiration
will have trouble getting its woozy head around.
To call Team Bush a thundering
herd of galloping loons is to be unnecessarily kind. For rarely
has daftness been elevated to such a lofty plane of power and
influence. The early days of the Iraq adventure set the tone.
A year after Defense strategist Ken Adelman infamously called
the coming liberation of Iraq a "cakewalk," Paul Wolfowitz,
then Rumsfeld's deputy, used the occasion of an interview with
NPR's Melissa Block to stamp the prediction with the Pentagon's
gold seal.
"We're seeing today
how much the people of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe
appreciate what the United States did to help liberate them from
the tyranny of the Soviet Union. I think you're going to see
even more of that sentiment in Iraq. There's not going to be
the hostility that you described Saturday. There simply won't
be." (25)
Hostility? What an idea! On
the eve of the war, in a vice presidential reprise of Tom Cruise's
couch-hopping antics, Cheney stepped on the set of NBC's "Meet
The Press" to share the love: "We will, in fact,
be greeted as liberators." (26) For a mere $44 billion
a year,(27) all we got from US intelligence was a silly update
of an old movie script:
Renault: And what in Heaven's
name brought you to Baghdad?
Bush: The sweets and the flowers. I came to Baghdad for love.
Renault: Love! What love? We're in the Middle East.
Bush: I was misinformed.
Christmas 2003 came early in
Iraq and WMD-stuffed stockings were spotted everywhere by late
March. Or so Rumsfeld told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos: "We
know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad
and east, west, south and north somewhat." (28) East,
west, south and nowhere somewhat. In September of that year,
the part-time AEI scholar, full-time slimeball Richard Perle
got all his neurons firing at once to produce this marvel of
crystal gazing:
"And a year from now,
I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad
that is named after President Bush." (29)
Or perhaps some grand morgue?
Which naturally leads us to the 600-billion dollar question:
where did they find these people? The answer: in that dank rodent
house known as the American Enterprise Institute. Often found
gnawing on the chicken wire, the rabid ferret Michael Ledeen
needs no cage rattling to work himself into a froth of hysteria:
"Every ten years or so,
the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country
and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean
business." (30)
In their knockoff of Mein
Kampf, retitled An End to Evil, Richard Perle and
former Bush speechwriter David Frum give voice to their full-blown
dementia by recommending all-out attacks on anybody ever so slightly
Muslim. Why? Because "There is no middle way for Americans:
It is victory or holocaust." (31) Salon's Gary Kamiya
calls the Perle-Frum worldview "a strange combination
of Hobbes and Popeye." (32) Harsh on Popeye. Me, I
have no patience for moral midgets who've seen their Napoleonic
hour arrive. Like Alexander in Gordium, I head straight for the
deliciously obvious: to end evil, end Perle and Frum.
The American Enterprise Institute
serves to mitigate the most glaring defects of our democracy.
Take the current escalation in Iraq, for example. President Bush
alone grasps the full cosmic immensity of its wisdom, even calling
the idea a "surge" to convey its irresistibility. Alas,
the Forces of Darkness, aka the Pentagon, the Congress, and the
American public, will have none of it. Enter the AEI and its
paunchy, double-chinned warmonger, Frederick W. Kagan. Faster
than a chickenhawk can flap its wings, Kagan demothballs his
fave retired general, Jack Keane, and whips up The Surge. Voilà.
Rasputin would be proud.
It would be unfair to let Team
Bush steal all the credit for the imperial collapse without a
tip of the hat to the White House Dictation Office, also known
as the mainstream media (MSM). Skipping right over the miniskirted
hyena Ann Coulter (a risky stunt but I've got my spiked pogo
shoes on), the oafish junkie Rush Limbaugh, and the assortment
of one-trick performing fleas hopping mad on the AM dial, I shall
ascend Mount Olympus to gaze at the brainy stars of the MSM.
Few shine more brightly than
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, the supernova of the Murdoch
empire-unless red dwarf is a tighter cosmic fit for someone known
to his friends and pet hamster as "Dan Quayle's brain."
