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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers!

HOW RUMSFELD MICROMANAGED TORTURE!

* Real-time grilling of Lindh by satellite
* "Put a bra and panties on this guy's head"
* His "Do This" List for Abu Ghraib
* Driving Jose Padilla Insane

Read Andrew Cockburn's devastating report in Our New CounterPunch Newsletter. PLUS: Robert Bryce on Frank Gaffney, Halliburton and Iran. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now

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Cockburn in San Francisco

Today's Stories

March 13, 2007

Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.
Scenes from a Cop Riot

 

March 12, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Patriot Act Unbound

Col. Dan Smith
Ghost Prisoners, Shadowy Jails and Secret Trials

Paul Craig Roberts
Neocons in Kafkaland

Ingmar Lee
The Sentencing of Betty Krawczyk: a 78-Year-Old Eco-Heroine

Fred Gardner
Cannabis for the Wounded: Another Walter Reed Scandal

Ron Jacobs
Showdown at Port Tacoma: Confronting the War Machine in the Northwest

Ralph Nader
Send the Bush Twins to Iraq!

John Ross
Political Prisoners in Calderon's Mexico

Stephen Fleischman
Bush's Latin American Slip

Eva Carazo Vargas
Why We Reject CAFTA

Website of the Day
Mountain Justice Spring Break

 

March 9 / 11, 2007

Sameer Dossani
Interview with Noam Chomsky: War, Neoliberalism and Empire in the 21st Century

Jeffrey St. Clair
Crude Alliance: The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil

Dave Marsh
Bono's Bullshit: Not One Red Cent

Patrick Cockburn
Shia Pilgrims Die Despite US Offensive

Jennifer Van Bergen
A Gonzo Argument: Alberto Gonzales's Defense of NSA Domestic Spying

James P. Stevenson
Pardon Whom? Libby and the Cheney Unseen

Arthur J. Versluis
Crusade for Commercialism

Corporate Crime Reporter
Not a Dime's Worth of Difference: Congress and Corporate Crime

Missy Beattie
Too Much Info, Newt!: Sex, God and Praying

Michael Simmons
Annie Get Your Gums: Why I Like Ann Coulter

Kevin Zeese
Making Democrats Pay the Price: Voting Against the War is No Longer Enough

David Swanson
Shocking Video: The Dark Side of the Democrats

John A. Murphy
Are the Congressional Democrats Spineless?

Dave Lindorff
Bush Dodges a Constitutional Bullet in New Mexico: Abetted by Democrats

Nikolas Kozloff
Lights! Camera! Chavez!

Christopher Fons
Bush Goes to Latin America: Is It All About (N)PR?

Mike Roselle
A Thousand Miles of Bad River

Mike Mejia
Justice for Sibel Edmonds

Susie Day
Anna Nicole Smith Bombs Iran!

Michael Donnelly
LA Story: Rock Stars, Porn Stars and Peace

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know (Parts 4 and 5)

Poets' Basement
Reed, Laymon, Mezmer and Harley

Website of the Weekend
Japanese Dolphin Massacre

 

March 8, 2007

Elaine Cassel
The Tragic Case of Jose Padilla

Yifat Susskind
Iraq's Other War: Violence Against Women Under US Occupation

Corporate Crime Reporter
Politics and the Prosecutors

Col. Dan Smith
The Sins of Walter Reed

William S. Lind
The Washington Dodgers

Mark Engler
Bush's Latin American Spring Break

Roger Burbach
With Negroponte as Tour Director, Bush's Trip Destined to Fail

Dana Cloud
Return of the Campus Witch Hunts: David Horowitz and the Thought Police

Isabella Kenfield
Brazil's Ethanol Pland: Breeding Rural Poverty and Environmental Degradation

Lucinda Marshall
We Stand with the Women of the World

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction (Part 3)

Website of the Day
Filibuster for Peace


March 7, 2007

Christopher Ketcham
What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?

Christopher Ketcham
The Kuala Lumpur Deceit: a CIA Cover Up

Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair
Ketcham's Story: Coming in From the Cold

Winslow T. Wheeler
Mismeasuring the Defense Budget

Sean Donahue
Free Scooter Libby!

Dave Lindorff
The Fall Guy Has Fallen

Evelyn Pringle
Psychosis and Mania: ADHD Drug Warnings Come Too Late for Many

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction

Website of the Day
Debating Iraq: Gaffney Against the World!

