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Today's Stories
June 26 / 27, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
June 25, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
US to North Korea: "Trust Us"
Saul Landau
2006 Pentagon Budget as Sacrilege: Bush
Invests the National Treasure in Death and Destruction
Amir
Butler
Iraq: the Deadly Embrace
Jack McCarthy
Another Times Plagiarism Scandal? Did
Maureen Dowd Lift from the World Weekly News?
Greg
Bates
Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
June 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
John
Lehman on the Iraq / al-Qaeda Links
Patrick Cockburn
A
Day in the Life of Col. Abu Mohammed: Defusing Bombs, Facing
Death Threats
Harry Browne
On
the Rebound: Bush Bounces Back...in Europe
Bill Kaufman
Another
Marxist for Kerry: Joel Kovel's Sad Smear of Ralph Nader
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush,
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission: What Did They Know? What Did
They Tell?
Rick Gioimbetti
Andrea Yates: Victim of Psychiatric Violence?
John Chuckman
Call Center ID Hypocrisy
Diane Johnstone
Kerry
and Kosovo: the Lie of a "Good War"
June 23, 2004
Laura Carlsen
Bush
and Castro Face Off
Dave Zirin
Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
Kurt Nimmo
From
Saddam, With Love
Patricia Wolff
Foundation Wars
Mahboob A. Khawaja
"They Had Me Arrested and Shackled My Son"
Patrick Cockburn
The
Pretense of an Independent Iraq
Website of the Day
The Road to Abu Ghraib
June 22, 2004
Dave Lindorff
The
Meaning of Putin's Pronouncement: Mutually Assured Pre-emption
Ron Jacobs
Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
Vanessa Jones
Coogee, Peter Garrett and Valium Earrings
Mickey Z
An Open Letter to the People of Iraq
John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
Committee for Pacho Cortés
An Exchange on the Case of Pacho Cortés
Bruce Jackson
Saying
No to Prosecutors: Why Steve Kurtz's Colleagues Refused to Testify
Website of the Day
From Boot Camp to Boot Hill
June 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
Putin's Helpful Remarks
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti After the Press Went Home: Chaos
Upon Chaos
Cockburn
/ Khan
Saddam May Face Death Penalty
Uri
Avnery
Irreversible Mental Damage
June 19
/ 20, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Inside the Green Zone: US is Paranoid
and Isolated
Bruce
Anderson
Frozen Gringos
Diane
Christian
Morality and Death: a Meditation on
Bush and Blake
Walter
A. Davis
Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib
Josh
Frank
How Democrats Helped Bush Rape Mother Nature
Col. Dan
Smith
Respectable Genocide?: the Crisis in Sudan
Brian
Cloughley
A Profound Disruption of the Senses
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Timken Plant, a Year Later
Prudence
Crowther
Mr. Ashcroft, Deport Me!
Poets'
Basement
Iqbal/Alam, Krieger and Albert
Kathy
Kelly
Dying to See Their Kids
June 18,
2004
Chris
Floyd
Blood Victory
Dave Zirin
Danielle Green, Basketball Player &
Disabled Vet, Speaks Out Against War
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Christian Question in American Politics
Gary
Leupp
The "Long-Established" Link?:
Iraq, al-Qaeda, and al-Zarqawi
June
17, 2004
Noel
Ignatiev
Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People
of Palestine
Kurt
Nimmo
The Bush-Kerry Conundrum
Ed
Cardoni
The Persecution of Steve Kurtz
Ron Jacobs
Power Relations: Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do
Dave
Lindorff
Philly Daily News: "Four Wasted Years"
Greg
Moses
Geneva Ignored
Norm
Dixon
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical
Weapons
June
16, 2004
Lenni
Brenner
A Question for Kerry Supporters
Davey
D
Hip Hop Reflections on Reagan
Daniel
Wolff
Why Did Michael Moore Withhold Video Evidence of US Prisoner
Abuse?