The day after the 9/11 attacks, the surrogate brain seized the
moment and began pounding the war drums: "There's a fair
amount of evidence that Iraq had very close associations with
Osama bin Laden in the past." (33) There was not a
shred of evidence. A year later, Kristol nuzzled up to The New
Republic's Lawrence F. Kaplan to break into a cakewalk jig on
the National Review dance floor: "Having defeated and
then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too
tall an order for the world's sole superpower." (34)
Brilliance of this magnitude is Kristol's trademark. Time magazine
took longer than most to realize that and only this month got
around to adding Kristol to its roster of columnists.
Two influential Canadians with
a nasty case of empire envy, Mark Steyn and Michael Ignatieff
pulpiteered the good news-one from his stool at the Chicago Sun-Times,
the other from his booster seat at the Harvard Kennedy School.
From Steyn we learned that "Imperialism is the answer"
(35) and from Ignatieff that "The case for empire is
that it has become, in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy
and stability alike." (2) (I don't know about you,
but the dazzling acumen of the expert never fails to give me
goosebumps!) Former TNR editor Andrew Sullivan, another heavy
smoker of the imperialist's hookah pipe, found his knees wobbly
after 9/11 and his left flank badly exposed: "The decadent
Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead-and may well mount
what amounts to a fifth column." (36)
Of course, no account of MSM
malfeasance would be fitting without at least a passing glance
at the yapping chihuahuas. Newsweek's Howard Fineman woofed a
few choice words of his own: "We had controversial wars
that divided the country. This war united the country and brought
the military back." (37) Well said, Howard. His colleague
Chris Matthews yaks at such vertiginous speeds that his brain
emits exotic particles of synchrotronic quirkiness. One month
into the war, he blurted out, "We're all neocons now."
A few weeks later, Matthews highlighted a side of war that too
often gets short shrift: what great, clean fun it is! "Check
it out. The women like this war! I think we like having a hero
as our president." (37) Must a TV show be pornographic
just because it's called "Hardball"?
The war has given the American
mainstream media a brilliant opportunity to prove its essential
worthlessness. It has shown itself to be little more than a circus
of entertainers and cheerleaders for whom every season is the
silly season. Tragically, the media has failed in its sacred
duty to keep a vigilant, skeptical, critical eye on the centers
of power. Who is the American Robert Fisk, Gideon Levy, or Amira
Hass? Whoever they are (and Sy Hersh proves they exist), why
are their writings not filling the op-ed pages of the great American
newspapers? How can the nation that produces the bulk of Nobel
prize winners be stuck with such a sullen bunch of journalistic
mediocrities? The sycophantic enablers of the Fourth Estate have
blood on their hands.
The unfolding catastrophe in
Iraq had a single cause: the reassertion of US hegemony after
9/11. Its trigger was a rare astral alignment. Big Oil, the neocons,
the Christian fundamentalists, the liberal hawks, AIPAC, the
MSM, and 9/11 all formed cosmic dots in the sky that only one
power could-and did-successfully align: the president of the
United States. No American leader has so much owned a war.
And none has so little owned
up to it. Victors are never war criminals. That's because they
get to write the history books. Bush won't have that chance.
The die has been cast and the hour is too late for him or anyone
to alter the unforgiving judgment of posterity. Therein, paradoxically,
lies our quandary. For, if freedom is just another word for nothing
left to lose, then Bush is a free man-free to pursue the most
malignant policies, heedless of the consequences to his unworsenable
presidential standing. Beware the desperation of a cornered man.
The apostle of imperial dominance,
Bush slew the "last empire." The towering figure of
our time, he is a piteously small man. The self-anointed emissary
of a "higher father," he is servant to no power but
himself. The captain of the sinking ship has laid his command
upon his fellow Americans: "Ask not what your country
can do for you; ask what you can do for me." No sacrifice
of life shall be too great, no damage to civil liberties too
high, no expenses too vast for a vainglorious man deluded by
fantastic dreams of redemption by force.
But who besides the bereaved
will mourn? Who besides the orphan will whimper? Who besides
the humiliated will stare back? Who besides the thugs and the
craven will lead? Patriotism is a lovely thing. In its name,
some go dying by the side of an Iraqi road in twitching agony;
others go shopping in oversized automobiles festooned with yellow
ribbons. We all play our part-and nobody else's.