 

March 6, 2007

Gary Leupp
Meet Eliot Cohen: "As Extremist a Neocon and Warmonger as It Gets"

Uri Avnery
Esterina Tartman: The Big Mouth of Israeli Fascism

Patrick Cockburn
The War on Terror is a Bust: Bush is Now Al Qaeda's Top Recruiter

Saul Landau
World in Crisis, Candidates in Denial

Corporate Crime Reporter
John Edwards' Big Lie

Ron Jacobs
The Legacy of Lordstown: The Union Makes Us Strong!

Mike Roselle
Judi Bari: Ten Years Gone

P. Sainath
Neoliberalism and the Ideology of the Cancer Cell

Joshua Frank
Dump the Dems, Unite Against the War

Aniket Alam
Women's Day, Lenin and a Riot in Copenhagen

Dave Zirin
Resurrecting Don Barksdale: Basketball's Forgotten Pioneer

Website of the Day
Physicians for a National Health Program

 

March 5, 2007

Greg Moses
Holding Suzi Hazahza for Profit

Patrick Cockburn
Exodus of Iraq's Ancient Minorities

James Petras
Bush vs. Chavez

Frida Berrigan
US Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran

Marjorie Cohn
Conscientious Objector Faces Court-Martial: the Case of Augustín Aguayo

Douglas Kammen and S.W. Hayati
The Rice Crisis in East Timor

Sen. Barack Obama
On Israel and AIPAC: "We Must Preserve Our Total Commitment to Our Unique Defense Relationship with Israel"

Michael Young
Sy Hersh and Iran: the Dark Side of Spun a Lot?

Dave Lindorff
It's the People of Washington vs. Pelosi, et al

Sonja Karkar
Raiding Nablus: Israel's Hot Winter Offensive

Website of the Day
How Obama Learned to Love Israel

 

March 3 / 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Persecution of Sami Al-Arian

Corporate Crime Reporter
"No Fingernails, No Good:" Al-Arian Prosecutor's Anti-Muslim Bias

Jeffrey St. Clair
Glory Boy and the Snail Darter: Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite

Patrick Cockburn
War Reporting in Iraq: Only Locals Need Apply

Ralph Nader
Hillary, Inc.: Sen. Clinton and Corporate America

M. Shahid Alam
American Mamlukes

Gilad Atzmon
From Esther to AIPAC

Fred Gardner
It's Official!: Cannabis Reduces Pain

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Fourth World War Started in Venezuela

Rock & Rap Confidential
Do the James Brown!: "No One Could Speak More Authoritatively for Blacks"

Gillian Russom
The Court Martial of Agustín Aguayo

Michael McPhearson
My Small Act of Civil Disobedience

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats and the Peace Movement: Who Owns Whom?

Sunsara Taylor
Four Years of an Unjust War

Wendy Thompson
Re-Organizing the UAW

Kenneth Rexroth
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"

Missy Beattie
Regarding Cheney

Don Monkerud
Jesus Turned Away at US Border

Tina Louise
Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams

Poets' Basement
Richards, Landau and Davies

Website of the Weekend
John Prine: Flag Decal

 

March 2, 2007

Roger Morris
Cheney's Bagram Ghosts

Phil Gasper
Prisoners of Ideology

Mike Roselle
Buffalo Gore: The Blood-Stained Snow of Yellowstone

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scam

John V. Walsh
Who is He This Time?: Kerry's Strange Call to Filibuster the War

Sherwood Ross
Bush and Walter Reed Hospital: Praise the Care, Slash the Budget

China Hand
Who Let North Korea Get the Bomb?

David Rosen
To Cut or Not to Cut?: the Politics of Circumcision in America

Chris Genovali
Connecting the Dots

Peter Harley
The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela

Website of the Day
Courage to Resist

 

March 1, 2007

Laura Carlsen
Return to Sender: Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail

Paul Craig Roberts
The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men

Ray McGovern
How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Who the Hell Knows?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Theater of the Absurd

Najum Mustaq
America's Musharraf Dilemma

Brent Bowden
The War on Terror and the Terror of War

Tina Richards
Demoralizing the Troops? The Mother of an Iraq War Vet Responds

Ethan Nadelman
Mexico and the Drug War

Mike Stark
"Tough on Crime" is the Problem, Not a Solution

Wadner Pierre / Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Poor Under a State of Siege by UN

Mike Whitney
Market Meltdown: the Dead Hand of Greenspan

Website of the Day
Dylan Hears a Who

 

February 28, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
An Amazing Disgrace

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Francisco Letelier

China Hand
The Shanghai Crash: Take the Money and Run

Marjorie Cohn
Why the Boumediene Case on Gitmo Detainees and Habeas Corpus Was Wrongly Decided

Sarah Olson
Is Lt. Watada an Isolated Case of Military Dissent?

