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June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
June 2, 2002
Fidel Castro
From FDR to Mister "W.":
Cuba, the US and Democracy
Arundhati Roy
Under the
Nuclear Shadow
Bernard Weiner
Bush 9/11 Scandal for Dummies
June 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
The
Strange Math of Roberto Carlos: Brazil v. Turkey
Gavin Keeney
Bush and Mies van der Rohe:
Architecture and Ideology
Jeff Halper
Sharon's
Post-Incursion Plan:
Incarceration or Transfer?
Walt Brasch
Crumpling the Constitution
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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The
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Al Gore:
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June 11,
2002
"We
were told specifically that if there were women and children
to kill them."
Murder, Incorporated
by Chris Floyd
While the lumbering giants of the American media
make their clumsy bows of obeisance to the presidential paymaster
filling their corporate goodie bags with tax cut candy and merger
massage oil, a few snippets of unsalted truth about the real
world continue to spill from the croker sacks of the lean and
hungry provincial papers.
Last week, it was the Savannah Morning
News unearthing an attempted terrorist bombing by a U.S. soldier
in the gaterous moral swamp of Jeb Bush's Florida. This week,
it's the Ithaca Journal in upstate New York, bringing news of
Big Brother Georgie's old-fashioned approach to warfare:
Ordering soldiers to kill women and children.
This revelation--entirely unremarked
by the larded lords of the Fourth Estate--came in a homely profile
of young Army Private Matt Guckenheimer, just returned to the
bosom of his family after a tour of service in Afghanistan. While
retailing some of his experiences during the much ballyhooed
"Operation Anaconda," Guckenheimer artlessly spilled
what was surely meant to be a secret order from his superiors.
"We were told there were no friendly
forces," Guckenheimer said. "If there was anybody there,
they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there
were women and children to kill them."
Let that sink in for a moment: American
soldiers were told to kill women and children. "Specifically."
To kill a child. To put a bullet in the brain of, let's say,
a two-year old girl. To hold the barrel of a rifle to her tiny
temple and pull the trigger. To watch as the tender plate of
her skull, the delicate bones of her face, her large bright inquisitive
eyes were all obliterated in a burst of red mist. "We were
told specifically to kill them." "Women and children."
"To kill them."
So that's the kind of warfare being waged
by those notorious two cowards, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
When their own generation was on the firing line, in Vietnam,
both men ardently supported the war--but disdained to fight in
it. For his part, Cheney was too busy with his long bootlicking
rise to power: "I had other priorities," he has loftily
proclaimed.
Meanwhile, Bush's daddy got his drink-addled
little boy a cushy stateside berth in the Texas National Guard--but
even then, Junior couldn't stick it. He bugged out for an entire
year of his duty--desertion in wartime, a capital offense, if
you're not rich and well-connected. Fortunately, his service
records for that period were "scrubbed" by General
Daniel James, former head of the Texas National Guard, who is
now head of the entire nation's Air National Guard -- courtesy
of his appointment by a grateful George W. Bush.
Now these two armchair warriors, Bush
and Cheney, ensconced safely behind the greatest phalanx of personal
protection ever seen in history, are sending out a new generation
of young people to kill and die. Like their predecessors in the
Vietnam War, they are twisting the faith and idealism of patriotic
young soldiers and turning them into instruments of murder.
And for what? Certainly not to "bring
the perpetrators of September 11 to justice," the ostensible
purpose of the war. Those perpetrators are still roaming free--and
are even more dangerous than ever, according to Cheney himself.
No, the main reason why Private Guckenheimer and his comrades
are being ordered to murder women and children could be found
last week in a headline buried in yet another obscure province
of the American Empire--a brief business story from the BBC:
"Afghan Pipeline Given Go-Ahead."
And there is more of this to come; much,
much more. For even as Private Guckenheimer was making his quiet
revelations, the Commander-in-Chief was loudly proclaiming a
brand-new military doctrine for the United States:
Sneak attacks--like Pearl Harbor, like
September 11.
Speaking at West Point military academy,
Bush first praised the soldiers in Afghanistan "who have
fought on my orders." (***"We were told specifically
that if there were women and children to kill them."***)
He then announced that from henceforth, the United States will
"impose preemptive, unilateral military force when and where
it chooses," the Washington Post reports.
For the first time in its history, America
is now openly committed to offensive military aggression against
any perceived threat designated by its leaders, the unelected
White House occupant told the cadets. Bush said that "60
or more nations" presently lie under this dread edict--all
potential targets of his "kill the women and children"
orders.
What's more, Bush said this new military
bellicosity will be accompanied by aggressive diplomacy aimed
at forcing other nations to adopt American values--that is, the
Enron-style "crony capitalism" foisted on the United
States by a corrupt elite and their political bagmen. Bush called
this pustulant system--now suppurating before our eyes, as corporation
after corporation, including Cheney's own Halliburton, are caught
cooking their books--"the single surviving model of human
progress."
So there you have it. Just like bin Laden--another
unelected leader who claims divine sanction for his actions--Bush
will send his forces to strike without warning at anyone he believes
is an enemy. Just like bin Laden, Bush considers innocent women
and children to be legitimate targets of his holy wrath. Just
like bin Laden, he seeks to impose his own limited, barbaric
worldview on other nations, for his own power and profit.
What quadrant of hell is hot enough for
such men?
Post Script
Guckenheimer has since qualified his
disturbing revelation. Perhaps shaken at seeing his words in
cold print (or shaken ***by*** someone who saw his words in cold
print), Guckenheimer wrote a letter to the Ithaca Journal modifying
his remarks. He now says the soldiers were ordered to kill only
those women and children who showed unspecified manifestations
of "hostile intent."
The orders did note that even "very
young children" (of unspecified age) were being trained
as soldiers by the heathen Mohammedans, and so could not be "just
dismissed as noncombatants," said Guckenheimer. "But
this does not mean we were ordered to kill noncombatants such
as babies."
Well, thank God for that. It is indeed
a saving grace that U.S. ground forces were actually not ordered
to kill babies. That would be a very serious breach of military
protocol everyone knows the killing of babies and other
innocent parties is reserved for the launchers of "smart
bombs," "daisy cutters," B-52s, CIA drones and
other purveyors of faceless, long-range death.
Glad we could clear that up.
Chris Floyd
is a columnist for the Moscow Times. He can be contacted at cfloyd72@hotmail.com
Today's
Features
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
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