Today's Stories

June 7 / 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top

June 6, 2008

Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine

Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal

Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist

Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market

Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?

Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself

Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley

June 5, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?

Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly

Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...

Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award

John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC

Dan Bacher
The Parching of California

DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off

Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?

Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers

June 4, 2008

Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers

George Wuerthner
Farm Economics

Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics

Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed

Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended

Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement

Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space

Website of the Day
Red State Rebels

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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By the Time This Election is Over Obama Will Feel Like He is a Muslim

Experience and the Two-for-One

By B.R. GOWANI

A white man, a white woman, and a half-white/half-black man, the US presidential candidates, have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars to rent the White House for four years in order “to serve the people.” (For another term, the lease money would be raised depending on the corporate owned media rates.) From each party, only one candidate could make it and so the woman is out.

A black woman (Cynthia McKinney) and other candidates are outside the tunnel vision of the corporate media and so most of the people are unaware of them.

Out of the many issues raised, the two that prompted me to write are “two-for-one” and “experience.”

Two-for-One

Many people I came across, when asked if they’ll vote for Clinton, were reluctant to go for Hillary because of their fear of getting Bill as part of the deal. During his presidential campaign in 1992, Bill Clinton quipped: If you elect me, you also get Hillary. That is, “two for the price of one.”

Nothing’s Wrong in Getting Two-for-One

There are only three things that can happen:

In the first case, let’s say the president is a warmonger and is endowed with a spouse who is of similar nature, too. With this explosive combo, the war/s—one of the most important rituals every US president has to perform—either overt or covert, would be waged with twice the speed. Also, the forces and weapons would be doubled and thus the war would probably end—if that is the goal—in half the time.

Won’t it be better for the United States, and especially the world?

In the second scenario, the president is not that aggressive—which is a rarity—but the spouse is ferocious. In that situation, the country would be at a disadvantage, if the spouse is able to push the president into war.
Our last scenario has a violent president but whose spouse prefers peace. This is the circumstance where, the spouse can have, if that spouse has any influence on the other partner, some calming effect.
Spouses such as Abigail Adams (1744-1818) (wife of second president John Adams, whom the critics called “Mrs. President”) and Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) (wife of president Frank Delano Roosevelt or FDR), who were liberal, intelligent, and independent women, can be great assets to their husbands.

And who needs an advising spouse when you have a vice president, like Dick Cheney, behind your back.

If Laura Bush had any influence over her husband, she would have told him long ago: “Hey Georgie, listen! It’s the fifth year of your presidency, stop this wars and think of getting a Nobel Peace Prize; create another peace façade in the Middle East by raising false hope of “homeland” for the Palestinians.”

Instead of Laura Bush, imagine if Hillary Rodham Clinton, the warrior queen, was the other half of George Bush. As a First Lady, Clinton would have supported—whole heartedly, as she did in 2003—the war but would have advised a quick obliteration of Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of 2005, she would have asked him to sober up from the power-intoxication and start cleaning up the mess. Once out of office, Bush would have become the youngest “elder statesman.”

So there’s nothing to worry about getting “Two-for-One;” it doesn’t make much difference. Besides, which president is not going to consult the other partner, or that partner is not going to offer free advice to the spouse-president, unless their relations are strained.

“Experience”

How much experience one needs to be a president of the United States? None whatsoever. It is hard to imagine Bush as president if one would have watched his 1999 interview with WHDH-TV’s Andy Hiller in which he was unable to name Pakistan’s president. However, since September 2001, Pakistani leader has become one of his best buddies—of course; the friendship was initiated at a gunpoint. (The other leaders he couldn’t name were Chechnya’s President Aslan Maskhadov and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India (the second most populous and a very important country). He could remember the first name of Taiwan’s President Lee Teng-Hui. Not just the names; his understanding of international affairs then wasn’t any better.

Today the whole world shudders at the name of Bush. And isn’t it what the US ruling class strives for that the world should fear its leader and comply with US demands of any sort?

The experience issue was raised, especially by Clinton, in relation to Barak Obama, that he is a novice in field of foreign affairs. The way it was portrayed was as if he alone was going to run the country. There are always plenty of Karl Roves around every leader. (Rove was known as “Bush’s Brain.”) You don’t even need Rove when Israel’s agents, in the garb of the Jewish Lobby, are there to teach, more correctly, thrust up your throat the only foreign policy that matters—the interests of Israel, many a times at the expense of the United States.