Susan Van Haitsma
Mark Wilkerson: Standing for a Soldier's Right to Conscience

Nicole Colson
License to Torture

Harvey Wasserman
The Sham of Nuclear Power

William S. Lind
The Non-Thinking Enemy

Nicola Nasser
US Turnabout?: Engagement and Confrontation in the Middle East

Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn on Rumsfeld

 

February 27, 2007

Tariq Ali
The Khyber Impasse: the Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Tom Barry
America's Crusaders: Santorum and Lieberman

Uri Avnery
The Next War

Antonia Juhasz / Raed Jarrar
Oil Grab: the Secret Scheme to Split Iraq

Jeff Nygaard
Howard Hunt and the National Memory System

Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Grenada: an Invasion Revisited

Mitchell Kaidy
Israel's Cluster Bombs: Made in USA, Ground-Tested in Lebanon

Carl Finamore
Airline Bankruptcies, Mergers and Profits

Anne McElroy Dachel
The Really Big Lie About Autism

Ramzy Baroud
Who is Really in Control?

Andrew Rouse
The Queen, Her Apothecary and the War on Iraq

Website of the Day
New York City Skyline

 

February 26, 2007

Franklin Lamb
US Israel Lobby Targets Lebanon's Jihad al-Bina

Bill Quigley
The Right to Return to New Orleans

Greg Moses
Suzi Hazahza in Haskell Hell

Col. Dan Smith
Calling All Carriers

Ralph Nader
The Bush Administration is a Threat to Our National Security

Paul Buchheit
The Income Gap

Jeff Leys
How Democrats Are Buying the Iraq War

Dave Zirin
Bojangling for Bigots: an Open Letter to Jason Whitlock

Mike Whitney
Doomsday Dick and the Plague of Frogs

Michael Dickinson
Free Kareem Amer!

Website of the Day
Beware the Chickenhawks!

 

February 24 / 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frightening Tales of Endangered Species

R. T. Naylor
Inside Islamic Charity

Gary Leupp
AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran

Saul Landau
Modern Day Miracle: Rev. Haggard Cured! Thank You, Jesus!

Ron Jacobs
Missile Defense Redux

Jeffrey Blankfort
A Debate on the Israel Lobby

Chris Sands
Afghanistan in Winter: Where Death Comes Cheap

Gary Freeman
The N-Word and Black History Month

Larry Portis
Zionism and the United States: the Cultural Connection

P. Sainath
Two Million People in "Maximum Distress"

Lee Sustar
What Next for the Immigrants' Rights Movement?

Kevin Wehr
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros: the Thrill isn't Gone, It's Just Moved

Ken Couesbouc
The African Card

Soffiyah Elijah
FBI Hunting Dead Panthers: Can John Bowman Ever Rest in Peace?

Kathlyn Stone
Iraqi Labor vs. Big Oil

Dave Lindorff
Breaking the Dam in Olympia

Jason Kunin
Criticizing Israel is Not an Act of Bigotry

Kevin Zeese
Can Hillary be Trusted?

Remi Kanazi
All Roads Lead to Checkpoints

Missy Beattie
Five Words That Change Lives

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt and Rodriguez

Website of the Weekend
Caught on Tape: an Anti-War Movement Finding Its Feet?

 

February 23, 2007

Franklin Spinney
Top Gun vs. the Axis of Evil: Is This What We Have Become?

Jonathan Cook
Watching the Checkpoints

Patrick Cockburn
The True Extent of Britain's Failure in Basra

Kathy Kelly
Do Something Good

Chris Dols
Islamophobia at Urban Outfiters: the Case for Keffiyehs

Evelyn Pringle
The Neurontin Suicides: Risks Kept Hidden for Years

Stephen Pearcy
If Bush is a War Criminal, What About the Troops?

