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Today's
Stories
June
3, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Palestinian Misery in Perspective
June
2, 2004
Brian
Cloughley
The Liars are Winning
Ray
McGovern
How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible
Intelligence"
Josh
Frank
The Anybody But Bush Offensive
Mike
Whitney
The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots
Jackie
Corr
Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana
Robert
Jensen
The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too
Alexander
Cockburn
"Bye, Bye Boonville!"
June
1, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up
with Him
William
A. Cook
Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in
Rafah
Dave
Lindorff
Will the Times Clean House?
Kevin
Zeese
Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did
the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed?
Jacob
Levich
Coming Soon: Return of the Draft,
a Bipartisan Production
Kathy
Kelly
Voices in the Wilderness v. the US
Government
Website
of the Day
Remind Us
May
29 / 31, 2004
Lee
Ballinger / Dave Marsh
The Origins of Memorial Day
Janine
Pommy Vega
Memo for Memorial Day
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
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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June
3, 2004
Only
Friends of the US & Israel Can Have Nukes
IAEA,
MAD, the US and Iran
By
RON JACOBS
Today's world grows ever more scary.
If we are to believe the men and women in Washington, DC, the
reasons for this fear come from abroad. Specifically, they come
from various countries and movements based in the Middle East,
the Korean Peninsula, South Asia, and Latin America. In other
words, wherever someone is contesting the US assumption that
it should rule the planet, there is something to fear. Of course,
to the rest of the world, the primary reason for humanity's fearsome
state lies with Washington's assumption that it has the right
to make such a claim.
One battleground (in the fundamental
sense of the word) for this difference of opinion is in Iraq,
where people die every day as a result of this struggle. Other
battlegrounds where words are the current preferred weaponry
include Iran and northern Korea. In both of these countries,
the fight is over their rights to conduct nuclear research and
develop nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). Beyond the specifics of the treaty itself is the question
of self-defense. In a world where one nation has more military
power than all the rest of the nations combined, the ability
to threaten the use of nuclear weapons is a pragmatic and effective
defense. One does not have to approve of this strategy to acknowledge
that it not only makes strategic sense, it is also effective
in the short run at keeping an aggressor nation at bay. In case
the reader is wondering, the United States would be the aggressor
nation in the cases under discussion.
Recently, Iran has undergone
a series of inspections from the International Atomic Energy
Association (IAEA) regarding its nuclear program. Although the
overwhelming reports back to the IAEA from their inspections
teams have indicated that Iran is adhering to the various protocols
it agreed to under the NPT the US continues to challenge those
assertions. As if to prove its intentions to cooperate with the
IAEA, Iran even agreed to an additional protocol requested by
the IAEA. According to an IAEA press release of May 21, 2004,
this protocol is designed to "provide broader information
about Iran's nuclear and nuclear-related activities and will
facilitate the IAEA's assessment of the correctness and completeness
of the information already provided by Iran on its past and present
nuclear activities." Unfortunately, Washington has chosen
to ignore this move by Iran and has instead restarted its campaign
of disinformation and half-truths aimed at discrediting and isolating
Iran prior to the next meeting of the IAEA Governing Council,
where Iran's compliance is on the agenda. (Additional note: On
June 1, 2004, the IAEA website (http://www.iaea.or.at/)
reported that, "The head of the UN nuclear monitoring agency
said today that his inspectors have found no clear proof of a
military dimension to Iran's efforts to develop nuclear energy.")
In all of this, it is extremely
important to remember that we are not talking about Iranian nuclear
weapons, but about Iranian nuclear energy. While it might be
reasonable to assume that Iran would like to possess nuclear
weapons if for no other reason than that some of its enemies
possess them, most notably the US and Israel, at this point Iran's
nuclear program is one devoted to the production of energy for
its people. This is more than can be said about the nuclear programs
in Israel, Pakistan, or India. As anyone who pays attention to
the news knows, all three of these governments have active nuclear
weapons programs. However, none of them are considered to enemies
of the United States or its bulldog in the Middle East--Israel.
If one wants to look for a
reason as to why the US insists on the dismantling of Iran's
nuclear program they need look no further than the last sentence
of the previous paragraph. Israel and the United States will
not rest until they have control over the use of nuclear power
of any kind in the Middle Eastern/South Asian part of the world.
The Pakistani and Indian governments have accepted this for now
and, after Pakistan's President Musharraf fired and punished
the scientist who was in charge of his government's bombmaking
program. Unfortunately for Iran, in terms of its nuclear program
at least, its government ranks very high on Washington and Tel
Aviv's enemies list. Consequently, it will continue to be challenged
by Washington in the IAEA and elsewhere. Let's hope that these
challenges remain verbal and never become military. If the latter
did occur, most indicators point to an extremely bloody confrontation.
I do not support the current
government in Iran. If one wants to investigate the hijacking
of a popular left-leaning revolution, they would do well to study
the events in Iran during the years from 1979 to around 1983.
What could have been a truly popular and emancipatory government
to replace the previous authoritarian state became instead a
theocratic tyranny. Instead of being subjected to the made-in-the-USA
police state of the Shah after their revolution, the Iranian
people found themselves the victims of a fundamentalist regime
intent on remaking the country according to its reactionary reading
of the Koran. They replaced one tyranny for another. The language
of oppression changed, but the daily reality did not.
Despite my distaste for the
current regime in Tehran (and for nuclear power), they have the
right to pursue their nuclear program, even though it might increase
the danger in the region. As a people who have been under the
threat of war with Israel and the United States since 1979, the
mere threat of them possessing nuclear weapons potentially prevents
an outbreak of hostilities with either of their adversaries.
The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union proved
to the world that in a nuclear environment, the best defense
is the ability to destroy your enemy without ever actually being
called on to do so. Strategists called this hideous policy Mutually
Assured Destruction or MAD. As has been said before, only madmen
would have designed such a policy. We are forced to live with
it. The alternative-a world where only one power has this destructive
capability-seems much worse.
Ron Jacobs is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground,
which is being republished by Verso.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.ed
Weekend Edition
Features for May 29 / 31, 2004
Mike
Ferner
On Their Way to Abu Ghraib
Alfred
W. McCoy
The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research
Douglas
Valentine
An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions
Chris
White
First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto
Bruce
Anderson
The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu
David
Vest
Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire
Saul
Landau
Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy?
Kurt
Nimmo
Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA
Elaine
Cassel
The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders
Will
Potter
The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps;
Get Arrested as a "Terrorist"
Ben
Tripp
They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches
Dr.
Susan Block
Save Abu Ghraib!
Kia
Kojouri
Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an
Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh
Mickey
Z
D-Day: 60 Years is Enough!
Jon
Brown
Correcting the Correction at the Times
Patrick
B. Barr
Pre-emptive War Insurance
Stephen
Gowans
Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel
Tom
Gorman
Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly
New
Dave
Zirin
Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa
Muhammad
Gregory
Weiher
Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy"
Erik
Cummings
Jung Meets Bush
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert
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