Bruce
Jackson
Harry Levin and the Penultimate Manuscript of Finnegans Wake
Patrick
Cockburn
Boom! Boom! Out Go the Lights: Bombings Target Oil and Power
Facilities
Gary
Handschumacher
Mourn Ben Linder, Not His Killer: Reagan's Death Squads
JG
Turning Haiti into One Big Sweatshop
Mario
Benedetti
Obituary with Cheers
Vicente
Navarro
Meet the New Head of the IMF: Who
is Rodrigo Rato?
Website
of the Day
Iraqi Oil Revenue Watch
June
15, 2004
Harry
Browne
Ireland Adds a Brick to Fortress Europe
Neve
Gordon
The Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
David
Palmer
Richard Armitage, Abu Ghraib and CACI
John
Blair
Lovelock's Misguided Call: Nukes Are No Solution to Global Warming
Dave
Lindorff
God Wins in TKO
Bill
Quigley
Blood-Pouring Peace Activists: State Charges Dropped; Feds Step
In
Patrick
Cockburn
Carbombs and Street Dances: 13 More Killed in Baghdad Blast
John
Chuckman
John Kerry, Political Placebo
June
14, 2004
John
Stanton / Wayne Madsen
Torture, Inc: Oliver North Joins
the Party
Kathy
Kelly
Requiems: What Happens When Compassion Dies?
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Gets Testy About Torture
Lee
Sustar
Strikers Defy Visteon's Company Thugs
Kurt
Nimmo
The Desperate Censors: the Republican Plot to Kill Farhenheit
9/11
Jim
Davis
Hard Right Nativism
Eliot
Katz
Death and War
Uri
Avnery
The Nightmare Comes True
Website
of the Day
Instruments of Statecraft
June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto
and Runnymede
Team
CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary
Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe
Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt
Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg
Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st
Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
| Weekend
Edition
June 26 / 27, 2004
Cold Irons
Bound
The Russian
Gambit and Reality's Rout
By
CHRIS FLOYD
"Reality
has always had too many heads."
–
Bob Dylan
Part
I: Spy Game
Vlad
"The Impaler of Chechnya" Putin has now added his two kopeks
to the debate over the origins of the Iraq War. Apparently distressed
at seeing his self-proclaimed "soulmate," George W. Bush,
floundering in the rising tide of revelations about his crooked casus
belli, the Chekist-in-Chief tossed the L'il Commander a bone with his
recent claim that Russian agents had uncovered Iraqi terrorist plots
against the United States – months before Bush launched the blitzkrieg
on Babylon.
Strangely
enough, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters he'd never
heard of this remarkable intelligence before. This would be the same
Colin Powell who spent days poring over "the very best intelligence
we had" from "every source" before making the American
case for war at the UN in February 20003. Given the Bush Regime's extremely
low standard for "very best intelligence"– every major
assertion made by Powell on that historic day turned out to be a screaming
falsehood – one shudders to think how threadbare Putin's terrorist
tidbits must have been.
That's assuming they even existed in the first place. Some cynics claim
this intervention by the KGB Kid is just typical security organ disinformation,
artfully stage-managed to provide a PR boost to the struggling son of
ex-CIA chief George Bush I. (And they say there's no honor among thieves.)
Others hint darkly of a sinister quid pro quo: what will Putin ask in
return for this manful effort to pull Bush's roasting chestnuts out
of the fire? A free pass for the Khodorkovsky takedown? Extra sauce
at the next Crawford barbeque? The return of the Baltics?
Or
perhaps it's just a bit of kooky Kremlin leg-pulling. After all, does
Vlad really expect anyone to believe that a Bush Regime which grasped
at every possible fear-rousing, warmongering straw – phantom WMD
arsenals, phantom mobile WMD labs, phantom uranium, phantom meetings
in Prague, phantom terrorist training camps, phantom unmanned bombers
that could span the globe – tactfully refrained from mentioning
that Saddam had terrorist teams locked, loaded and ready to fire at
the American heartland? What, were they too shy to bring this up? Didn't
want to cause a fuss?