Dan Brook
Making Poverty History

Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Police Commit Rapes

Website of the Day
A Citizens Arrest of Patty Murray

 

February 22, 2007

Robert Fantina
Repeating History

Tariq Ali
Prodi's Soap Operatic Fall: Neoliberalism and War in Italy

Michael Shank
An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, the Democrats and Climate Change

John Ross
Calderon's War on Drugs

Christopher Brauchli
Stockcars on Dope: How NASCAR and the Tour de France are Bring the World Together

Cindy Litman
Paying for the Damage Done to Iraq

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Mr. Jefferson's Inheritors: Caution, Calculation and Cold Feet

Kevin Zeese
Finally, a Populist Antiwar Candidate for President

Aseem Shrivastava
The New Indian Way?: a Developer's Model of Development

Reza Fiyouzat
A Letter to the Israeli People: We are All Led by Mad Men

Illinois Students Against the War
Why We Protested at Obama's Speech

Website of the Day
An Interview with Mike Gravel

 

February 21, 2007

Maass / St. Clair
The Clintons: the Art of Politics Without Conscience

Sharon Smith
Inside the Imperial Budget

Greg Moses
Showdown Over Texas Immigrant Prisons

Margaret Kimberly
America the Stupid

Ralph Nader
Making Cancer Cool: Tobacco and Hollywood

Nicola Nasser
Evasive Diplomacy: Bush Adm. Shuns Middle East Peace Talks

Mike Whitney
The Second Great Depression

Tao Ruspoli
Revolutionary But Gangsta: a Conversation with Stic.Man of Dead Prez

Byeong Jeongpil
Beyond the "Protection Facility", Another Prison

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Hillary, Obama and Edwards Oppose Single-Payer Health Care

Josh Mahan
The Lost Art of Shattuck: a Good, Old-Fashioned Drinking Story

Website of the Day
Time to Free the Puerto Rican Nationalists


February 20, 2007

Sgt. Martin Smith
Structured Cruelty: Learning to be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine

Werther
How to be a Washington Expert

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing SAIC

Carl G. Estabrook
Common Sense About the Recent Past

China Hand
Setting Sun: The Diverging US-Japan Relationship

Joshua Frank
Cleaning Up Exxon's Greenpoint Oil Spill

Megan Boler
The Daily Show and Political Activism

John Feffer
People Power vs. Military Power in East Asia

Daryll E. Ray
What's Inside the New Farm Bill

Alan Gregory
Midwest Wolves Fall Prey to Slob Hunters' PR Scam

Website of the Day
"Not a Target Rich Environment?"

 

February 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Economists in Denial: Blind to the Consequences of Offshoring

Gary Leupp
"A Genocidal, Suicidal Nation:" Mitt Romney Joins Iran's Hysterical Accusers

Ron Jacobs
The Mecca Agreements: the Future Remains Bleak

Michael F. Brown
The Peace Process Industry

Robert Jensen
Liberal Icons and War: Bi-Partisan Empire-Building

Roger Burbach
Ecuador Stands Up to US

Monica Benderman
America, Where Are You Now?

Sonja Karkar
Apocalyptic Archaeology: Israel's Provocations Threaten Jerusalem

John Walsh
Some Good News from Beantown

Talli Nauman
Colorado Delta Blues: Challenging the Law of the River

Website of the Day
"The Best Place to be in Town"

 

Feburary 17 / 18, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Sold to Mr. Gordon, Another Bridge!

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Patrick Cockburn, Part Two

Gary Leupp
Iran: A Chronology of Disinformation

Jeffrey St. Clair
Dark Mesas in an Ancient Light

Roger Morris
The Undertaker's Tally: the Tragedy of Donald Rumsfeld

Uri Avnery
Facing Mecca

James Brooks
Palestinians and the "Diplomatic Horizon"

Sen. Russell Feingold
Congress Must Defund the Iraq War

Linn Washington, Jr.
"Death Row is a Web That Catches Only the Poor"

Michele Brand
Iran: the Proxy War?

Fred Gardner
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Music and Basketball in the Harlem Renaissance

Mitchel Cohen
Storming the Pentagon: Lessons from 1967

Mike Ferner
Democrats Keep Ohio Refugee Free: "No Iraqis in Our Backyards!"

