How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
Today's
Stories
January 19,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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January 19, 2005
We Aren't Dealing With Rationality
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"Any appearance of a permanent
occupation of Iraq by the US] will both undermine domestic support
here in the United States and play directly into the hands of
those in the Middle East who -- however wrongly -- suspect us
of imperial design." So spoke former secretary of State
James Baker last week in a speech at Rice University in Houston.
There are few heavier hitters
in Bush country than Baker, secretary of state when Bush Sr went
to war on Iraq in 1991 and the architect of Bush Jr's stolen
election in 2000. A few days earlier Brent Scowcroft, another
veteran of Bush Sr's administration, raised once more, as he
had in 2002, doubts about Bush Jr's Iraq strategy.
There's plenty of high-level
talk of possible American withdrawal after Iraq's elections at
the end of this month. A retired American general is now in Iraq
to assess the situation. Even so, to bet that the United States
might cut and run from the mess in Iraq is, in an historical
perspective, a risky option. The traditional pacing of imperial
adventures even misadventures does not include many
pell-mell retreats. Where has the US actually left behind military
bases? Iran, the Philippines, Panama, Vietnam. They still haven't
left Cuba, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Marshall Islands,
et al.)
The speediest withdrawal was
probably the one that followed President Reagan's decision in
February, 1984 to pull a US marine force out of Lebanon after
a disastrous 16-month deployment that included the blowing up
of 241 US marines in their barracks by a truck bomb.
But by comparison with the
huge US deployment in Iraq the Lebanon operation was minor, though
there is one instructive parallel, in terms of imperial hubris.
The advocates of the Lebanese deployment in Reagan's time pointed
back to Eisenhower's successful dispatch of US marines to Lebanon
in 1958, as an auspicious precedent.
Looking back at the routing
of Saddam's army in 1991 those urging invasion of Iraq in 2002
and 2003 said that history would not only see a repetition of
that victory but the consummation that Bush Sr would not permit,
the eviction of Saddam and rearrangement of Iraq's internal politics.
The consequence of that hubris
is already securely lodged in the annals of imperial discomfiture.
After nearly two years eight US divisions can barely guard their
own internal lines of communication or the road to Baghdad airport.
There's talk of organizing dearth squads on the old Salvadoran
model run by the CIA, but it's way too late for that option.
The casualty list swells with
each day that passes; over 10,000 dead and maimed American troops.The
torture scandals have been as devastating to America's international
reputation as was the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. No one expects
the situation to improve militarily and the prospect of civil
war in Iraq looms. The war is politically unpopular here, as
local newspapers and tv news stations carry weekly news of local
boys killed or maimed.
The US army is cracking under
the strain, in part because of one of the legacies of the Vietnam
experience. Creighton Abrams and other US generals restructured
the army to make it heavily dependent on reserves. Among their
motives was the idea that presidents would find it harder to
commit the forces to extended wars.
That particular chicken has
now come home to roost: no less than 40 per cent of the US forces
now in Iraq are made up of national guard and reserves, most
of them bitterly resentful of having been corralled into long
tours in Iraq with no release in sight. Last month, the general
who heads the army reserves stated bleakly in a memo to his superiors
that his units were "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken'
force".
New recruitment to the reserves
and to the army has plummeted, for obvious reasons. The generals
want out, before the war destroys the US Army.
The cost of the war is already
huge: $200 billion by the end of this fiscal year is the forecast
of Chuck Spinney, a former Pentagon analyst. America is trying
to finance this with its cheap dollar, but that is raising other
political problems.
Politically, there will never
be a more opportune time to start a withdrawal. Bush was reelected
with a solid majority. Unlike Kerry, he does not have to establish
his warmongering credentials. Republicans rule both chambers
of Congress and the midterm elections are nearly two years in
the future.
The political establishment
is split. James Baker certainly speaks for the oil industry,
and most of corporate America thinks America has problems far
more pressing than Iraq. The libertarian, and old conservative
wing of the Republican Party has never liked this war.
But the Israel lobby, which
pitched the war to Bush and got America into it, is still deeply
committed and retains considerable power both in the government,
the Congress and the para-government of Institutes, Centers and
Think-tanks that throttle Washington like kudzu.
The great dread of the Israel
lobby back in the early 1970s was that withdrawal from Vietnam
might presage withdrawal of support for Israel. Withdrawal from
Iraq would be seen by the same lobby as a huge setback and the
Sharon government is no doubt pondering scenarios maybe
a Tonkin Gulf type incident involving Iran, perhaps an attack
on its reactor to ensure withdrawal is postponed. All the
leaks and consequent news stories notably one by Seymour
Hersh in the New Yorker about intelligence sorties by
US or Israeli units in western Iran, and possible attack on Iran
later this year reflect the ferocious debate going inside the
Bush administration. As in 2002 the strategy of the war party
is to maintain tension, and to fan the flames.
Bush himself has a huge stake
in being able to claim some sort of "success" in Iraq,
so it all depends on how the Iraq elections play out. If somehow
the White House can claim that Iraq has now been led towards
the "democratic" path then decorous retreat is conceivable.
If the resistance makes further strides, if the Shia turn on
the US, then retreat will be inevitable, with the only other
option to the US being a draft here and a US force four times
its present size. The war would become the all-consuming theme
of Bush's second term.
It would be rational for the
United States to start withdrawal in a month or two. But we are
not dealing with rationality. Gabriel Kolko, America's greatest
historian of war, put it well, in this reflection on "intelligence"
ande Vietnam:
"The state's intelligence
mechanisms are constrained by a larger structural and ideological
environment and by the inherent irrationality of a foreign policy
which foredooms any effort to base action on informed insight
to a chimera. Even when the insight is exact, and knowledge is
far greater than ignorance, political and social boundaries
usually place decisive limits on the application of 'rationality'
to actions. The political and ideological imperatives and interests
define the nature of 'relevant' truths. Intelligence's pretension
to being objective is a hoax because those parts of it that do
not reconfirm the power structure's interests and predetermined
policies are ignored and discarded. There are innumerable reasons
we must conclude this Even more important is the entire experience
with Iraq and the U.S.' failed confrontation with the Islamic
world for over half a century. To expect the U.S. to behave
other than as it has is to cultivate serious illusions and delude
oneself.
"The system, in a word,
is irrational. We saw it in Vietnam and we are seeing it today
in Iraq."
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