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America's First Terror War
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Today's Stories May 12 / 13, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Patrick Cockburn May 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Kathleen Christison Mike Ferner John Holt Laurie Hasbrook Christopher
Brauchli Margaret Kimberley Dave Lindorff Nicole Colson John V. Walsh Website of the Day
May 10, 2007 Tariq Ali Patrick Cockburn Neve Gordon Marjorie Cohn David Rosen Alan Farago John Hellman Kathy Rentenbach BANCO Richard Rhames Website of the Day
Jeff Leys Patrick Cockburn Glen Ford Paula Rothenberg Kathryn Weber John Chuckman Jordan Flaherty Dave Lindorff Stephen Lendman Website of
the Day
May 8, 2007 Dave Lindorff Patrick Cockburn Corporate Crime Reporter Ralph Nader Malini Johar Schueller Juan Santos Dave Zirin Joshua Frank Evelyn Pringle Eamonn McCann Website of the Day
May 7, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Monica Benderman Greg Moses Rannie Amiri Fitrakis / Wasserman Fred Wilhelms Ramzy Baroud Bruce K. Gagnon T. W. Croft Sonja Karkar Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn William Blum Uri Avnery Franklin Lamb Fred Gardner Lawrence R.
Velvel Missy Beattie Robert Fantina Carla Blank Linn Washington,
Jr. Stephen F. Jackson P. Sainath Anthony Papa James T. Phillips John Ross Stephen Lendman Ben Terrall CounterPunch
Newswire Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
May 4, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Col. Dan Smith Norman Solomon Azmi Bishara Ron Jacobs Dave Lindorff Kevin Zeese Bob Fitrakis Janet Kauffman Website of
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May 3, 2007 Jeff Halper Christopher
Brauchli Dave Zirin Corporate Crime
Reporter Robert Fisk Mike Ferner Mike Whitney Pham Binh Dave Lindorff Michael A.
Johnson Website of the Day
May 2, 2007 Saul Landau Dr. Susan Block Carla Blank Margaret Kimberly Kevin Zeese Carlos Villareal Michael Dickinson Tim Shorrock Alevtina Rea William S.
Lind Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Fred Gardner Chase Madar Ralph Nader John V. Walsh Joshua Frank Leslie Radford Shaun Harkin Dave Lindorff Peter Rost,
MD Peter Linebaugh Website of
the Day
April 30, 2007 Frank Menetrez Paul Craig
Roberts Ray McGovern Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Diana Johnstone Sherwood Ross Peter Rost, MD Robert Jensen Kevin Zeese Jane Stillwater Website of
the Day
April 28 / 29, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St.
Clair Fred Gardner David Orchard
Alan Maass Joe Bageant Robert Fantina Hanan Ashrawi Ron Jacobs Nicole Colson Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Harvey Wasserman Cindy Beringer Mike Roselle RAWA James McEnteer Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Eva Liddell Phyllis Bennis Mike Whitney Michael F.
Brown Jordan Flaherty Margaret Kimberly Christopher Brauchli Jacob Mundy Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn Franklin Lamb Patrick Cockburn Roger Morris Henry Siegman Alevtina Rea Paris Nikolas Kozloff Alan Farago Matthew S. Miller Website of
the Day
Sharon Smith David Price Diana Johnstone Brendan Cooney Sonja Karkar Brian Concannon Lee Gaillard Leah Fishbein Dave Lindorff Neal Galloway Website of the Day
April 24, 2007 Ishmael Reed Lila Rajiva Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Website of the Day
April 23, 2007 Saul Landau Patrick Cockburn Robert Fantina Sam Husseini Corporate Crime Reporter Elizabeth Lalasz Harvey Wasserman Dave Lindorff Gary Leupp Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Fred Gardner Kristoffer Larsson Barbara Rose
Johnston Manuel Garcia, Jr. John Scagliotti Marjorie Cohn Patrick Cockburn Diana Johnstone Ron Jacobs Evelyn Pringle BANCO Paul Richards Dan Bacher Ben Terrall Sherwood Ross Remi Kanazi Aseem Shrivastava Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
April 20, 2007 Doug Peacock Diane Farsetta Tom Clifford Amira Hass Nicole Colson Sonja Karkar Heather Gray Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban Agustin Velloso Matthew Koehler Website of
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April 19, 2007 Emad Mekay
/ Patrick Cockburn Larry C. Johnson Norman Solomon Saul Williams Sunsara Taylor Harvey Wasserman Christopher
Brauchli Anthony Papa Dave Lindorff Website of the Day
April 18, 2007 Lila Rajiva Landau / Hassen Charles Fisher
/ Diane Christian Kevin Prosen China Hand Peter Rost,
MD Justin Akers Chacón Jerry Kroth Sherwood Ross Niranjan Ramakrishnan Alice Cherbonnier Website of
the Year?