David Swanson
Memo to Don Young: What Lincoln Really Said

P. Sainath
In the Theater of the Jungle Belt

Mike Stark
GoreAid: Gore Plans Concert with Musicians He and Tipper Betrayed in the 80s

Missy Beattie
The Object of My Disaffection

Jonathan Franklin
Carnival: Where Dance is Hope

Website of the Weekend
The Godfather and the Tenor: "It's a Man's World"


February 16, 2007

Marc Levy
Turning Point: Veterans' Voices Trigger Response

Andrew Cockburn
In Iraq, Anyone Can Make a Bomb

Glen Ford
Powell, Rice and Obama: Putting Black Faces on Imperial Aggression

Greg Moses
The Terror of Suzi Hazahza: Why Her Family Must Be Freed

Ron Jacobs
Marching on the Pentagon: Then and Now

John W. Farley
Hook, Line and Sinker: The Press and Stephen Hadley

James Marc Leas
Vermont Legislature Says: "Bring Them Home Now!"

Tim Rinne
The Most Dangerous Place on the Face of the Earth?: StratCom and the Coming War on Iran

Albert Wan
Star-Cross'd Lovers?: The Strange Romance of Hillary and David Brooks

Website of the Day
Did Wal-Mart Murder Tweety Bird?

 


February 15, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Muqtada al-Sadr?

Saul Landau
How to Obsess Your Enemies

Stephen Lendman
The Rules of Imperial Management

Evelyn Pringle
More Zyprexa Postcards from the Edge

Michael Simmons
Is the Joke Over?: an Evening with Ralph Steadman

Kevin Zeese
A Congressional Kabuki Show

Dave Lindorff
The Co-Dependent Congress

Pete Shanks
They Want You to Eat Cloned Meat--And They Don't Want You to Know It

Peter Rost
The Michelle Manhart Affair: the Air Force Listens!

Lenni Brenner / Gilad Atzmon
An Exchange

Website of the Day
Barack Obama vs. Huey P. Newton

 

February 14, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: A Conversation with Patrick Cockburn

Dick J. Reavis
War Without a Name

Margaret Kimberly
Medical Apartheid in America

Christopher Brauchli
The Perils of Charity: You Can be Prosecuted for Funding Terror Even If the Designation of the Group as a Terrorist Organization was Wrong!

Paul Craig Roberts
Cracks in the Pentagon

John Ross
The Plot Against Mexican Corn

Michael F. Brown
The Democrats and Palestine: New Chairman, Old Rules

Dave Lindorff
The Press Bites, Again: a Word of Caution on Those Iranian Weapons

J.L. Chestunut, Jr.
Texas-style Injustice in Black and White

Don Fitz
Hybrids, Biofuels and Other False Idols

Michael Donnelly
Give Love, Give Life

Dr. Susan Block
The Chemistry of Love

Website of the Day
Code Pink Drops By Hillary's Office

 

February 13, 2007

Uri Avnery
Three Provocations: the Method in the Madness

Patrick Cockburn
Targeting Tehran

Ralph Nader
When Wall Street Whines (You Know They're Making a Killing)

Marjorie Cohn
Fool Us Twice? From Iraq to Iran

Col. Dan Smith
Iran Bashing Goes Prime Time

Col. Douglas MacGreagor
Empty Vessels: Gen. Patraeus and Other Hollow Men

Thomas Power
Coal Ambivalence: Mining Montana

Nicola Nasser
The Politics of Archaeology in Jerusalem

David Swanson
Iran War Talking Points

Columbia Coalition Against the War
Why We Are Striking

Website of the Day
Our Friends at Antiwar.com Need Your Help

 

February 12, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Scapegoating Iran

Paul Craig Roberts
How the World Can Stop Bush: Dump the Dollar!

John Walsh
A Splintered Antiwar Movement: Nader and Libertarians Not Welcome

Dr. John Carroll, MD
What Next for Haiti's Cite Soliel?: a Journey Through the World's Most Miserable Slum

Greg Moses
An Outrageously Sickening Immigration Policy

Nicole Colson
The Frame-Up That Fell Apart: Jury See Through Another Botched Federal "Terrorism" Case

Dave Lindorff
Acting in Bad Feith: Inappropriate Behavior and Impeachment

Ray McGovern
The Kervorkian Administration: Are Bush and Cheney the Biggest Threats to the Existence of Israel?

Doug Giebel
Rampant Cyncism

David Swanson
Twisted: Sex and Torture in America

Website of the Day
The Texas Model: Executing Women in Iraq

 

February 10 /11, 2007
Weekend Edition

Alexander Cockburn
Will They Nuke Iran?