No: it is inconceivable that the Bush Regime would not have used such
"smoking gun" intelligence in its maniacal efforts to stoke
war fever in the American populace. After all, credible evidence of
Saddam actively plotting to launch direct attacks on the United States
would have been a much more effective tool than the painful contortions
about an Iraq-al Qaeda alliance that the Regime kept trotting (and keeps
trotting) out. It would have even worked better than all the huffing
and puffing about weapons of mass destruction, since the idea that Saddam
might send around a crew to blow up a shopping mall would have been
far more believable than the Regime's Hollywood fantasies about an evil
supervillain capable of destroying the earth in 45 minutes. If any such
evidence – with even the slightest tincture of possible truth
to it – had actually existed, it would have been plastered wall-to-wall
throughout the ever-compliant American media for months on end.
As
for Powell, his expressions of incredulity were couched in the same
cringing ambiguity he's displayed throughout his long career as an apologist
for bloodthirsty leaders – Nixon (My Lai), Reagan (Iran-Contra),
Bush I (Panama, Gulf War) and Bush II (Babylonian Conquest). In fact,
Powell even served a spell as an apologist for Saddam himself, when
Bush I needed to whitewash the infamous gassing of the Kurds in order
to keep peddling WMD technology to his then-beloved Iraqi tyrant. Now,
instead of stating the obvious – that the Russian intelligence,
if it existed at all, was so useless that it was flushed out of the
system long before it could reach the top – Powell hemmed and
hawed and said, well, maybe the boys over "in the intelligence
shop" might have seen it.
Well,
maybe they did see it. And maybe what they found merely echoed what
American intelligence already knew – indeed, what Saddam Hussein
had already openly declared: that if Iraq were invaded by the United
States, the Iraqis, certain to be overwhelmed militarily, would resort
to "asymmetrical warfare" in retaliation, striking at American
targets wherever they could. But this wasn't "intelligence"
that had to be ferreted out from the bowels of the Baathist regime by
wily Russian agents; it was old news from the back pages of the Washington
Post and the New York Times. In the fall of 2002, for example, then-CIA
Director George Tenet told Congress – in public, under oath –
that there was only one likely scenario in which Saddam would ever attack
the United States: if America invaded Iraq. This was duly noted in the
"papers of record" – then promptly forgotten (by the
papers themselves) in the months of media war-drumming that followed.
Tenet's
testimony dovetailed with other clear warnings intelligence officials
gave Bush before the war: that invading Iraq would absolutely guarantee
an upsurge of Islamic terrorism around the world. It would be the answer
to bin Laden's prayers: an unprovoked "Crusader" attack on
the Muslim heartland, an inexhaustible recruiting tool for generations
of "holy warriors." Bush knew this going in – he just
didn't care. His eyes were on the prize – the milking of Iraq
for power and profit – not on the security of all those pathetic
losers who didn't even elect him president: the American people.
No doubt Saddam had his minions draw up plans for an "asymmetrical"
response to a U.S. invasion – just as the U.S. spends countless
millions each year wargaming scenarios for, say, invading Iran, taking
over the Saudi oilfields, nuking China and yes, impaling Vlad's own
Russia. And no doubt Russian operatives could have easily picked up
such plans while, by their own admission, they were helping Iraq prepare
its pre-invasion defenses, as the Los Angeles Times reports. But Saddam
– a hardened survivor who'd been helped to power by the CIA and
supported in his military aggression and WMD attacks by both Reagan
and Bush I – would never have been stupid enough to launch "pre-emptive"
terrorist strikes that would have resulted in the immediate destruction
of his regime, as Tenet testified months before the war.
It's
obvious now that whatever retaliation plans and revenge fantasies Saddam
might have had, their actual reach did not extend beyond the streets
of Iraq – where Bush has conveniently sent American soldiers and
contractors to be slaughtered by the hundreds (while slaughtering and
torturing thousands of Iraqis in their turn). It's obvious too that
these retaliations could only have been triggered by Bush's invasion.
