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Today's
Stories
March 4, 2004
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
March 3, 2004
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
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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March
4, 2004
Stop
the Stonewalling, Mr. President
Fairy
Tales, Bush & the 9-11 Commission
By Senator ROBERT BYRD
Most of us are familiar with the Aesop's fables,
having read some of them at one or more times during our lives.
Aesop once told the story of a jaybird that ventured into a yard
where peacocks used to walk. There the jay found a number of
feathers fallen from the majestic birds when they had last molted.
He tied them all to his tail and strutted toward the peacocks.
His cheat was quickly discovered, and the peacocks harassed the
imposter until all his borrowed plumes had fallen away. When
the jay could do no more than return to his own kind, having
watched him from afar, they were equally affronted by the jay's
actions.
The moral of the story, said Aesop, is
that it takes more than just fine feathers to make fine birds.
It is an age-old lesson that the Congress
should hold in its mind as we consider how best to investigate
the distorted and misleading intelligence that the administration
used to build its case for war in Iraq.
On February 6, the President announced
the creation of his own commission to investigate our intelligence
agencies to find out, in the words of Dr. David Kay, why we were
almost all wrong about the administration's prewar claims of
huge Iraqi stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. If Congress
is serious about getting to the bottom of this apparent intelligence
failure and the administration's rush to war, we must realize
that once stripped of its dazzling plumage, the White House proposal
for its own so-called independent commission is a real, honest
to goodness turkey. It is not only fine feathers that make fine
birds.
The President has described the panel
that he created as being an independent commission. Well, nothing
could be further from the truth. This commission is 100 percent
under the thumb of the White House. Who created the panel's charter?
The President. Who chooses the panel members? The President.
To whom does the panel report? The President. Whom shall the
panel advise and assist? The President. Who is in charge of determining
what classified reports the panel may see? The President. Who
gets to decide whether the Congress may see the panel's report?
The President.
To describe this commission as independent
is to turn that word's definition on its head. In fact, the deeper
one delves into the text of the Executive order that creates
the President's so-called independent commission, the more one
finds that the commission is ill-equipped to discover just what
went wrong with the prewar intelligence on Iraq.
At first glance, the charter of the President's
commission appears very broad. It is to assess whether the intelligence
community of the United States is sufficiently authorized, organized,
equipped, trained, and resourced to tackle the threats of terrorism
and weapons of mass destruction. As part of that goal, the commission
is to compare prewar intelligence on Iraq with what has so far
been discovered.
That mission sounds like a mouthful,
but it really misses the point of why the American people are
calling for a commission to investigate in this matter.
The public has a right to know why our
intelligence on Iraq was so wrong, how the administration may
have misrepresented its intelligence, who is going to be held
accountable for misleading our country into war, and what will
be done to fix the problems with our intelligence. Those are
exactly the questions an independent intelligence panel should
be investigating, and yet the President's commission only skirts
those key issues.
What is more, even though the President
promised that his commission will investigate current intelligence
on North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan, his Executive order, in fact,
does not bother to direct the commission to review intelligence
on those countries. Instead, the President's Executive order
directs the commission to focus its energies on Libya and Afghanistan.
Libya and Afghanistan are not countries that the President has
labeled as part of his axis of evil. A real independent intelligence
commission would shine new light on how we assess the threats
of North Korea and Iran, not be distracted by sideshows that
will keep the commission busy until March 31, 2005.
The President has carefully drafted this
Executive order to allow himself to serve as the gatekeeper on
what information the so-called independent commission might have
access to. While the President directs Federal agencies to cooperate
with this commission, he also has created a giant loophole that
would prevent the most important intelligence products from being
read by his commission.
The Executive order reads as follows:
The President may at any time modify the security rules or procedures
of the commission to provide the necessary protection to classified
information. I was born at night but not last night. All of America
knows that the White House is in a dispute with the September
11 Commission over intelligence reports that were read by the
President. The commission wants them. The White House will not
give them. The Executive order drafted by the President to create
an intelligence commission makes sure that his own commission
will never see documents that the President does not want them
to see.
At least the 9/11 Commission has the
power to issue subpoenas for critical information. The President's
intelligence commission does not even have that power. The deck
is being stacked against a full and open inquiry on the prewar
intelligence on Iraq. Congress is not even assured of having
access to the commission's report.