Gabriel Kolko
Israel, Iran and the Bush Administration

Patrick Cockburn
Now It's War on the Shia

Jeffrey St. Clair
Till the Cows Come Home: How the West was Eaten

Kevin Alexander Gray
Barack Obama: Not a Bold Bone in His Body

M. Shahid Alam
The Pacification of Islam

Greg Moses
The Words of Mohammad: an 11 Year-Old Prisoner

Paul Craig Roberts
Brzezinski's Damning Indictment

George Ciccariello-Maher
Coups and Democracy in Venezuela

Kevin Zeese
"You Can't Oppose the War and Fund the War:" a Conversation with Anthony Arnove

Turner / Kim
The World's Factory: China's Filthiest Export

George Duke
Has Jazz Lost Its African-American Core?

Walter Brasch
A Dream Still Unfulfilled: America Remains Divided

Shepherd Bliss
Veterans' Love Story

Missy Beattie
Fear and Diversions: Anna Nicole, Wolf Blitzer and the Missing Body Count in Iraq

Peter Harley
Mr. Hyde and Uncle Sam: Reading Stevenson in an Age of Shock and Awe

Pat Wolff
Oprah's Strange Endorsement of "The Secret"

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt, Engel and Louise

Website of the Day
The 25 Most Corrupt Members of Bush Administration


February 9, 2007

Conn Hallinan
The Najaf Massacre: an Annotated Fable

Gary Leupp
Charging Iran with "Genocide" Before Nuking It

Lee Sustar
An Interview with Patrick Cockburn

Nikolas Kozloff
Bombing Venezuela's Indians

Newton Garver
Politics and Apartheid

Yitzhak Laor
Under the Steamroller

Dave Lindorff
Truth or Consequences: Some Questions for Bush

David Swanson
The Politics of Self-Congratulation: Democrats Change Gas, Claim It's a New Car

Website of the Day
Why Corporate Social Responsibility is Not Working for Workers

 

February 8, 2007

John V. Walsh
Filibuster to End the War Now!

Marjorie Cohn
Watada Beats Government

Trish Schuh
The Salvador Option in Beirut

Ron Jacobs
The Case of the San Francisco 8

Laura Carlsen
Mexico at Davos: the Split with Latin America Widens

Ramzy Baroud
Countdown for Iran

Brenda Norrell
"Leave It in the Ground": Indigenous Peoples Call for Global Ban on Uranium Mining

Bryan Farrell
The Splinter and the Beam: Violence in the Eye of the Beholder

Judith Scherr
BP Beds Down with Cal-Berkeley

Website of the Day
Peace TV

 

February 7, 2007

Daniel Wolff
"The Road Home is a Joke": Playing Politics with the Recovery of New Orleans

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: A Conversation with Oliver Stone on Art, Politics and the Future of Cinema in Bush's America

Tony Swindell
The Looming Shadow of Nuremberg

Sharon Smith
Why Protest Matters

Ken Couesbouc
Delenda Est Baghdad: Why Republics End Up as Empires

Jeff Cohen
Jonah Goldberg's Gambling Debt

Col. Dan Smith
The Self-Destructive Logic of War

Tom Kerr
McCain to Wounded Soldiers: When Words Fail Fundamentally

Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran

Adam Elkus
Surging Right Into Bin Laden's Hands

Stephen Fleischman
The Good News About War on Iran

Website of the Day
Vote Vets: Battling Escalation

 

February 6, 2007

Diana Johnstone
Frenzy in France Over Iranian Threat

Gregory Wilpert
Did Chavez Over-reach?: Venezuela's Enabling Law Could Enable Opposition

Norman Solomon
A Kangaroo Court Martial: Making an Example of Ehren Watada

Dave Lindorff
Borat Goes to Washington: Don't Experiment with the Economy?

William Blum
Space Cowboys: Full Spectrum Dominance

Mike Ferner
War Opponents Occupy Congressional Offices

CP News Service
Nader's CNN Interview: "Hillary's a Panderer and a Flatterer"