Only he could "bring it on" – as he has the promised
al Qaeda upsurge – with his illegal war based on the lies of spies.
***
Part
II: Caves and Chains
The
poverty of any given political discourse can be measured by how far
its fundamental terms depart from reality. Putin's heavy-handed intervention
– drawing from the deep, poisoned well of the "black ops"
world, chasing ghosts in a hall of mirrors – is entirely representative
of our famished discourse today. Like Plato's cave-dwellers, we can
only sit in the dark, talking trash about the shadows on the wall. This
is especially true for the "debates" over the war in Iraq,
particularly its origins, for they are founded upon the most insubstantial,
unmoored fantasy imaginable – namely, that the American-led war
against Iraq began when George W. Bush launched his ravaging blitzkrieg
in March 2003.
In
reality, the only genuine question up for debate in the months before
that fateful plunge was not, "Should we now go to war with Iraq?"
but rather, "Should we now escalate our war against Iraq?"
This could be further refined as: "Should we now add ground forces
to our on-going, 12-year air war against Iraq?" or "Should
we now convert our murderous economic war against Iraq into an open
takeover of the Iraqi economy?" or "Should we now upgrade
our long-running covert terrorism against Iraq into outright conquest?"
In
March 2003, fully one-third of Iraq's land-mass was already controlled
by Kurdish armies allied to the United States: a vast region where U.S.
forces, CIA agents and Iraqi dissident groups operated with absolute
freedom, far beyond the reach of Saddam Hussein. From here, the CIA
ran various terrorist groups whose bombs killed dozens, perhaps hundreds
of civilians in the Iraqi "heartland." (As often noted on
Counterpunch, new Iraqi strongman Iyad Allawi – currently preparing
to impose direct military rule on the subjects his American paymasters
have given him to play with – was one of the main terrorist leaders.)
It
was here too, in what was essentially American-controlled territory,
that the now-infamous Islamic extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi operated
his terrorist camp – again, beyond the reach of Saddam, and with
no connection to al Qaeda, according to the CIA itself. Bush cancelled
several planned military strikes on al-Zarqawi's camp – precisely
because it would have drawn the American public's attention to the fractured
reality of pre-invasion Iraq and undermined the Regime's cartoonish
agit-prop for war.
The
airspace of another third of the country was controlled by Anglo-American
fighters and bombers, which ranged freely throughout the land to destroy
any military structure they saw fit. Indeed, by the late 1990s, U.S.
generals were openly complaining that there were no more targets to
hit; they had destroyed everything that could have possibly posed a
threat to other countries. Still the bombing went on, again killing
hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent civilians over the long, relentless
air campaign.
Finally,
there were the famous UN sanctions that helped destroy Iraq's physical
and social infrastructure, its hospitals, waterworks, waste-treatment
plants, agriculture, industry, roads, turning one of the most developed
nations in the Middle East into a backward sewer where disease ran wild,
killing people by the hundreds of thousands – especially children
and the poor, the old and the sick. Weakened, starved, blockaded, cut
off from anything that might help them build any kind of alternative
social and civic structure in opposition to the regime (except, of course,
for the religious extremism now coming to full flower in the occupation),
the Iraqis were forced into an even further dependence on the tyrant,
whose food distribution system (hailed, ironically, as a model by the
very UN whose sanctions made it necessary) was the only thing that kept
most people alive.
This
was the reality of the situation during the run-up to Bush's invasion;
and in any political/media system not completely narcotized –
to the point of zombification – by Big Money, these facts would
have set the terms for the debate. Instead, the decision for war was
presented as a blank slate, with no history, no context, no connection
to reality. We were all trapped in a ludicrous pipe-dream, where Iraq
was a strong, unitary state, threatening its neighbors in all directions,
"harboring" al Qaeda terrorists, raging with irrational, unfounded
hatred against the United States, bristling with weapons of mass destruction
– not WMD "programs" or "WMD-related program activities,"
but the real deal, cited with iron certainty in speech after speech:
"We know where they are," declared Donald Rumsfeld early on;
"they are north of Baghdad, in the area around Tikrit."