A Few Suggestions

Ms. Rodham

You should work out some deal with Obama and accept the vice presidency. With that office, obliterating Iran would be a piece of cake. <1> Without doubt, you’ll be exerting more influence than Cheney. And even then, if the craving doesn’t end, you could ask Mr. Clinton to send one of his white female friends to the White House and blame it on the black man’s sexual prowess. (This myth has a long history going back to the slave era.) It would be much better and morally more appropriate than sending your opponent on the way to Robert Kennedy. <2>

In less than a year, your dream would come true. In addition to the three years, you’ll get two terms as elected president. Eleven years! After FDR, you’ll be the first person to get more than eight years.

(By the way, my nephew, who has few more years before he’s eligible to vote, accompanied me for voting and suggested that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama should become the president and vice president or vice versa.)

Mr. Obama

Hopes have the power to be audacious when the circumstances have changed drastically or the person aiming for it is a revolutionary. You are not a revolutionary and the things haven’t changed in the United States. In just one sentence, Alexander Cockburn perceptively sums up your politics: “As a presidential candidate the only politically unorthodox item on Obama’s record is that he has a black skin.” <3>
  
As an author of “The Audacity of Hope,” you’re so blinded by the ultra whiteness of hope—that is, the White House—that you can’t see the racism that is peeking through the prison population, economic inequality, the broken inner cities, the financially starved schools, the uninsured people, misery of Palestinians, and several other things.

You know damn well that when 67% of the population in the US is white, you can’t be the first black person to be in the White House if you open your mouth about discrimination and disparity. The only hope of the wretched that would be fulfilled, if you’re elected, would be a change of color in White House. It would be a symbolic satisfaction, because sooner or later, they’ll come to know where your loyalty lies. It won’t make much difference if you go for the Michael Jackson skin tone.
 

Mr. McCain

Your talk, temperament, and an appetite for occupation makes you a Bush Whopper. President Bush doesn’t mind staying in Iraq for “50 years;” you’re quite ahead of him; you want to stay for “100 years.” And there’s nothing wrong in it. The United States has been occupying some or other land since—and also prior to—its birth.

Your reasoning: “We’ve been in Japan for 60 years, we’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.” <4>

And your response to a question about Iran, “that old Beach Boy song, ‘Bomb Iran, bomb, bomb, bomb,’” says a lot about the next four or eight years. <5>

The best thing for you would be to choose the former New York mayor and presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani as your running mate. You can stay (and fight) for 100 years and an occasional repercussion would allow Giuliani to show his emergency handling talents and be in the limelight, once in a while.

Days Ahead

Now that the final contest is black versus white, the racists will have a field day till the beginning of November, and onward, if Obama becomes the next president. Obama’s own party people have not spared him, as Jeffery St. Clair points out:

“For the dull-witted, Clinton’s surrogates are sent out ... Obama used cocaine (Bob Johnson). Obama’s middle name is ‘Hussein’ (Bob Kerrey).  Obama is a master of ‘shuck and jive’ (Andrew Cuomo). Obama is another Jesse Jackson (Bill Clinton). Obama’s story is a fairy tale (ditto). And, most recently, Geraldine Ferraro told the Los Angeles Times that Obama is a ‘sexist’ (most black men are, right?) and she won’t vote for him if he is the nominee.”

St. Clair then summarizes it into un-politicized English: “Obama is a drug abuser, a huckster, a secret Muslim, a con artist and a misogynist. And that’s without dragging [Obama’s former pastor] Jeremiah Wright into the scenario.” <6>

By the time the election is over, Obama himself will start feeling that he is a Muslim ....

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

Notes

<1> Israel has about 100 nuclear weapons, whereas Iran has none.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

A couple of weeks back, former president Jimmy Carter put the figure at 150.

Hillary was asked by ABC’s Chris Cuomo: “What would you do if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel?” Her response: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran.” “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Hillary’s response was reprehensible but so was Cuomo’s question. When it comes to Middle East, most of the US politicians and the media people are sick and so are in ICU, that is, Israeli Care Unit. They know, if they speak out the truth, their respiratory tube will be pulled out by the Jewish Lobby.

<2> Sensing that she was fighting a lost battle, many people urged Hillary to quit the race. She came up with a murderous reasoning for not quitting: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?” “We all remember Bobby Kennedy [the presidential candidate] was assassinated in June [1968] in California.”

<3> http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05242008.html

<4> http://www.newyorker.com/

<5> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg

<6> http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair05212008.html

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