Evelyn Pringle
Eli Lilly and Zyprexa: Even the Insurance Companies are Bailing

Christopher Brauchli
Corporate Advice from the Office of Detainee Affairs

Alan Cabal
How Charles Manson Kept Me Out of Vietnam

Website of the Day
Free Josh Wolf: the Longest Jailed Journalist in US History


February 5, 2007

Dave Zirin
Super Bore: When Hawks Cry

Uri Avnery
The Fatal Kiss: Wars and Scandals

Ron Jacobs
The Looming War on Iran: It's Not About Democracy

Paul Craig Roberts
The Real Failed States

Newton Garver
Bush and the Old Hands: Decider vs. Negotiator

Bruce Anderson
The Genocidal Namesake of the Hastings School of Law

Saul Landau
The Golden Globes After a Mud Bath

Ralph Nader
The Good Fight of Molly Ivins

James T. Phillips
Road Outrageous: Tailgating and Iraq

Mike Whitney
Quarantine USA: Bird Flu Panic and Profiteering

Kenneth Rexroth
Clowns and Blood-Drinking Perverts: Imperial History According to Tacitus

Website of the Day
Richard Thompson's Anti-War Song: "'Dad's Gonna Kill Me"


February 3 /4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Who Can Stop the War?

Tao Ruspoli
CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Censorship and Liberation

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Thrill is Gone: the Withering of the American Environmental Movement

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqis on the Run

P. Sainath
They Take the Early Train

Sen. Russell Feingold
A Symbol of a Timid Congress

Diane Christian
Dying Well: Why Killing Saddam Backfired on Bush

Brian Cloughley
Space Missiles Away!: the Irony of Bush's Indignation

Diana Barahona
How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal: US Reporting on the Coup in Haiti

Timothy J. Freeman
The Iraq War Hits Hawai'i: the Stryker Brigade and the Watada Case

Conn Hallinan
The Vishnu Strategy

John Ross
Felipe's First Fifty Days

Greg Moses
The Government Blinks: Freedom for the Ibrahim Family

Missy Beattie
No More Rebukes or Non-Binding Resolutions

Joshua Frank
Unsafe in Any Seas: Cruising with Ralph Nader?

Evelyn Pringle
"These Drugs are Poison to Some People"

Stephen Fleischman
Let's Hear It for Chuck Hagel!

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Iraq in Fragments

Poets' Basement
Holt, Engel, Ford and Saavedra

Website of the Day
Flamenco Dali


February 2, 2007

Chris Kutalik
The Meanest Industry

R. Gibson / E. W. Ross
Cutting the Schools-to-War Pipeline

Pam Martens
America's "Money Honey" as Corporate Matchmaker: Maria Bartiromo and the Co-Branding of CNBC and Citigroup

John Feffer
Picturing the President

Daryll E. Ray
Why the Family Farm is Good for Rural America

Ronald Bruce St. John
Apartheid By Any Other Name

Mitchel Cohen
Listen Gore: Some Inconvenient Truths About the Politics of Environmental Crisis

Website of the Day
The Real Issue is Empire


February 1, 2007

Diane Farsetta
An Army Thousands More: How PR Firms and Major Media Military Recruiters

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Targets Iran: Cruise Missile Diplomacy

Mark Scaramella
Our Founding War Profiteers

Ranni Amiri
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March 13, 2007

Mangling the Mandate

The Democrats' Fraudulent Iraq Exit Plan

By KEVIN ZEESE

The Democrats took the majority of both the House and Senate on January 4th, 2007 since then 192 members of the Armed Services have died as have countless Iraqi civilians. With power comes responsibility, so voters should know that this is now the Democrats War and every death and casualty is their responsibility.

When they came to power their leadership said they would not use the "power of the purse" to end the war. But pressure from voters opposed to the Iraq quagmire has changed their tune. Last week an obviously frustrated Rep. David Obey told Marine Mom, Tina Richardsin a Capitol Hill hallway encounter that his appropriations bill would de-authorize the war.

I went to Capitol Hill as part of a support delegation for Tina Richards this Monday to return to Rep. Obey's office to seek clarification of his hallway comments. There has been a lot of deal making by Congressional leaders to line up support for the Iraq War supplemental. They are adding billions in goodies for constituents, for Midwest farmers, avocado growers, communities that have lost bases, Katrina relief, Veterans and other goodies to gather votes.

The headline that the Democratic leadership would like voters to hear is "troops out of Iraq by August 2008." But the headline is more a wolf in sheep's clothing than a reality. After hearing details of the bill from Obey's appropriations staff person the loopholes may define the law more than the headline.

For most in the peace movement an August 2008 deadline for withdrawal is already way too slow. Why the delay? On November 17, 2005 Rep. Jack Murtha called for redeployment within six months. Here we are sixteen months later and the Democratic leadership is talking about redeployment in seventeen months! Six months has turned into 33 months ­ and in fact the August deadline is illusory. How many lives ­ U.S. and Iraqi ­ will have been lost in this quagmire over this time period?