The President has required that the commission
send its report to him in March 2005 and then within 90 days
the President will consult with the Congress concerning the commission's
report and recommendations.
Why can the Congress not simply read
the commission's report? Why should the White House be given
the opportunity to reword, reshape, redact, or even flat out
censor the so-called independent commission's report before Congress
can get their hands on it?
It is quite possible that if this so-called
independent commission is allowed to proceed as the President
has directed, Congress will never have the chance to review the
commission's work.
Tucked away in the President's Executive
order is a provision that intends to exempt this commission from
judicial review. Let us not forget that the Office of the Vice
President fought tooth and nail in Federal courts, and is still
doing so, to keep the General Accounting Office, an arm of the
Congress, from learning about the meetings of the Vice President's
energy task force.
Could this provision be an attempt to
hide the work of the President's intelligence commission from
Congress? I would not put such a scheme beyond the White House,
which has already demonstrated its zeal for secrecy.
The administration's case for war in
Iraq appears to have been built upon cherry-picked intelligence,
produced and massaged to hype the American people into going
along with a war of choice. The President's so-called independent
commission would allow the White House to do the exact same number
on the commission's report as it did on prewar intelligence and
analysis; namely, pick out only the parts that it wants the public
to see and bury the rest.
It is bitter irony that a report on whether
the administration covered up evidence that contradicted a rush
to war might itself be covered up under the terms of the President's
Executive order.
So what is next? An independent commission
to investigate the President's own commission? Is that so? I
wonder. Let us not make the mistake of ignoring the shortcomings
of the White House's version of an intelligence commission on
Iraq, only to be haunted by those problems later.
The revelation by Dr. Kay that he does
not believe any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction existed
in Iraq has dealt a blow to the President's case for war. It
has shaken the American people's faith in their Government. We
owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of what went
wrong with our intelligence agencies and whether the administration
misused the intelligence that it was provided.
The President has simultaneously promised
a commission to investigate these matters and stacked the deck
against the independence of his very own panel. That is not the
right way to gain the confidence of the American people in their
Government. It is yet another in a string of attempts by this
White House to mislead the American people on issues of national
security.
Congress must step in and correct the
grievous error that the President has made in creating a commission
that is not equipped properly to do its job. Congress should
use the independent 9/11 Commission, a commission that has shown
itself to be fair, independent, and bipartisan, as a starting
point for how to create an independent panel to investigate the
Iraq intelligence failures. If the administration is serious
about getting to the bottom of this debacle, this new commission
might even be created in just a matter of days.
The American people deserve answers on
why the administration relied on faulty intelligence to take
this country to war without presence of an imminent threat. A
commission that is designed to keep the inquiry under the thumb
of the same White House that misled Congress and the public about
the nature of the threat from Saddam Hussein will never be able
to operate independently. So Congress should not allow the President
to get away with posting a fox at the door to the hen house.
The structure of the 9/11 Commission
is a solid foundation upon which to conduct an inquiry into the
administration's prewar intelligence claims. The 9/11 Commission
has been doing yeoman's work in digging into all of the events
that led up to those catastrophic attacks on New York and Washington.
In fact, the only real problem that the 9/11 Commission has faced
is the lack of cooperation from the White House.
After refusing to meet with the full
membership of the 9/11 Commission, the President and Vice President
have reluctantly proposed to meet only with the chairman and
vice chairman of the panel. And for how long? Just 1 hour.
The National Security Adviser has flatly
refused to participate in any public discussions with the Commission.
The White House position on dealing with the 9/11 Commission
is so unreasonable that the administration is drawing criticism
from both sides of that panel. There is even talk that former
Senator Bob Kerrey, who once served as Chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, could resign because of the administration's
refusal to let the Commission do its work. What could possibly
be the reason for this stonewalling by the White House?
It is as if a whole swath of the Washington
establishment has completely forgotten the horror of the terrorist
attacks that killed 3,000 innocent people. But the American people
have not forgotten. The American people have their priorities
straight. They place getting at the truth of how that tragedy
was carried out above election year politics.
Enough with the stonewalling. Enough
with the foot dragging. Enough with the election year politics.
The Senate acted correctly a few days ago to extend the life
of the 9/11 Commission so that it can get its work done, and
the House should promptly follow suit. Now Congress should act
quickly to create an independent Iraq intelligence commission.
The confidence of the American people in their Government, the
people's government, hangs in the balance.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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