April 17, 2007 Jean Bricmont
/ Paul Craig
Roberts Frida Berrigan Alison Weir John Walsh Jason Hribal Evelyn Pringle Ben Terrall Stan Cox Soren Ambrose Website of the Day
April 16, 2007 John F. Sugg Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Carl G. Estabrook Paul Craig Roberts Uri Avnery Ralph Nader Eamon McCann Lee Sustar Mike Whitney Don Fitz Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
April 14 / 15, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Jorge Mariscal Jeffrey St. Clair Dave Marsh Dr. Trudy Bond Joe Bageant Fidel Castro Alfredo Molano Alan Farago Michael Neumann Fred Gardner Ron Jacobs Gail Dines Linda Ford Missy Beattie Dan La Botz Giuliana Sgrena Laura Carlsen Abu Spinoza Elizabeth Schulte Poets' Basement Website of
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April 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Stephen Soldz George Ciccarriello-Maher Laith al-Saud Dave Zirin John Ross Ramzy Baroud Harvey Wasserman Lopez, Olivo and Garcia Dols, Fukumori,
Judd and Tillett-Saks Website of the Day
April 12, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Evelyn Pringle Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Joe DeRaymond Nicola Nasser Nikolas Kozloff William S.
Lind Siegfried L. Sassoon Website of
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R. T. Naylor Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler Jack Balkwill Alan Farago Russell D.
Hoffman Peter Rost, MD Mike Whitney Dave Lindorff Susie Day Website of the Day
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Weekend
Edition A New Arms RaceEuropean Missiles and the Camel's NoseBy CONN HALLINAN The current brouhaha over a U.S. plan to deploy anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) in Poland has nothing to do with a fear that Iran will attack Europe or the U.S. with nuclear tipped Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), but a great deal to do with the Bush Administration's efforts to neutralize Russia's and China's nuclear deterrents and edge both countries out of Central Asia. The plan calls for deploying 10 ABMs in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic, supposedly to interdict missiles from "rogue states"-read North Korean and Iran. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security John Rood claims "North Korea possesses an ICBM range missile," and it is "certainly possible" that Pyongyang could sell some to Iran. Barring that, Tehran could build its own missile capable of striking Europe and the U.S. But the North Korean Taepodong-2, which failed a recent test, is not a true ICBM-in a pinch it might reach Alaska. And Iran pledged in 2003 not to upgrade its intermediate missile, the Shihab-3. "Since there aren't, and won't be, any ICBMs [from North Korea and Iran], then against whom, against whom, is this system directed?" First Deputy Prime Minister Sergi Ivanov said to the Financial Times, "Only against us." The Chief of the Russian General Staff added, "The real goal [of the U.S. deployment] is to protect [the U.S.] from Russian and Chinese nuclear-missile potential and to create exclusive conditions for the invulnerability of the United States." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded that "The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet [sic] strategic return is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it." But once you start adding up a number of other things, it isn't just 10 missiles and a radar site. There is already a similar site in Norway, and the plan is to put similar systems in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Britain is considering deploying ABM missiles at Fylingdales, which even the U.S. admits would pose a threat to Russian missiles. "If the [Russians] are concerned about the U.S. targeting their intercontinental ballistic missiles, I think that would be problematic from the UK because I believe we probably could catch them from a UK launch site," says U.S. Lieutenant General Trey Obering, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. An editorial in the Guardian called the Fylingdales plan "the far side of folly." The Russians are also suspicious that the Polish missiles are the camel's nose under the tent. Poland has made it clear that it doesn't feel threatened by Iran. For Warsaw, this is all about its traditional enemy to the East, Russia. Besides the ABM missiles, Poland is pressing Washington for Patriot missiles and high altitude THAAD missiles, plus it is purchasing American F-16s. In response, the Russians have moved surface-to-air missiles into Belarus. "It would be naïve to think that Washington would limit its appetite to Poland or the Czech Republic, or the modest potential that it is now talking about," writes Victor Litovkin of Russia's Independent Military Review, All these systems will be tied into ABM systems in Alaska and