Yeats bemoaned an era when
the best lacked all conviction, while the worst were full of
passionate intensity. Today, Kristol blusters and hectors, Cheney
scolds and forebodes, Bush struts and smirks. Meanwhile, the
giant, timid chorus listens politely to the deafening silence
of the outraged-and the mad march of war goes on.
Bernard Chazelle is a professor of computer science
at Princeton University and author of The
Discrepancy Method: Randomness and Complexity. He can be
reached at: chazelle@CS.Princeton.EDU
Notes
[1] Cheney Dismisses Critic
With Obscenity, by Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank, Washington Post,
June 25, 2004.
[2] America's Empire Is an
Empire Lite, by Michael Ignatieff, The New York Times, Jan. 10,
2003.
[3] Press Conference by the
President, The White House, Oct. 25, 2006.
[4] U.S. Not Winning War
in Iraq, Bush Says for 1st Time, by Peter Baker, The Washington
Post, Dec. 20, 2006.
[5] War in Iraq, CNN, 2006.
[6] The Human Cost of the
War in Iraq, by G. Burnham, S. Doocy, E. Dzeng, R. Lafta, L.
Roberts, Lancet, 2006.
[7] Global Opinion: The Spread
of Anti-Americanism, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Jan. 24, 2005.
[8] Cancer Research Funding,
National Cancer Institute, May 19, 2006.
[9] Worldwide Press Freedom
Index 2006, Reporters Without Borders, 2006.
[10] The Muslim Stereotype,
by Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times (firewalled original),
Dec. 10, 2006.
[11] Insurgency Out, Anarchy
In, by Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times (firewalled original),
June 2, 2006.
[12] The Lingo Of Vietnam,
by Richard Cohen, The Washington Post, Nov. 21, 2006.
[13] Powell Says U.S. Losing
in Iraq, Calls for Drawdown by Mid-2007, by Karen DeYoung, The
Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2006.
[14] Anbar Picture Grows
Clearer, and Bleaker, by Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks, The
Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2006.
[15] The Iraq Study Group
Report, by James A. Baker, III and Lee H. Hamilton, Co-Chairs,
United States Institute of Peace, 2006.
[16] Closer to the Abyss,
by Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, Dec. 6, 2006.
[17] Coalition divided over
battle for hearts and minds, by Richard Norton-Taylor and Rory
McCarthy, The Guardian, Apr. 1, 2003.
[18] The Talk of the Town,
by Susan Sontag, The New Yorker, Sept. 24, 2001.
[19] The Most Cowardly War
in History, by Arundhati Roy, Global Research, June 28, 2005.
[20] Politically Incorrect,
Wikipedia.
[21] Trigger-happy US troops
'will keep us in Iraq for years', by Sean Rayment, Telegraph,
May 15, 2005.
[22] Madeleine's War, by
Walter Isaacson, Time, May 9, 1999.
[23] Bush: 'We Don't Torture',
CBS News, Sept. 6, 2006.
[24] He's The Worst Ever,
by Eric Foner, The Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2006.
[25] United States Department
of Defense, by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Feb.
19, 2003.
[26] Upbeat Tone Ended With
War, by Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, March 29, 2003.
[27] Official Reveals Budget
for U.S. Intelligence, by Scott Shane, The New York Times, Nov.
8, 2006.
[28] United States Department
of Defense, by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30,
2003.
[29] Turkey at the Crossroads,
by Richard Perle, Sept. 22, 2003.
[30] Baghdad Delenda Est,
Part Two, by Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, April 23,
2002.
[31] An End to Evil: How
to Win the War on Terror, by David Frum and Richard Perle, Random
House (excerpt), Dec. 2003.
[32] "An End to Evil"
by David Frum and Richard Perle, by Gary Kamiya, Salon, Jan.
30, 2004.
[33] Their War, Too, by Harold
Meyerson, The American Prospect, Sept. 1, 2005.
[34] Closing In, by Lawrence
Kaplan and Bill Kristol, National Review Online, Feb. 24, 2003.
[35] Imperialism is the Answer,
by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 14, 2001.
[36] A British View of the
US Post-September 11, by Andrew Sullivan, The London Times, Oct.
15, 2001.
[37] 'The Final Word Is Hooray!',
FAIR, March 15, 2006.
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