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What You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter JAMES WEBB: IF THE DEMOCRATS WANT A POPULIST,
IT'S HIM, FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSEJoAnn Wypijewski on how Webb really talks on his home turf in Virginia and on the two faces of populism, dark and lite. The New Yorker helped sell the war in Iraq. Now see how it shills for the drug companies at home. Fred Gardner finds Malcolm Gladwell, at the bottom of the New Yorker's deep barrel. David Petraeus is the favorite general of Bush and the New York Times. Alexander Cockburn on how the salesman of surge sold himself. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now
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Today's Stories February 7, 2007 Tony Swindell Jeff Cohen 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
the Day
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
the Day
January 20/21 2007 Alexander Cockburn
Gail Dines
Newton Garver
Gilad Atzmon
Seth Sandronksy
Raphaelle Bail
Jim Goodman Larry Portis
Website of
the Weekend
Jonathan Cook
Glen Ford Dave Lindorff
Larry Portis
Website of
the Day
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
the Weekend
January 11, 2007 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Dave Lindorff Jeff Leys Richard W.
Behan Col. Douglas MacGregor Website of
the Day Speech of the Day
Peter Linebaugh Robert Fantina Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Col. Dan Smith Ben Tripp Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Mike Ferner Dave Zirin Website of
the Day Bootleg of the Day
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
the Day
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
the Day
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 7, 2007 When Words Fail FundamentallyMcCain to Wounded SoldiersBy TOM KERR Although I am not a former POW, a battle-scarred veteran, or an active duty soldier laying my life on the line for my country, I am a human being who has experienced love (of life, of freedom, of family) and loss. As a human being, I feel devastated by the loss of life, limb and peace of mind suffered by all soldiers and civilians in war. Even when war is unavoidable, the losses suffered by individuals, families, communities, and nations are immeasurable, catastrophic. And as a human being, I feel authorized if not duty-bound to speak on the subject of war. It is with this understanding that last week I viewed a photograph, taken by Tom Pennington for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Associated Press, of seriously wounded American soldiers marching toward a new, privately funded rehabilitation center in San Antonio. In the foreground and center of the photograph, perched high up in his motorized wheel chair, sits a man, a soldier, a double amputee whose face has apparently been badly burned. He is not identified by name. I wonder what he is thinking and feeling at the moment the photo is snapped. Marching behind him, in a long line moving down a sidewalk, are eight or nine other wounded soldiers, mostly amputees, all but one in wheel chairs. The accompanying story tells about the opening of the rehab center, christened the Center for the Intrepid, which is equipped with a rock-climbing wall, a wave pool and a virtual reality computer system. No expense has been spared. Both John McCain and Hillary Clinton were on hand to honor the veterans for whom the center was built. Only a brief quotation from John McCain's speech appears in the story. McCain is quoted as saying, "We can only offer you our humility. You are the best Americans." As a student of rhetoric, I know very well that McCain's words in this context are powerfully charged with ethos, which is formed by the character or authority of the speaker (or writer), and can make or break a speech. If a person brings enough ethos to bear on the matter, the logic of his or her words, the logos, may not matter to the audience much at all. If the ethos fails, so most likely will the speech. It is very often not what is said so much as who does the saying. Few are as well-suited to speak to wounded soldiers at the opening of a rehab center than former POW and current Senator and presidential hopeful John McCain. Most Americans, including me, honor his service and sacrifice; many undoubtedly, and with good reason, revere the man. Yet we are still obliged to attend to the underlying logic or illogic of words, no matter how much authority we might grant their speaker. We are not, as McCain himself would surely agree, a nation of blind followers or of yes men and women. Our soldiers do not risk life, limb, and peace of mind to protect a country where one cannot question our leaders' words and the reasoning behind them, even when those words are spoken in ceremonial contexts super-charged with emotions born of war and its ravages. McCain's words disturb me. Why, after all, haven't these wounded soldiers been treated like "best Americans" long before becoming victims of war? Why, prior to their enlistment, were we not treating all these intrepid Americans, many of whom choose military service for economic reasons, like "best Americans"? As McCain puts it, all we can give them now is humility, which amounts to nothing-far too little, way too late. So when might we have given them something substantial? If we regard them as our best Americans, the cream of the Uncle Sam's crop, why weren't we giving them much more, much earlier in their lives? We might have begun, for example, by infusing poor communities throughout the land with the same massive levels of funding-for housing, education, health care, social services, and infrastructure-we marshal for war. We might have given all prospective soldiers early, equal access to the best public and private schools in the country. We might have transformed the minimum wage into a living wage to better equip their care-givers to meet their needs, and to better meet their own needs as teenagers and young adults. We might have reduced the often debilitating financial burden of illness on individuals and families by legislating universal heath care. We might have radically increased federal funding for higher education, multiplying the ways and means available to all Americans willing and able attend college, where real economic opportunity begins. We might, in other words, have provided the soldiers to whom McCain now offers our humility just a small taste of the opportunities enjoyed by "average Americans." For these average Americans, the neo-conservatives who conceived the Iraq war among them, military service is just one choice among many, and not usually (only occasionally) high on the list of priorities. Humility seems to me a very small price for average Americans, such as Dick Cheney and George Bush, to pay for their abundant privileges and able-bodied freedoms. You might think, at the very
least, we would have given our best Americans the truth about
the war so they could have decided, with all the information
available to those average Americans designing the war, whether
benefits to them, their families, and the nation outweighed the
costs. You might even think we'd have continued to insist on
a draft, all these years, so that average Americans could at
least be given equal opportunity to raise their status and become
more like the best Americans in McCain's audience. As a human being, I feel deeply for the soldiers pictured by Tom Pennington marching toward the Center of the Intrepid in San Antonio. I understand that all words, including John McCain's and mine, must fail. Certainly, we can do no less than offer humility, but we might all rightly wonder why it takes such monumental sacrifice for the best Americans among us to be accorded the recognition and respect they have deserved their whole lives. Tom Kerr teaches Writing and Rhetoric at Ithaca
College. You can email him at tkerr@ithaca.edu.
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CounterPunch Books / AK Press The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained! Buy End Times Now! Michael Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn Bruce Springsteen On Tour By Dave Marsh |