But, that is not the worst of it. As Rep. Maxine Waters, the Chair of the Out of Iraq Caucus point out, a few weeks ago the Congress passed a non-binding resolution against the so-called "surge" but this appropriation will actually pay for the surge ­ which has grown since their vote by more than 8,200 troops. Indeed, the Democrats are poised to give Bush up to $20 billion more than he asked for!

The appropriation initially was going to require that only combat ready troops could be sent to Iraq. But in order to please "Blue Dog Democrats" and some Republicans the bill is now merely a requirement that Bush report to Congress if non-combat ready troops are used in Iraq. Since when do conservatives want us sending troops to wars who are not fully trained or equipped for combat? Combat readiness has become a symbolic requirement that will at best embarrass the commander in chief but it will not stop deployment of troops unprepared for battle.

And, it keeps getting worse. Regarding the August 2008 deadline not all troops are being redeployed (the bill does not say to where). The bill leaves four categories of soldiers who can remain in Iraq. These include troops to guard the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. This is the largest Embassy in the world ­ a city within a city ­ so who knows how many troops that will take. Also, troops involved in diplomatic and consular affairs will remain in Iraq.

But, the two big categories allow troops to remain in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda and to train the Iraqi military and police. President Bush has called Iraq one front in the war on terror, where the main target in the war on terror is Al Qaeda. Indeed, "we're in Iraq to fight them over there rather than over here," according to the president. Further, he claimed that Saddam and Osama were working together ­ and Vice President Cheney still makes that claim. And, throughout the Iraq War the resistance in Iraq has been defined as terrorists and there have been no solid numbers regarding how many Al Qaeda fighters are in Iraq. And, can you imagine the intelligence-leak drumbeat as that deadline approaches. There will be story after story planted in the establishment media about Al Qaeda coming to Iraq in preparation for the U.S. exit. This hole is so large by itself to make the Democratic exit strategy a virtual mirage.

And, then there is the training of Iraqi military and police. How many trainers will the U.S. have for an Iraqi military and police that will be in the very high hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million? Will training include U.S. soldiers being embedded in the Iraq military or police as part of training them? This is another gigantic loophole that makes the withdrawal more a "stay the course" plan then a real withdrawal.

But, the thing that makes this supplemental appropriation particularly dangerous is the Democratic leadership decision not to raise the question of forbidding military force against Iran. The Bush administration has been beating the war drums for a military attack on Iran for months. It had been reported that the spending bill would have required congressional approval, with some exceptions, before using military force against Iran.

The Congressional Quarterly reported on March 8, 2007 that "The influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee also is working to keep the language out, said an aide to a pro-Israel lawmaker." Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the consigliore for the hard right Israeli lobby in the House of Representatives ­ a congressman who was a civilian volunteer with the Israeli army during the first Gulf War, is quoted as predicting "that the language would ultimately not be included in the supplemental on the House side."

On the 8th CQ reported "a Democratic leadership aide said there are no plans to remove
the provision. 'There's heat,' the leadership aide acknowledged. 'We've heard
their concerns, but we think it's likely to remain on the bill.'" Less than a week later it seems the hard right Israeli lobby, which is often the puppet master of U.S. foreign policy, has gotten the provision removed.

Thus, the Congress has decided to put up no barriers to a Bush attack on Iran. In hearings before Sen. Russell Feingold this January legal experts said that the original use of force resolution, the power of the president to act to defend U.S. national security and the authority of the president to introduce troops into "hostilities, but not into a war" may be sufficient to allow military action against Iran absent congressional action. If Congress put up barriers requiring Congressional approval or restricting the use of funds appropriated than that would limit the president's authority. But without Congressional action, Bush could act militarily against Iran.

So, the slow exit of the Democratic leadership will in the best case scenario be a partial exit that could keep tens of thousands (or more) troops in the Iraq quagmire. And, their failure to curtail the president's authority regarding Iran will give him the unbridled path he needs to go forward with military action against that country. This supplemental may result in a bigger Mid-East war in 2007, rather than a real exit from Iraq.

Is this what the November 2006 anti-war mandate was for?

Kevin Zeese is director of DemocracyRising.US and co-founder of VotersForPeace.US.



 

 

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