California, plus similar planned systems in Japan, Australia and the Philippines (not to mention sea-borne ABM systems in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean). Keep in mind the Bush Administration unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Total all those things up, and toss in the recent decision by the Bush Administration to start designing another generation of nuclear warheads, and it is no wonder the Russians have turned cranky. The European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have-with reservations- gone along with the plan, in part because the EU would like to squeeze Russian control over gas and oil pipelines coming out of Central Asia. According to K.M. Bhadrakumar, the former Indian ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey, the U.S. has financed a pipeline that runs natural gas from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan through Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. The pipeline will be "a rival to Russian Gazprom's Blue Stream-2," scheduled to open in 2012. "Moscow is well aware that Washington is the driving spirit behind the EU's energy policy toward Central Asia," Bhadrakumar writes in the Asia Times, arguing that the U.S. "calculates that Moscow will be inexorably drawn into a standoff with the EU over the latter's increasingly proactive polices in Eurasia." While Rice may suggest that "everyone" thinks Russian paranoia is "ludicrous," in fact the EU is split over the missiles, and unhappy that Washington bypassed NATO to make bilateral agreements with both countries. Neither the rightwing Polish government nor the center-right Czech governments dare put the issue up for a referendum. Sentiment in the Czech Republic is running 60-40 against the radar, and there is strong opposition to the missiles in Poland. The German Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in the current coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel, also oppose it. "We do not need new rockets in Europe," says SPD chair Kurt Beck. "The SPD doesn't want a new arms race between the U.S. and Russia on European soil. We have enough problems in the world." French President Jacques Chirac also warned, "We should be very careful about encouraging the creation of a new dividing lines in Europe or a return to the old order." The Russians have threatened to withdraw from the European Conventional Forces Treaty, and have even hinted they might reconsider their participation in the 1987 Intermediate Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russia is also making plans to quadruple its production of new ballistic missiles and add to its nuclear submarine fleet. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute researcher Shannon Kile says the Russians view the deployment "as a violation of the original NATO enlargement agreement," where the U.S. pledged it would not permanently deploy or station "military assets on the territories of former Warsaw pact countries." Last month, the White House urged admitting Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Macedonia and the Ukraine to NATO. Implicit in Rice's "ludicrous" comment is that an ABM system would be incapable of stopping a full-scale nuclear attack by a major nuclear power, and critics point out that the system has a dismal track record. Kile characterized the proposed ABM as "A system that won't work to fight a threat that does not exist." But it doesn't have to work very well. ABM systems have a dark secret: They are not supposed to stop all-out missile attacks, just mop up the few retaliatory enemy missiles that manage to survive a first strike. First strikes-called "counterpoint" attacks in bloodless vocabulary of nuclear war-are a central component in U.S. nuclear doctrine. Last week the Democrats blocked funds for the European ABM system. Robert Wexler (D-Fl), chair of the House subcommittee on Europe, said, "Europeans also question why-if this program is really intended to protect Europe-did the administration choose to bilaterally negotiate with Poland and the Czech Republic rather than collectively decide this issue in NATO?" But whether the Democrats will stand up to the White House is anyone's guess. If you are sitting in Moscow or Beijing and adding up the ABMs, the new warheads, and the growing ring of bases on your borders, you have little choice but to react. Imagine the U.S. response if the Russians and the Chinese were to deploy similar systems in Canada, Mexico and Cuba. A nuclear arms race, an increase of tension in Europe, and the launching of a new Cold War: That is what is at stake in the European missile crisis. Conn Hallinan is an analyst for Foreign Policy in
Focus, a winner of a Project Censored Award, and did his PhD
dissertation on the history of insurrectionary organizations
in Ireland.
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