Of
course, they were not there. They were nowhere. Most of Iraq's WMD arsenal
– the chemical weapons Saddam had used against Iran, with the
direct assistance of U.S. military intelligence under Ronald Reagan,
the chemical weapons Saddam had used against the Kurds, for which he
was awarded with increased aid, money and military technology by George
Bush I – had been destroyed after the first Gulf War. The rest
of the WMD and the "WMD-related program activities" had been
destroyed or shut down at Saddam's order in 1994 – a fact which
the United States and Britain well knew, because it was confirmed by
top Iraqi defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law, as Time Magazine
(among many others) reported years ago.
In
other words, more than a million innocent people were killed in order
to "punish" Iraq for not destroying WMD which the Anglo-American
intelligence services knew had already been destroyed. This pre-invasion
reality – a dismembered, partly-occupied country, a dismantled
arsenal, a million civilians murdered, a 12-year war of bombing, sanctions
and state terrorism – is the true context for any reports that
Iraq considered retaliatory strikes against such an onslaught. You don't
have to be a Powell-like apologist for Saddam's murderous, American-succored
regime to acknowledge this fact – nor the fact that despite the
12-year war, Iraq never actually launched or supported any terrorist
act against the United States.
But
of course, this reality has been erased from the American mind, allowing
the Bush Regime to spin whatever flights of fancy serve its partisan
turn at any given moment. Zarqawi is a case in point. After being repeatedly
reprieved by Bush before the war – in effect, given a license
to kill – Zarqawi has since conveniently morphed into the Scarlet
Pimpernel: striking here, there and everywhere, with one leg, two legs,
with dark skin and light skin, with a Jordanian accent and a Russian
accent, in Mosul, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Fallujah – the prime mover
of all evil in Iraq and now, according to Bush in his recent casus belli
contortions, the retroactive justification for the war itself.
Once
again, we're in the cave, chained to fools whose gazes are fixed on
the dark shapes flickering across the wall. Putin's KGB kibitzing is
just the latest amorphous shadow sent out to blot our vision. Right
now, it looks as if this particular gambit hasn't taken; it was too
clumsy, too obvious. But there will be more, many more of these in the
months to come – and some of them will have blood in them. For
it's clear now that the shadowmakers will stop at nothing to hold on
to the very real substance of their power.
Weekend Edition June 12 / 13, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede
Team CounterPunch
CP's Favorite Albums
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Troy, Now and Then
Gary Leupp
Not Really a Puppet Government in Iraq?
Brian
Cloughley
US Military in Crisis
Antonio
Ponvert, III
Iraqi Prisoner Abuse: the Connecticut Connection
Ben
Tripp
The Polls Get Stupider
Joe Bageant
Mash Note to the "Girl with the Leash"
Ron
Jacobs
The Return of the Hip Hop Insurgency
Forrest
Hylton
Object Lessons from the Case of Francisco Cortés
Christopher
Brauchli
Federal Bureau of Errors
Kurt Nimmo
Going After Qaddafi, Again
Wayne
Madsen
Israel's Slap at Reagan
Anthony
Loewenstein
Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World
Michael
Donnelly
A Lightship in the Forest: Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous
Greg Moses
Who Will Tell Us More About the Workers of Nasiriyah?
Susan
Davis
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban
Joseph
Ramsey
Weather Report: a Review of The Weather Underground
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The 18th Brumaire in the 21st Century
Wayne
Saunders
The Gipper, D-Day and the Stanley Cup
Poets'
Basement
Richey, Ford, La Morticella, Albert
Website
of the Weekend
Insurgent Music
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